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AbstractThis paper investigates Abiy’s legitimacy crisis and resolution of his legitimacy on the way to the Northern Armed Conflict. It is claimed that Abiy lost popularity shortly after his premiership but managed to mobilize people against the Northern Armed Conflict. However, empirical support for this argument has been ambiguous at best. The researcher employed qualitative methods with a case study design. Key informant interviews and secondary sources of data have been used. The northern armed conflict of Ethiopia was crafted by leaders as a disguise for economic underperformance and loss of legitimacy. This paper posits that a leader either recalibrates its base or uses coercion to retrieve legitimacy, but it was found that Abiy did not reestablish the base to retrieve his legitimacy, nor did he utilize coerce. Thus, the paper calls up on a new perspective to legitimacy resolution and shows how intractable ancient hatreds, territorial claims, and self-administration are used for the retrieval.

This study analyzes the involvement of external actors in Ethiopia's civil war between 2020 and 2022, categorizing their behaviors and discourses based on the dominance of instrumental and affective motives. It argues that the convergence of objectives between instrumental motive-dominant actors, who seek to protect the stability and survival of the Ethiopian government, and affective motive-dominant actors, who address humanitarian crises, reached a point of overlap and consent which led the war to end in relatively short duration.

Kurz nach seiner Ernennung zum Premierminister Äthiopiens im April 2018 veranlasste Abiy Ahmed die Renovierung des Kaiserpalastes in der Hauptstadt Addis Abeba. Die Renovierung steht im Kontext einer Reihe von Infrastrukturprojekten im städtischen Raum, die nationale Einheit und staatliche Souveränität repräsentierten. Der Beitrag diskutiert Reinszenierung des in Unity Park umbenannten Palastes als politisches Projekt zur Schaffung einer äthiopischen Staatsgeschichte, einer Staatsmythologie und eines Staatsnationalismus. Spezielles Augenmerk liegt dabei auf dem Bau von Statuen zweier äthiopischer Kaiser: Menelik II und Haile Selassie I sowie ihrer strategischen Bedeutung für Abiy Ahmeds Vorhaben, seinen Herrschaftsanspruch in und über Äthiopien zu legitimieren. Die Statuen ermöglichen es ihm, sich als souveräner äthiopischer Führer zu inszenieren, als König, dessen souveräne Macht sich aus seiner Beziehung zu seinen Vorgängern an der Macht ergibt. Der Beitrag liefert Einblicke in die ideologische Dimension autoritärer Herrschaft und deren Konsolidierung im städtischen Raum.

This article has a twin mission: examining the impact of party merger on the federal arrangement and its association with the current conflicts in Ethiopia. The 1995 federal constitution of Ethiopia devolves powers to regional states. Since then, each regional state was fused with its distinct ruling party that created a coalition at the federal level. This state-party fused federal arrangement faced serious challenges with the rise of intra-coalition disagreements since 2016 following the protest movements in the country, which further plunged Ethiopia into a devastating civil war since November 2020. This article asks what caused the conflicts. While recognizing the multidimensional roots of the conflicts, this article uses a political party-driven theory of federalism in order to identify the political processes that led to the conflicts. It argues that in a multiethnic federation such as Ethiopia where there is state-party fusion, a ruling party’s metamorphosis from a coalition to a union may not only centralize power but could also result in both de facto merger of that fragile federation and conflicts. Delinking the state from the party through inclusive national negotiations and democratic elections within a federal arrangement might help transition Ethiopia to a stable country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine whether ethnopolitical identities have grown in Ethiopia since the introduction of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's reforms in 2018, using the most recent Ethiopian survey data from the World Values Survey (wave 5, from 2007 and wave 7, from 2020). I find that although there remains a general popular commitment to a national (Ethiopian) identity, among younger people (especially males) there is a growing sense of an "ethnic" identity and a growing intolerance of other ethnic groups. Further, I find that those who express ethnonational identities are significantly more likely to engage in protest and demonstrations. In conclusion, I suggest that this may not portend well for the future of Ethiopian unity. I also suggest that whether this happens also depends on the institutional transformation of the Prosperity Party (the successor the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF)) and the level of external support the regime receives from its foreign benefactors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the Derg's restoration of Meskel Square for its military parades and Meles Zenawi's Light-Rail Transit (LRT) and condominium social housing projects to Abiy Ahmed's high-end luxury real estate and urban tourism schemes, megaprojects have collapsed Ethiopia's political history into an urban bricolage of shifting ideologies and new priorities. At this critical juncture, where questions of political rupture and continuity become salient, this paper examines what we can learn about Ethiopia's political dynamics through its latest urban megaprojects. Drawing on 'LaGare' and 'Beautifying Sheger' as case studies, this article argues that there is a new urban aesthetic emerging in Addis Ababa targeting domestic elites, the Ethiopian diaspora and tourists. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's Gulf-emulated luxury real estate projects and major riverside renewal schemes are intended to generate revenue through increased land values and urban tourism. At the same time, issues around inclusive consultation with local stakeholders, the lack of coordination with the relevant bureaucracies and the highly centralized decision-making process are reminiscent of the modus operandi of previous Ethiopian regimes. These urban megaprojects are useful analytical lenses to disentangle political rupture from operational continuity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]