Introduction

Ethiopia experienced two regime changes in the last four decades: the coercive ousting of imperial rule and its replacement by a military dictatorship in the mid-1970s, followed by the military victory over the military dictatorship and seizure of power by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) in May 1991. While EPRDF's initial seizure of power was facilitated by its armed victory over the military regime, its perpetuation in power since then was mediated by the outcomes of five successive electoral contests held since 1995. The rule of EPRDF commenced by introducing a series of liberal reforms aimed at bringing about betterments in the socio-cultural, economic and political spheres of life. These were underpinned by the quest for reconfiguring the alignment of the country's social forces, altering the ideological orientation and structure of the state, recasting the major strands of state-society relations, and overhauling the workings of political economy. The formation of EPRDF in 1989 was spearheaded by the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), a conglomeration of ethno-nationalist insurgent groups aspiring to unseat the military dictatorship led by Mengistu Hailemariam. The success of these movements organized under EPRDF's umbrella laid the foundation on which ethnicity was elevated to the status of an overarching principle for organizing the Ethiopian political system serving as the cornerstone of the workings of political economy and state-society relations in post-1991 Ethiopia.

Although the EPRDF-led government retained some of the military regime's institutions and governance structures, it also endeavoured to reconfigure the major aspects of socio-economic and political life through a plethora of policy instruments. Perhaps the most dramatic development that accompanied the 1991 regime change was the process of ushering in a form of constitutionalism that had far-reaching implications for subsequent developments. By resorting to a more radical move, EPRDF abolished the unitary form of the Ethiopian state and reconstituted it as a federation comprising nine self-governing regional states and two autonomous city administrations, premised on ethno-linguistic considerations. Most controversially, the constitution contains, albeit with strong safeguards attached, a clause guaranteeing the right of the country's ethnic groups to secede. This provision became a major bone of contention in Ethiopian political life, pitting the proponents of ethno-nationalism who harboured centrifugal tendencies (ICG 2009) against those who feared that this could be a recipe for disintegration.