Politics In Ethiopia Research Articles

The New Prime Minister’s Faith

For the first time in Ethiopia’s history, the head of state is not a member of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, but a Protestant. Moreover, Hailemariam Desalegn, who was sworn into the office of the prime minister following Meles Zenawi’s death in the summer of 2012, is a Pentecostal, and more significantly a Oneness Pentecostal, belonging to the Apostolic Church of Ethiopia – a church which in the past has been ostracized by Orthodox, mainline Evangelicals and Pentecostals alike, because of its rejection of the dogma of the Trinity. This recent transition of power thereby highlights an interesting part of Ethiopia’s increasing religious diversity, which to date has hardly been addressed. Briefly sketching the background of Oneness Pentecostalism in the USA, this paper focuses on the history of the Apostolic Church of Ethiopia as well as its present relations to other churches. It also takes a look at Hailemariam’s relationship with his church and discusses possible implications of his ascendency for religious politics in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia's Lalibäla and the fall of Jerusalem 1187

Although there is no conclusive proof that the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 was not the main reason for hewing the churches at Lalibäla out of the rocks, there seem to be enough indications that the incentive for the enterprise is to be looked for in the internal politics in Ethiopia at the turn of the XIIIth century. The fact that the relations with the most important Muslim power of the time were rather friendly, in any case not hostile, may corroborate this view.ATTENTION: Due to copy-right no online publication is provided.

Transnational Politics in Ethiopia: Diasporas and the 2005 Elections

Beginning with a discussion of new political processes in transnational social networks, this essay presents Ethiopians in North America as a conflict-generated transnational diaspora closely involved in homeland politics. The essay surveys a range of key diaspora political organizations and media, detailing their involvement in the dramatic political events surrounding the Ethiopian election in 2005. The critical and creative roles that the Ethiopian diaspora played—in framing political events and as a gatekeeper for opposition strategies—provided essential support for the homeland’s opposition parties both during and after the election. (6 March 2009)

The Preservation of Terror

The Preservation of Terror Eric Gottesman (bio) After the 1974 arrest of Emperor Haile Selassie by the Marxist opposition-prompted in part by public outrage over photographs in the international media showing the emperor feeding meat to his animals while rural Ethiopians starved-political factions angled for control. Not coincidentally, it was around this time, specifically in 1977, in the midst of the Red Terror, that the Soviet-supported communist government in Ethiopia (known as the Derg) unofficially outlawed photography. These officials were afraid that someone might use images to expose their regime's abuses of power. As a result, during that time, Ethiopians could only have their images made in official "photographing studios" set up by the government to make photographs used as official documents of identity. The Derg collapsed twenty-one years ago, but its psychological legacy continues to mystify identity and politics in Ethiopia and terrify those old enough to remember it. Of course, Ethiopians are now permitted to have cameras; but people continue to visit photography studios and carry around passport photographs of their loved ones. On holidays, families still line up to have their pictures made. I have visited friends and neighbors in Ethiopia, and in the United States, and have asked to see the images they preserved in their homes, in photo albums, in forgotten boxes, on cluttered desks. I asked people to allow me to re-photograph these images and the marks left on them over the turbulent intervening years. Many of these photographs depict people lost during the Red Terror or in its wake. Some are made more recently with this photographic history in mind. The photograph "Mother and Son Reunited . . ." was brought to me by someone who used the darkroom to combine an old image of a boy, missing since 1982, with a new image of his mother who still carries his photograph with her to try to find him. I have also begun to explore the pictures people in the Diaspora have carried with them, as well as the "ones that got away"-photographs that Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees remember but, for some reason, had to leave behind. The verbal descriptions of these inert photographs (gone, but not forgotten) testify to the power of the printed photograph in a time of digitization. As well, they reveal fragments of previously normal lives. These nearly two-dimensional rectangular objects seem fleeting, yet they have endured war, flight, and physical decay, as well as love and banality. I am interested in what these images say about the elision of personal and official histories. What do disintegrating government-sanctioned images say about the legacy of an authoritarian regime? What do old monochromatic images recall of the subjects, of what they endured, or of their memories? And how do these images inform the new, full-color national self-image Ethiopians are busily creating? [End Page 155] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Banded Passport Photographs (2007) by Eric Gottesman. C-print (h: 20" x 24"). [End Page 156] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Every page of Amsale Shiferaw's Photo Album (2007) by Eric Gottesman. Inkjet print (h: 80" x 42"). [End Page 157] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Mobile Orphan Photo Studio (2007) by Eric Gottesman. Gelatin silver prints (h: 30" x 40"). [End Page 158] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 4. Hanna Mesfin's Mother's Photo Album (2007) by Eric Gottesman. C-print (h: 24" x 17") [End Page 159] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 5. Backs of Passport Photographs, Amharic (2007) by Eric Gottesman. C-print (h: 16" x 20"). [End Page 160] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 6. Photograph of Hanna Mesfin's Mother, 1996 (2008) by Eric Gottesman. C-print (h: 9" x 12"). [End Page 161] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 7. Photograph of Hanna Mesfin's Mother with Woman, 1996 (2008) by Eric Gottesman. C-print (h: 17" x 24"). [End Page 162] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 8. Photograph of General's Engagement Party (2004) by Eric Gottesman. Gelatin silver...

