Ethiopia's development strategy rests on the promotion of a market economy, driven by ‘new entrepreneurs’, both urban and rural, while, to bring it to ‘maturity’ and to compensate for its present ‘failures’, the resolute intervention of a ‘developmental state’ is essential. Simultaneously, the ruling party aims to sustain its political hegemony by enrolling massively among those at the top of the social pyramid, to which most of these ‘new entrepreneurs’ belong, so as to build its new constituency on them. In the rural areas (83% of the population), the merger of these two objectives leads to the mobilisation of the upper group of smallholder farmers, recruited both as ‘model farmers’ to become the engine for the growth, notably with the support of a massive public Agricultural Extension Programme, and also as members of the ruling party. However, the subordination of the regime's economic objectives to its political agenda undermines the implementation of its development strategy at the field level. This raises questions about the efficiency of the programme and the room left for entrepreneurship, even though this is a mainstay of the market economy that the regime sees as ‘vital’ for Ethiopia's ‘survival’ (Meles 2006).
Observation of the 2005 Ethiopian elections in two rural communities in south-east Amhara State reveals a picture very different from that presented in national-level analyses derived largely from urban areas. Deeply entrenched attitudes to power and government in the study area make the idea of peaceful electoral competition inconceivable. Peasants are first and foremost concerned to vote for the winning side, since to do otherwise carries intense risks to their welfare and even survival. The freedom with which the main opposition party was able to campaign until a few weeks before the election convinced many peasants that the government had abdicated, and that they should vote for the opposition as the likely winners. Belated mobilisation of the ruling party and state apparatus challenged this perception and created great uncertainty. This peasantry's political, economic and cultural alienation, allied to authoritarian rule and a lack of voter information placed genuinely ‘free and fair’ elections out of reach.
Most of the reports about the reaction of the Ethiopian regime to the blow that it suffered in the 2005 elections focus on its institutional evolution, and conclude that it took a turn towards even stronger authoritarianism. Observations made in a rural community in south-east Amhara State reveal that it reacted first, until the end of 2009, by a whole range of the deepest reforms since its takeover in 1991. These combined a stronger grip of the ruling party in all areas with a ‘liberalisation’ of the rural development strategy and first steps towards local ‘good governance’. They were embodied in the rise of the traditional rural elite which had been ostracised for years, as if the regime was trying to build its new constituency on it. But at the end of 2009 the local authorities suddenly returned to the all-encompassing authoritarian attitude characteristic of the pre-2005 period. This ‘liberalisation’ could thus be seen as merely a tactical interlude, conceded by a ruling party still driven by its Leninist legacy and the Abyssinian ‘culture of power’.
Le pouvoir éthiopien monopolise les domaines politique, exécutif et législatif. L’opposition légale, harcelée, continue de se déliter. La croissance économique reste forte. Pourtant, le régime s’enfonce dans une crise accentuée par la disparition, en 2012, de l’omnipotent Meles Zenawi. Celle-ci s’enracine dans la perpétuation d’un système de pouvoir élitiste, centralisé, autoritaire et ethniquement biaisé. Dès lors, le fédéralisme, tel qu’appliqué, ne peut répondre aux poussées identitaires qu’il a intensifiées. La nouvelle classe moyenne, urbaine comme rurale, reste marginalisée. Ses compétences, indispensables à la poursuite de la croissance par une libéralisation économique, demeurent bridées. Divisé entre et au sein de ses quatre composantes ethniques, le parti-État se réduit à une machinerie qui n’avance plus que sur la lancée fixée par Meles, figé face aux enjeux de son indispensable refondation.
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