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Nation Formation and Legitimacy International Journal of Academic Multidisciplinary Research (IJAMR) ISSN: 2643-9670 Vol. 4, Issue 6, June – 2020, Pages: 52-58 Nation Formation and Legitimacy: The Case of Ethiopia Getachew Melese Belay University of International Business and Economics School of International Relation, Beijing Email Address: [email protected], cell phone+8618513001139/+251944252379 Abstract: This paper attempted to examines how nation formation of Ethiopian undergone and legitimate under the Empire, Military and EPRDF regimes. Accordingly, the paper argues that there are changes and continuities in nation formation of Ethiopian under Empire, military and EPRDF regimes. The study used secondary source of data; collected from books, journal articles, published and unpublished materials, governmental and non-governmental organization reports and remarks, magazines and web sources. To substantiate and supplement the secondary data, the paper also used primary data collected through few key informant interviews. Given the data gathered are qualitative, the study employed qualitative data analysis techniques. The finding of the study revealed that the legitimacy of every regime has their own explanation during monarchy it was that most of the population believed in Jesus Christ so that belief was that king came from God and accept that is divine rule and also the church was doing that. When we come to the recent even if the Derg regime has done land reform but has some defects one not seriously (radically) implemented throughout the country and farmers were not able to use their product. But special after 1991 it was radical land reform and other like democracy, multi-party system and decentralization also contributed for the government to be legitimate. Keywords: Ethiopia, nation formation, legitimacy, Empire Regime, Military Regime, EPRDF Regime, 1. INTRODUCTION: Orthodox, which accounts for approximately 43% of the Ethiopia is the oldest independent country in Africa and population. Islam is also widely practiced, accounting for one of the oldest in the world. What are believed to be the around 33% of the population; while the remaining percent oldest remains of a human ancestor ever found, which is largely made up by other Christian denominations have been dated as being some five million years old, were (CSA, 2007)3. discovered in the Awash Valley in Ethiopia. This beats the However, there are always changes and continuities of discovery of “Lucy”, a 3.2 million year old skeleton, who nation formation /building/under different regimes to be was unearthed in the same area in 1974. The Greek legitimate. Thus, the objective of this study is to examine historian Herodotus, of the fifth century BC, describes how the nation formation of Ethiopian in the consecutive ancient Ethiopia in his writings, while the Bible’s Old regime undergone and legitimate. In terms of Testament records the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Jerusalem methodology, the study employed the qualitative research where “she proved Solomon with hard questions”. Matters methodology and narrative research design was employed clearly went further than that because legend asserts that to achieve the objective of the study. Accordingly, the King Menelik – the founder of the Ethiopian Empire – was study used a secondary source of data; collected from the son of the Queen and Solomon (https://africa- books, journal articles, published and unpublished facts.org/facts-about-ethiopia/)1 materials and archives. To substantiate the secondary data, primary data was also collected via few key informant Ethiopia is a Horn of Africa nation located in the heart of interviews from key actors and pertinent experts. Given East Africa. It shares its borders with six other countries - the data gathered are qualitative; the study also employed Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the qualitative technique of data analysis. the east, Kenya to the south, South Sudan to the west and Sudan to the northwest. Ethiopia is slightly less than twice 2. NATION FORMATION BEFORE 1991 the size of Texas, with a total area of 426,372 square In the process of Ethiopian Nation formation, the central miles/ 1,104,300 square kilometers’. According to the power – from emperor Tewodros to the present CIA World Factbook2, Ethiopia's population was estimated government run by the Ethiopian People Revolutionary at 102,374,044 in July 2016. The largest ethnic group in and Democratic Front (EPRDF) led by Dr. Abiye Ahmed ( the country is the Oromo people, who account for 34.4% peace noble winner of 2019) - shows a certain degree of of the population. continuity in the attempt of controlling a vast and instable The official national language of Ethiopia is Amharic, territory by the means of: (i) a structure of administrative although it is the most widely spoken. The Oromo belongs and bureaucratic control, through which the power of the to the Oromo language, which is the official working central government is maintained and enforced over the language of the state of Oromia. Other states `use different people within its jurisdiction; (ii) a system of extraction official working languages, including Somali, Tigrigna and distribution, through which resources are extracted and Afar. from the economy and distributed according to the priority The predominant religion in Ethiopia is Ethiopian of the government – “mostly of course for the maintenance 1 https://africa-facts.org/facts-about-ethiopia 2 CIA World Factbook 3 Central Statistical Agency, 2007 www.ijeais.org/ijamr 52 International Journal of Academic Multidisciplinary Research (IJAMR) ISSN: 2643-9670 Vol. 4, Issue 6, June – 2020, Pages: 52-58 of the state itself”4(iii) a strategy of extraversion of transforming and developing the Organization inherited external resources to utilize technical, financial, military from Haile Selassie in a more explicit structured Leninist international assistance to legitimate and reinforce the political system. central government; (iv) an ideological apparatus to The Derg strengthened the existing means of control and legitimize these practices and encourage adhesion and introduced new ones: the army, the ministry of public and support by the population. national security, the party and several mass organizations, like trade unions, the women’s and youth associations 2.1. A strong center for administrative and “through which virtually all Ethiopians were brought bureaucratic control within a common administrative framework”7. Control The distinctive variant of central power consolidation in was further ensured by the establishment throughout the Ethiopia arose from the need to control and tight together a country of organs of local administration, the county and vast territory, densely populated by different ethnic groups peasant’s associations. These institutions “add up to a and to defend it from external menace and centripetal control capacity vastly greater than anything that could movements. In fact, rather than on revenues from external have been provided by the personal networks of the old trade as the majority of the other African countries, this regime” and “unrivalled in Sub-Saharan Africa”8. power was based on surplus accumulation through direct exaction from a population living of agriculture. 2.2. Mechanisms for surplus extraction In Ethiopia, the process of political centralization and This enterprise of accumulation built on and consolidated economic accumulation followed a trajectory unique in the the dual process of centralization and territorial African continent, based on a peculiar agrarian system that expansion– almost reaching the border that we find today - led to the emergence of social classes. Thus, the modern undertaken by emperor Menelik at the end of the XIX Abyssinian empire-state, inaugurated by Tewodros II century, culminated in the creation of a new capital, Addis (1855-68) and consolidated by Menelik (1889-1913) and Ababa (1886), in a more strategic position then previous Haile Selassie (1930- 1974) has been often compared with political centers (Axum, Gonder) to control the new European feudalism and “differentiated from others in the empire originated by the acquisition of the southern continent by its greater organic linkage to society”9. provinces. In imperial Ethiopia, different land tenure systems and While the most accurate description of Menelik period mode of production were adopted. In the historical should be in term of “decentralized monarchy, rather than “Abyssinian” northern core of the Empire, the system was a centralized one”5, things changed significantly under based on “over lordship”. This society was characterized emperor Haile Selassie, with the central government by little differentiation between elite and commoner tightening its control over the state territory by the means cultures, due to the ideology of kinship between classes of a “modernization” process to build a centralized and and the possibility of upward – but downward as well – modern system of administration and bureaucracy and of social mobility. Fief lords enjoy rights granted by the the creation of a unified national army. In particular, Haile emperor, the administrator of the land (gult), not on the Selassie’s first written constitution (1931) provided the land, but only on the peasants living and working on it, legal and institutional framework for the achievement of while peasant retaining the ownership of the land his “modernizing” objective: introduction of a national according to the owner of
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