Between 1976 and 1978, urban Ethiopia became a site of collective violence. Rival campaigns of revolutionary terror were fought out, most notably in the capital city of Addis Ababa. Opposition forces launched targeted assassinations against the military regime and its collaborators, prompting the latter to widen early campaigns of repression into one of the most brutal reigns of state terror in modern Africa. Tens of thousands of Ethiopians, most of them young and many educated, lost their lives. Thousands more were systematically tortured or otherwise abused. Many escaped to the countryside or fled abroad, invigorating rural insurgencies and generating the country's first permanent diaspora. The Terror effected deep changes in Ethiopian state and society, as well as in relations between them. This thesis analyses the social and political history of this revolutionary violence. It brings materials familiar to scholars of modern Ethiopia together with new sources, from oral interviews to international archives. On the basis of these sources, the dynamics and aftereffects of the Ethiopian Terror are examined. Urban Ethiopia's revolutionary violence is shown to have been jointly produced by supralocal decision makers and by local actors, shaped by centrally imposed structures as much as by locally moulded operational cultures. Geo-political alliances in the context of the global Cold War had profound effects on the mode of violence on the ground. Underpinning this violence were evolving social processes and narratives that legitimised terror campaigns and depersonalised opponents. Unveiling these dynamics of violence, this thesis traces the changes in the Terror’s forms and agents. The mode of state-instigated violence shifted significantly: it transitioned from unsystematic repression before February 1977 to a phase of decentralisation that lasted until July 1977, during which the means of state violence were devolved to local actors. It culminated in a centrally coordinated campaign of terror in late 1977 and early '78, which inscribed institutional structures and practices of collective violence into the state bureaucracy. Opposition violence, meanwhile, moved into the opposite direction, becoming increasingly localised and less subject to centralised control. Having surveyed these defining dynamics of revolutionary violence, the thesis traces their subsequent trajectories, highlighting the enduring repercussions of the Terror's legacies and of its contested memorialisation process for Ethiopian politics and society.

No description available.

Since the fall of the Derg regime in 1991, Ethiopia has undergone a remarkable economic transformation. Shunning liberal policy advice yet avoiding the pathologies of patrimonialism, its experience is increasingly presented as an example for others to follow. However, there has been surprisingly little research, and even less consensus, on what actually constitutes this 'Ethiopian model.' The present thesis provides an answer to this question by focusing on the role of the EPRDF - the former insurgency movement which has governed Ethiopia since 1991 - and the fundamental reconstruction of state and market it has overseen. It argues that the resulting political economy is best characterised as a form of 'vanguard capitalism,' which combines the centralising political logic of a Leninist movement party with the expansive logic of capitalist markets. At its base lies the monopolisation of state-society relations by the EPRDF which, in turn, allows for the creation, centralisation and strategic use of economic rents by its administration. The two processes of illiberal state- and market-building are complementary, and their outcomes mutually reinforcing: a state that seeks to derive legitimacy from 'developmental' interventions in the economy, and an economy that advances a particular vision of the Ethiopian state. To bear out this argument, the thesis traces the evolving relationship between party, state, and market through four distinct periods in the EPRDF's Ethiopia. While the administrative and economic institutions built during the wartime years were all subsumed into the movement's thrust toward military victory, structural adjustment during the 1990s led to a gradual differentiation between party, state, and market. The propagation of an Ethiopian 'developmental state' in the early 2000s implied a re-centralisation of economic rents, yet without a corresponding degree of control over society the party was left vulnerable. After the electoral near-defeat of 2005 the EPRDF thus reclaimed its 'vanguard' role, again fusing party, state, and market into a campaign for economic transformation that it presents as a logical extension of the original struggle for liberation. The thesis draws on over one hundred stakeholder interviews conducted during ten months of field research in Addis Ababa, Mekelle, and among the Ethiopian diaspora, as well as on extensive archival research.

No abstract / Development Studies / M.A. (Development Studies)

No abstract available / Development Studies / M.A. (Development Studies)

En dépit de sa complexité analytique, la situation sécuritaire de la Corne de l’Afrique peut être soumise aux outils de la Science politique afin de mieux comprendre les interactions entre les différents acteurs. Cette recherche s’efforce d’analyser les ressorts d’une équation sécuritaire qui peut paraître insoluble : le régionalisme est-il aujourd’hui un prérequis à l’émergence d’une paix régionale ? Pour répondre à cette question il est nécessaire de comprendre quels rôles jouent les processus sécuritaires régionaux (régionalisation et régionalisme) dans la construction des États de la Corne de l’Afrique. Cette étude s’efforce d’étudier les interactions entre le régionalisme, fondement de l’architecture de paix et de sécurité continentale, la régionalisation des conflits, qui semble à l’oeuvre dans cette région, et les processus de construction/formation de l’État. Les rapports entre les trois termes de l’équation dépendent du contexte et des interactions entre les différentes entités composant la région (États, acteurs non étatiques qui se dressent contre eux ou négocient avec eux et acteurs extérieurs). Deux types de dynamiques sont mises en évidence au terme de cette étude : l’une endogène, l’autre exogène. Dans la première, nous constatons que les conflits participent à la formation de l’État. Ils sont en grande partie des conflits internes et montrent qu’il existe une crise dans l’État. Ces États dominent le processus de régionalisme qui tente de réguler la conflictualité régionale avec un succès relatif puisque les organisations régionales cherchent à renforcer ou reconstruire l’État selon les critères idéalisés de l’État wébérien vu comme source d’instabilité. Le processus exogène se caractérise par le rôle des conflits régionaux dont l’existence sert de justificatif au développement et au renforcement du régionalisme, perçu comme la réponse la plus appropriée à ces problèmes de conflictualités. Cette conflictualité a pour source l’État car celui-ci est perçu comme faible. Le régionalisme permettrait de renforcer les États et diminuerait leurs velléités de faire la guerre. / In spite of its analytical complexity, the security context in the Horn of Africa may be submitted to the Political Science’ tools in order to better understand the complex interactions between the various actors. The present research thus seeks to analyze the mechanism underlying what appears as an unsolvable security problem: is regionalism a prerequisite for the emergence of a regional peace? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to understand the role of regional security processes (regionalization and regionalism) in the state formation and state building of the Horn of Africa’s states. This study endeavours to explore the interactions between regionalism, which are inherent in the creation of an African peace and security architecture, the regionalization of conflict, which seems at work in this area, and construction/formation state process. The relationship between the three terms of this equation depends on the context and interactions between the various entities that make up the region (states, non-state actors that stand against them or negotiate with the states and external actors). This study thus reveals two kinds of dynamics at play: an endogenous process and an exogenous one. In the first one conflicts are involved in the formation of the state and are largely internal conflicts. It demonstrates that there is a crisis in the state States dominate the regionalism process which tries to regulate regional conflit with relative success because regional organizations seek to strengthen or rebuild the state according to the idealized criteria of the Weberian State seen as a source of instability. The exogenous process is characterized by the role of regional conflicts whose very existence serves to justify the development and the strenghtening of regionalism thus perceived as the most appropriate answer to those security problems. States are the source of conflicts because they are perceived as weak. Regionalism would strengthen states and reduce the inclination of states to make war.