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 Periodical article |
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| Title: | Ethnicity and Power in Ethiopia |
| Author: | Young, John |
| Year: | 1996 |
| Periodical: | Review of African Political Economy |
| Volume: | 23 |
| Issue: | 70 |
| Period: | December |
| Pages: | 531-542 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Ethiopia |
| Subjects: | institutional change ethnicity Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front Politics and Government Ethnic and Race Relations |
| External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056249608704221 |
| Abstract: | The overthrow of the military regime, or Derg, in May 1991, brought the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) to power. The EPRDF is a coalition of ethnic political movements, dominated by the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) which fought a sixteen-year war against the Derg in the northern province of Tigray. After assuming power, the EPRDF set about implementing new and controversial policies, the most contentious of which was the acceptance of Eritrea's independence, and the reversal of the age-old quest of Ethiopian rulers to centralize the State and integrate a population belonging to more than eighty ethnic groups. The EPRDF chose instead to accord political recognition to all ethnic groups, and to devolve power to regional and district administrative units representing ethnic communities. This article examines the process that brought forth this novel, and for Africa unprecedented, constitutional arrangement. It concludes that, in the absence of a strong opposition with convincing alternative policies, the government's approach must be considered the only viable one at present, although whether it will indeed prove effective remains to be seen. Bibliogr., note, sum. |
