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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Liberalization and Democratization in Ethiopia: Domestic Consequences of the Conflict in Eritrea |
Author: | Bariagaber, Assefaw |
Year: | 1996 |
Periodical: | Eritrean Studies Review |
Volume: | 1 |
Issue: | 1 |
Period: | Spring |
Pages: | 69-89 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Ethiopia Eritrea |
Subjects: | democracy Politics and Government Economics and Trade Ethnic and Race Relations |
Abstract: | As much as liberation wars in European colonies contributed to the liberalization and democratization of political systems in the metropole - Portugal is a case in point - so did the war in Eritrea contribute to the processes of liberalization and democratization in Ethiopia. The war in Eritrea was a long-term contextual variable in the process of political liberalization that took place in the years immediately preceding and following the overthrow of Haile Selassie in 1974, as the regime paid increasingly more attention to security and defence and disregarded the welfare of the population. The cumulative process of violence finally made the Ethiopian people ungovernable and the whole repressive machinery of the State unmanageable. Unfortunately, the liberalization process did not advance towards political democratization. Signs of cracks in the Dergue signalled the beginnings of a second cycle of liberalization in 1990. The rapidly deteriorating military situation in Eritrea around Asmara and in Ethiopia around Addis Ababa precipitated the overthrow of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991 and opened up the political system. This time the liberalization process was followed by steps towards democratization, with the formation of a broad-based transitional government and the holding of elections in June 1992. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |