Ethnic federalism and its potential to dismember the Ethiopian state

Assefa Mehretu

Progress in Development Studies, 2012, vol. 12, issue 2-3, 113-133

Abstract: The Horn of Africa has become the most fragmented post-colonial region in Africa. The largest state in the region, Ethiopia, with its unequalled demographic and resource power lost one of its provinces to secession and the rest of the country became divided into ethnic enclosures called killiloch , which are federal states with tribal designation. The recitation of divisive counter-narratives on the history of the Ethiopian state by ethnically inspired governing and non-governing political elite has minimized the collective identity of Ethiopians leading to their decomposition into tribal groupings in killiloch with neo-tribal restrictive covenants that include the right of secession. The supporters of such divisions have touted the policies as emancipatory that are ostensibly designed to help in the self-determination of Ethiopia’s various nationalities and to govern their own local affairs under a form of dual federalism (exclusive states’ rights). The objective of this article is to reflect on the adverse consequences of dual federalism based on ethnic killils and to explore an alternative framework for cultural and functional integration of the Ethiopian state under the rubric of cooperative federalism.

Keywords: Ethiopia; ethnolinguistic; tribe; killil; counter-narratives; hegemony; marginality; dual and cooperative federalisms; communal integration; functional integration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/146499341101200303 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:prodev:v:12:y:2012:i:2-3:p:113-133

DOI: 10.1177/146499341101200303

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Progress in Development Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().