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The political and economic narrative has shifted from developmentalism to the homegrown economy in post-2018 Ethiopia, but maintains the hegemony of the developmental state project of nation-building. This article investigates the shift to homegrown economic narratives, assesses the alignment with macroeconomic data and various sources and their implications. The narrative seeks an endogenous growth model and emphasizes macroeconomic stability, industrialization, private-sector growth, and contributions of key sectors for economic transformation. In some respect of industrialization and macro-financial stability, the macroeconomic data align with the reform narratives. However, agricultural productivity, export diversification, and dependency on imports remain critical challenges of the economy and implicate structural issues of the reform. Several factors, mainly civil war, Covid-19 and climate change, complicate this economic landscape. The article underlines a sustainable and inclusive growth in Ethiopia requires greater transparency and revisiting the assumptions and implications of the homegrown economic narratives.

Political parties and their internal working policy and pattern of interactions have a profound impact on the operation of federations and the character of intergovernmental relations (IGR). By using the Ethiopian party system as a case study, this article aims to explore the impacts of party ideology, structure and style of functioning on the overall operation of a federation and the (de)institutionalisation of intergovernmental relations. It shows that the party structure, internal practices and ideological conviction of two parties—the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and the Prosperity Party (PP)—have shaped and reshaped the functioning of the Ethiopian federation and the dynamics of vertical and horizontal relations. At the same time, constitutional and IGR principles have been sidelined. There is a need to entrench stable and formal IGR frameworks for negotiation, the exchange of information and co-operation between federal and sub-state institutions. Reducing excessive reliance on the party line is essential to optimise the regularity, continuity and effectiveness of the interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Ethiopia's 2021 elections have been overshadowed by the brutal civil war that has raged since November 2020. The elections may not have been competitive but they reveal important dynamics about institutions and the competition for power in Africa's second most populous state. These were the first elections under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who came to power in 2018 insisting that legitimacy comes through elections. By 2021, however, repression and boycotts resulted in the ruling party winning 97% of the seats where voting took place. Beneath this national result were patterns of asymmetric electoral authoritarianism. Some regions experienced heavy-handed political domination and voting with only the ruling party competing. Others had circumscribed political space and opportunities for the opposition to win votes. Local dynamics challenge assessments that only look at the national outcome, missing important differences between types of electoral authoritarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Democratic Developmental State (DDS) model was attempted during the tenure of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front’s (EPRDF) in Ethiopia. In this paper, an effort has been made hence to explore some economic blessings and political curses incurred, cases for launching and now terminating DDS, and the reform-led changes and continuities in the political economy of Ethiopia. In doing so, the researcher has depended on a qualitative approach and in-depth content analysis of secondary data sources. The finding revealed that the ideological confrontations and lusts for power coupled with the fragile institutional and structural profiles of the EPRDF-led government have precipitated the abortion of the embryonic DDS. Indeed, in the pursuit of DDS, a trade-off between promoting democracy and achieving economic development has remained at a tolerable cost. In consequence, protracted popular grievances against the unequal distribution of benefits have been accompanied by paving the birth of a new leadership submissive to the Neo-Liberal recipes. Now, the state seems as it goes to start from scratch despite some belief that the new leadership appears to regurgitate the footsteps of its predecessor EPRDF rebranding the infamous legacy. It has been found that the reformist part of the government has been facing coordination problems to materialize the political and economic reforms. To this effect, early costs of the beginnings of the reform have been encountered. For that reason, the researcher suggests that the incumbent government should constitutionally and inclusively overcome the state-wide leadership crisis to ensure positive synergy.

The political and economic narrative has shifted from developmentalism to the homegrown economy in post-2018 Ethiopia, but maintains the hegemony of the developmental state project of nation-building. This article investigates the shift to homegrown economic narratives, assesses the alignment with macroeconomic data and various sources and their implications. The narrative seeks an endogenous growth model and emphasizes macroeconomic stability, industrialization, private-sector growth, and contributions of key sectors for economic transformation. In some respect of industrialization and macro-financial stability, the macroeconomic data align with the reform narratives. However, agricultural productivity, export diversification, and dependency on imports remain critical challenges of the economy and implicate structural issues of the reform. Several factors, mainly civil war, Covid-19 and climate change, complicate this economic landscape. The article underlines a sustainable and inclusive growth in Ethiopia requires greater transparency and revisiting the assumptions and implications of the homegrown economic narratives., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2024 The Authors.)

This paper presents the historical development of the authoritarian Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) with particular attention to its origins in civil war and its use of multi-national federal structures to balance centralizing dynamics and demands for regional autonomy. It argues that the reform process launched by Prime Minister Abiy and the formation of the successor Prosperity Party failed to overcome the challenges and political logics that undermined the EPRDF. The article concludes by examining the prospects of the center to manage these contradictions and bind together the distinct and highly polarized regions and political interests. [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]