Political Culture and Cyclical Conflict in Ethiopia: Exploring the Generative Dynamics of Political Crisis in the 2020s

Ethiopia is frequently facing serious political-communal conflict. Prevailing narratives attempting to identify causes often focus on presumed ‘ethnic’ groups and inequalities – a perspective crystallised especially in the past ca. 30 years. While Ethiopia as a socio-political domain existed for ages before the Emperor Menilik period (1889–1913) of incorporation of adjacent territories, the question emerges whether the ‘roots’ of recent armed conflicts are as much contemporary-political as historical, and related to an established political culture, based on resilient authoritarian values among both elites and the wider population. Ethiopia’s current unresolved conflict dynamics need a renewed analysis of not only history and ‘political economy’ but also of recent constitutional features and group politics, which strongly impacted on its political culture. On the basis of document study and interviews, Jan Abbink examines crucial features of such recent processes so as to re-evaluate the specific articulations of ethno-regionally based governance in Ethiopia in recent years to find causal elements fuelling the repetitive cycles of conflict.

This article appeared in the Journal of Asian and African Studies. Read the full article here.