Modernity, Eurocentrism, and radical politics in Ethiopia, 1961–1991

This article provides a critical reflection of radicalism in Ethiopia in the thirty years from 1961 to 1991. Radical politics among Ethiopians, both at home and abroad, grew out of the global radicalization of the 1960s. Radicalism in Ethiopia took one form: Marxism. The article highlights three main points. First, unlike any other place in the history of revolutions, Ethiopia went through three simultaneous revolutions during the 1974–1991 period: those in Eritrea, Tigray and Ethiopia at large. Second, almost all the military conflicts that consumed hundreds of thousands of lives in the country were conducted among political forces that were Marxist, or Marxist‐oriented. Third, Marxism was deeply embedded in the Eurocentric structure of knowledge. Ethiopian Marxism by extension was Eurocentric in its grasp of the Ethiopian situation. It rejected Ethiopia's past as being one reactionary pile of refuse badly in need of cleaning. The paper presents a critical reflection of this Eurocentric paradigm.

The Politics of Contemporary Language Policy in Ethiopia

Language is political in Ethiopia because it has both structured and symbolized the nation-building project, and because, in the context of limited resources, any language policy change would require a significant realignment of resources. In modern Ethiopia, the historical distribution of the political goods of communication, recognition and autonomy has been highly skewed, benefiting native Amharic-speakers disproportionately. Since the early 1990s, the decentralization of language choice under the federal constitution has led to the use of other languages by members of select ethno-linguistic communities. This study considers the politics of language choice, drawing from the rich literature in political theory which addresses the role of language in the identity politics of multiethnic and multilingual societies. The historical trajectory of language politics in Ethiopia is presented, but the focus is on evidence gathered in parts of Ethiopia in 2001 and 2003. These findings indicate the relationship between language identities, citizenship formation and identification in the country. They are based on structured interviews and participant observation in select regions of the country.

Conflict-generated diasporas and transnational politics in Ethiopia

Diaspora groups link processes of globalisation and transnational migration to homeland politics and conflicts. In some cases, diaspora groups produced by a specific set of traumatic memories create ‘conflict-generated diasporas’ that sustain and often amplify their strong sense of symbolic attachment to the homeland. Conflict-generated diasporas tend to be less willing to compromise and therefore reinforce and exacerbate the protractedness of homeland conflicts. Economists have focused on the links between remittances and civil war. Beyond resources, however, conflict-generated diasporas frequently have a prominent role in framing conflict issues and defining what is politically acceptable. Diaspora groups created by conflict and sustained by traumatic memories tend to compromise less and therefore reinforce and exacerbate the protracted nature of conflicts. The 2005 political opening and subsequent crackdown in Ethiopia illustrates how this diaspora shaped recent political developments and points to broader patterns of transnational linkages among diasporas and homeland political processes.

Transnational Politics in Ethiopia: Diasporas and the 2005 Elections

Beginning with a discussion of new political processes in transnational social networks, this essay presents Ethiopians in North America as a conflict-generated transnational diaspora closely involved in homeland politics. The essay surveys a range of key diaspora political organizations and media, detailing their involvement in the dramatic political events surrounding the Ethiopian election in 2005. The critical and creative roles that the Ethiopian diaspora played—in framing political events and as a gatekeeper for opposition strategies—provided essential support for the homeland's opposition parties both during and after the election. (6 March 2009)

Discomfiture of democracy? The 2005 election crisis in Ethiopia and its aftermath

In this article, the author assesses the nature and the impact of the May 2005 Ethiopian parliamentary elections on Ethiopian politics. The elections, although controversial and flawed, showed significant gains for the opposition but led to a crisis of the entire democratization process. The author revisits Ethiopian political culture in the light of neopatrimonial theory and asks why the political system has stagnated and slid back into authoritarianism. Most analyses of post-1991 Ethiopian politics discuss the formal aspects of the political system but do not pay sufficient attention to power politics in a historical perspective. There is a continued need to reconceptualize the analysis of politics in Ethiopia, and Africa in general, in more cultural and historical terms, away from the formal political science approaches that have predominated. The success of transitional democracy is also dependent on a countervailing middle class, which is suppressed in Ethiopia. Furthermore, political-judicial institutions are still precarious, and their operation is dependent on the current political elite and caught in the politics of the ruling party. On the basis of the electoral process, the post-election manoeuvring, the role of opposition forces, and the violent crisis in late 2005, the author addresses the Ethiopian political process in the light of governance traditions and resurrected neopatrimonial rule that, in effect, tend to block further democratization. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. (Comment by Tobias Hagmann: in African Affairs, vol. 105, no. 421 (2006), p. 605-612, with a reply by Abbink on p. 613-620.) [Journal abstract]

State and Religion in the Constitution and Politics of Ethiopia

State and Religion in the Constitution and Politics of Ethiopia

State and Religion in the Constitution and Politics of Ethiopia

State and Religion in the Constitution and Politics of Ethiopia

Sport, culture and politics in Ethiopia

(2000). Sport, culture and politics in Ethiopia. Culture, Sport, Society: Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 35-47.

Ethiopia in Change: Peasantry, Nationalism and Democracy

Looking back - into the future mutation of statehood and contemporary politics in Ethiopia from progressive to reactionary Eritrea - evolution towards independence and beyond an important root of the Ethiopian revolution - the student movement reflections on Ethiopian underdevelopment - problems and prospects new economic policies and rural development options in the 1990s designing structural adjustment options for Ethiopia - reconstruction, rehabilitation and long-term transformation small urban centres and their role in rural restructuring environmental degradation, population movement and war in Ethiopia neither fast nor famine - prospects for food security in Ethiopia local democracy and central control ethnic factors in post-Megistu Ethiopia the unquiet countryside - the collapse of socialism and rural agitations in Ethiopia, 1990 and 1991 the end of crises? or crises without end?.

The Ethnogenesis of the Oromo Nation and Its Implications for Politics in Ethiopia

Theend of the cold war has coincided with, and in some cases fuelled, the politicisation of ethnically based nationalism, particularly in Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. The international political environment had previously been characterised by ideological competition and conflict between the United States on the one hand and the Soviet Union and Communist China on the other. Both of these ideological camps stressed the cohesion and viability of multi-ethnic nation-states, and as a matter of policy discouraged the representation of groups based upon a distinctive ethnic identity,1a tendency reinforced in social science scholarship, which often focused on what was described as the process of national political integration. To the extent that it existed and was relevant, scholars generally agreed that ethnic solidarity was different from nationalism in that it did not require the creation of an ethnically pure nation-state. Today, however, the notion of the inviolability of certain internationally recognised entities is being seriously called into question as ethnic groups assert their right to self-determination up to, and including, separation from the multi-ethnic state.

The Political Economy of Comparative Environmental Policy

Brendan F.D., Barrett and Rikti Therivel Environmental Policy and Impact Assessment in Japan.Alemneh Dejene, Environment, Famine, and Politics in Ethiopia: A View from the Village.David Goodman and Michael Redclift, eds., Environment and Development in Latin Ameruca: The Politics of Sustainbiliity.Roberto P. Pryde, The Ecopolitics of Development in the Third World: Politics and Environment in Brazil.Philip R. Pryde, Environmental Management in the Soviet Union.Lester Ross, Environmental Policy in China.

Environment, Famine, and Politics in Ethiopia: A View from the Village

Environment, Famine, and Politics in Ethiopia: A View from the Village

The military and politics in Ethiopia

The military and politics in Ethiopia