Recensions / Reviews 1059

Haile Selassie, Western Education and Political Revolution in Ethiopia

Paulos Milkias
Youngstown NY: Cambria Press, 2006, pp. xxii, 364.
DOI: 10.10170S0008423907071259

Paulos Milkias explores Ethiopia’s 1974 revolution, focusing on the role of ideas in
driving political change. The core of the book explains the political forces that led to
the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie I, ending Ethiopia’s 3,000-year-old heredi-
tary feudal order and the installation of a military government led by a committee
known as the Derg ~or Dergue!, headed by Mengistu Haile Mariam. The final sec-
tions of the book cover the complex and bloody consolidation of the Derg’s rule and
that government’s demise seventeen years later, overthrown by a coalition of revolu-
tionary movements seeking autonomy from Ethiopia’s centralized , authoritarian
government.
After a brief historical primer, the book reviews comparative literature on rev-
olutions. It highlights Ethiopia’s distinctive features compared to other states that
hosted twentieth-century revolutionary movements. In much of Africa, especially coun-
tries with armed struggles ~such as Algeria, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South
Africa!, revolutions were national liberation struggles to end direct or indirect colo-
nial rule. Ethiopia, in contrast, was never formally colonized ~though it was occupied
by Italy for half a decade! and had a distinguished history of fending off European
invaders and establishing independent diplomatic relations during its 3,000-year dynas-
tic history. As a result, Milkias suggests, Ethiopia shared more with Iran, which saw
its ruling dynasty overthrown a few years later, than with other African states whose
boundaries and political structures had been created through colonialism.
Milkias emphasizes the importance of ideas in driving revolutionary energies,
developed in the strongest section of the book, chapters 3 through10. These chapters
establish several important features of the Ethiopian case study. Perhaps the most
important is that the revolution occurred largely because the society became “ungov-
ernable” due to domestic unrest, led by students and teachers. The military were
late-comers to the process, opportunists in a power vacuum created because the
student-teacher movement did not have the power or the organizational capacity to
rule. Another distinctive feature of Ethiopia’s 1974 revolution was that it was urban-
based, unlike the “peasant wars” that characterized most twentieth-century national
liberation struggles, though the characteristics of the leadership were similar. More-
over, these urban revolutionaries made little use of armed force in overthrowing the
state, though there was considerable political violence in its aftermath, acknowl-
edged in the 2006 in absentia conviction of Derg leader Mengistu of genocide.
A third important suggestion is that revolution became inevitable because the
emperor introduced some educational reforms in the hope of modernizing the econ-
omy but would not introduce the extensive reforms that might have actually modern-
ized Ethiopia’s economic and social structures because they would have fatally
undermined his rule. Attempting to limit the reform process nonetheless weakened
the ideological basis of feudalism, because students were radicalized by the ideas
they had been exposed to ~rights, justice and constitutional democracy, followed by
Marxism-Leninism!, but the state was unable to meet their expectations so they sought
a new kind of state, making revolution inevitable.
The core sections of the book are strengthened by Milkias’ first-person experi-
ences in the student movement. They offer an interesting and highly readable account
of urban activism contributing to the breakdown of government. The later chapters
on the rule of the Derg and the postscript on its replacement after another revolution
and subsequent elections are somewhat weaker, in large part because they cover so
much information in a short space. Though they bring some closure to the story of
1060 Recensions / Reviews

the 1974 revolution, anyone who is not a specialist on Ethiopia will need to supple-
ment these sections with additional materials.
The analytical framework, as well, seems underdeveloped despite the aforemen-
tioned theoretical chapter. Milkias could have drawn more extensively on the com-
parative literature to help us understand the specificity of Ethiopia and its broader
significance in the study of revolutions, and he failed to return to the theoretical
material after his early chapter. Though Milkias focuses on the role of ideas, he also
notes their linkage with the unfulfilled expectations of the emerging educated mid-
dle class who faced unemployment or low-paying jobs. So there was a material side
to Ethiopia’s revolution, underscored by the abject poverty in the countryside that
had been hit by a severe famine in 1973–1974. But while the material elements of
the Ethiopian revolution are noted, they are not analyzed with the same rigour as the
role of ideas in radicalizing this new social class.
These weaknesses should not take away from what is an extremely interesting
volume, one that should make a contribution to a growing literature on post-
revolutionary ~and post-“liberation”! politics as well as the challenges of main-
taining political stability while reforming an economy. Ethiopia’s revolution was
simultaneously unique and typical, and scholars of revolutions will find much to reflect
upon in this volume.
CAROLYN BASSETT Atkinson Faculty, York University

Democracy, Society and the Governance of Security

Jennifer Wood and Benoît Dupont, eds.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 291.
DOI: 10.10170S0008423907071260

This edited volume engages the question of security from a critical perspective, with
an emphasis on sociology and criminology. The various chapters and overall argu-
ment, however, should be of considerable interest to political scientists, especially
those seeking a broader understanding of international and domestic security. Specif-
ically, contributors suggest that security is no longer a state-centric concept and is
now a by-product of a wide range of public and private interests, including govern-
ments, corporations and community-based organizations. The collection includes a
diverse range of chapters examining transnational commercial security providers
~Johnston!, inter-agency anti-terrorist networks ~Manning!, external stakeholders and
police organizations ~Dupont!, linkages between health and security ~Burris!, and
“enclosed” security areas, such as gated communities and privately owned shopping
centres ~Crawford!. As a unifying theme, the editors question the relevance of dem-
ocratic values in this “pluralized field of delivery.” The goal is to examine these issues
by “integrating explanatory and normative theory” ~1!.
At the core of the volume is a “nodal governance” model that identifies smaller
communities within broader security arrangements. As such, there is an emphasis on
non-state sources of security, in which power is not always the main priority. These
contributions also focus on “mentalities” within nodes of governance, which can occur
within and across public and private groups engaged in the provision of security. As
an extension of this argument, the editors emphasize “networks” of security gover-
nance tied to cognitive understandings of interests and priorities. These networks,
however, tend to be temporary and are shaped by the acquisition of economic, polit-
ical, cultural, social and symbolic capital. There is also the recognition that the state
may serve as a barrier to the pursuit of security.
Ultimately, this collection challenges historical and philosophical assumptions
that acknowledge the sovereign state as the legitimate provider of security. Its focus