Where Formal and Informal Justice Meet: Ethiopia's Justice Pluralism

Abstract

Ethiopia is a federal republic of 82 million, where the former victorious Tigrean rebels, under the auspices of the political party known as the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), hold a firm grip on power. In 2010, the EPRDF and affiliated parties won 545 of 547 parliamentary seats, ensuring a fourth consecutive five-year term. In the concurrent elections for regional parliaments, the EPRDF and its affiliates won 1,903 of 1,904 seats. Two years earlier in 2008, the EPRDF and its affiliates had won all but four of 3.4 million local and by-elections, helped by the fact that the opposition parties abstained from the process. The ambitions of an authoritarian government that as part of its ideology of revolutionary democracy desires to maintain its authority at every level and yet is conscious of its political insecurity, inevitably mean that the State’s formal justice system is subject to significant political intervention and influence. This