A Political success story

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 9, Issue 4, 1998, Pages

  Henze, Paul B ^a  

^a RAND CORPORATION   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 18744436200     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jod.1998.0062     Document Type: Article

References (20)

1. See, for example, Fareed Zakaria, "The Rise of Illiberal Democracy," Foreign Affairs 76 (November-December 1997): 22-43.
2. Stephen Bucklcy, "Africa's Agricultural Rebirth: Production Soars as Ethiopia, Others Recast Farm Policies," Washington Post, 25 May 1998, A18.
3. Without generous support from the Soviet Union - $12 billion in as many years - Mengistu's rule would have come to an end much earlier. After 1985, some Soviets developed serious doubts about "socialist" Ethiopia's viability, but Gorbachev was unable to halt military aid until 1990. See Paul B. Henzc, Ethiopia: Crisis of a Marxist Economy, Analysis and Text of a Soviet Report (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND R-3347-USDP, April 1989).
4. Thus the term "democratic" came into use, though there was no agreement within these movements about its meaning in practice. In Eritrea, the EPLF avoided the term until February 1994, when it transformed itself into the People's Front for Democracy and Justice.
5. Economic rejuvenation did not depend entirely on central government action. In the northern areas through which the EPRDF advanced, the peasantry was relieved of Derg controls from 1988 onward, and traders and craftsmen began to operate freely. In the capital and the south, people seized so quickly on Mengistu's 1990 reforms that it was impossible for him to reverse them. Smuggling over the eastern and western borders, rampant in the Derg's final years, continued to flourish.
6. Many regional authorities did not understand what an election involved. Candidates were nominated at the last minute. Ballots did not arrive. Some parties refused to participate, claiming harassment and discrimination. In some areas, the OLF, which had withdrawn from the governing coalition, encouraged violence but received only sporadic support from Oromo populations. The TOE welcomed foreign observers. Many came from Europe and America. Not uncharacteristic is the experience of an American observer in the Gondar region: "[The local authorities] had a great deal to learn about the meaning and procedure of democratic elections by secret ballot. When I asked one election official "How are you going to ensure that the voter has a secret ballot?" his answer was immediate, informative, and amusing: "Secret? We've had too much secrecy for the last ten years. We want no more of it. Everything around here is wide open!" I had no problem sympathizing with his assessment of the previous regime, but this clearly pointed up the lack of understanding of a basic feature of democratic practice." See the Report by Conrad Evans of Oklahoma State University in Friends of Ethiopia Newsletter, August 1992.
7. For an analysis of the constitution in this regard by a well-known American specialist on local government in Ethiopia, see John M. Cohen, "Ethnic Federalism in Ethiopia," Northeast African Studies 2 (1995): 157-88.
8. Bitter at the fact that the EPRDF had liberated the country, these Marxist movements persisted for several years in low-level guerrilla harassment from remote regions in the northwest, but attracted few followers.
9. Moa Anbasa has never gained significant support because there is no credible heir to the Ethiopian throne. The overwhelming majority of the population regards the imperial era as irrevocably past. Nevertheless, the old Lion of Judah remains popular in Ethiopia, and his picture can be seen in shops and bars, and even on T-shirts, all over the country.
10. Tigre played practically no role in Ethiopian national politics after the death of Emperor Yohannes IV in 1889.
11. The loosely structured OLF has ever since engaged in periodic violence against both the OPDO and government facilities in Oromia and has occasionally unleashed bombs in the capital. These actions have been sensationally reported by the private press, which has exaggerated - and not infrequently concocted - reports of alleged violent antigovernment activity in other parts of the country. On several occasions after traveling in northern and central Ethiopia, I have returned to Addis Ababa to read invented private press accounts of incidents in towns and regions which I had found completely peaceful.
12. While exiles and ethnic communities abroad have generally been supportive of new governments in Eastern Europe, the EPRDF in Ethiopia is almost unique among postcommunist governments in having to operate in the face of continual attack from frustrated exiles. Many of the exiles did relatively little to oppose Derg excesses; some are former Derg officials and apologists; others are "Amhara-centrists" bitter at losing the dominant position they enjoyed in Ethiopia for a century. Many have become skillful at influencing opinion in the countries where they now live. A trend toward moderation and acceptance of the new government in Ethiopia has nevertheless been observable among the Ethiopian community in the United States over the last two or three years.
13. Financial Times, 2 March 1998.
14. The Ethiopian population was thus spared the socially disruptive inflation that has affected almost all other countries recovering from communism. The Derg kept the Ethiopian birr pegged to a rate of 2.07/$1 during its entire 17 years. By the time the Derg fell, the black market rate had risen to 7/$1. Devaluation brought it to 5/$1. During the past six years, the rate has risen slowly to 7/$1 as Ethiopia's currency has approached convertibility.
15. Siegfried Pausewang, "Local Democracy and Central Control" in A. Zegeye and S. Pausewang, eds., Ethiopia in Change: Peasantry, Nationalism, and Democracy (New York: I.B. Tauris, 1994), 225-26. I do not offer these citations to argue that basic features of democracy in the West - competition between parties, elections, rights to organize and express opinions freely - are not important and, indeed, recognized as such by present leaders in Ethiopia, but merely that they rank lower among priorities of the great majority of Ethiopians and, probably, most other Africans.
16. When I asked then-president Meles Zenawi in February 1995 what lessons he drew from the experience of governing up until that time, his comments included the observation that, "We underestimated the inertia of the bureaucracy and the deep-rooted tendencies toward protectionism and corruption that existed in it. We should have moved more decisively to shake it up." He moved decisively a year and a half later when his former prime minister and close associate, Tamrat Layne, was exposed in a scheme of massive corruption, quickly removed, convicted, and severely punished.
17. In many respects, however, the change is not as radical as it seems because many long-existing regions and even some former provinces have remained essentially unchanged as autonomous subdivisions of the new states. For example, the historic principality of Wag - now Wag-Himra - has experienced a renaissance as the center of development of the ancient Agau people.
18. "Ethiopia and Eritrea in Transition - the Impact of Ethnicity on Politics and Development" (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND P-7937), 1995.
19. Bereket Habte Selassie, "Creating a Constitution for Eritrea," Journal of Democracy 9 (April 1998): 164-74.
20. During the previous year, 67 percent of Eritrea's external trade had been with Ethiopia. "Eritrea's Economy: Challenging Structural Problems" (Asmara: U.S. Embassy, 3 March 1998).