Politics and Government in Ethiopia

UNIT ONE
1. Introduction to Basic Concepts in Politics and
Government Studies
Defining Politics, Government and Governance: Theories
and Approaches
 Politics
The word politics was derived from the Greek word “polis” and
was first used by Aristotle to refer to the general affairs
operating in the Greek city states at the time.
It is the activity of peaceful resolution of conflicts, tensions. It is
settlement of public conflicts with social, economic, and
political nature through compromise, negotiation, give and take,
conciliation, manipulation, peaceful means of reasoning such as
using different forums like free press, freedom of speech,
parliamentary debates, persuasion, diplomacy, etc.
• It is also the resolution to determine “who gets what,
when, and how.” It is a technique of compromise. But
at the later stage conflicts will be resolved by violent
means of force and coercion like bloody
demonstrations, Punishment/penalty, warfare, civil
war, manipulation, etc. Conflicts are the driving force
of politics. These conflicts can be dealt with a political
manner through negotiation, bargaining, and
compromise.
 Political Science:
 ◦ Is the systematic study of and reflection upon politics?
Politics usually describes the processes by which
people and institutions exercise and resist power.
Political processes are used to formulate policies,
influence individuals and institutions, and organize
societies.
Fields of Political Science
 Comparative Politics
 American Politics
 International Relations
 Political Theory
 Public Administration
 Public Policy, and
 Political Behavior.
A.Comparative Politics:
 Involves study of the politics of different countries. Some
political scientists, known as area specialists, study a single
country or a culturally similar group of nations, such as the
countries of Southeast Asia. Area specialists tend to be
versed in the language, history, and culture of the country
or group of countries they study.
B.International Relation :
 International relation is the study of the international
system, which involves interactions between nations,
international organizations, and multinational corporations.
◦ The two traditional approaches used by political
scientists in the study of international relations are
realism and liberalism (which is not the same as
liberalism as a political ideology).
 Realism emphasizes the danger of the international system,
where war is always a possibility and the only source of
order is the balance of power.
But liberalism is more idealistic and hopeful,
emphasizing the problem-solving abilities of
international institutions such as the United Nations and
World Trade Organization. In 1991, after the Soviet
Union dissolved and the Cold War ended, the balance of
opinion briefly shifted in favor of liberalism, but realists
were quick to point to the potential for future
international conflicts.

C.POLITICAL THEORY

 Political theory involves the study of philosophical thought

about politics from ancient Greece to the present; the
interpretation and development of concepts such as
freedom, democracy, human rights, justice, and power; the
development of models for government, such as
participatory democracy or constitutional systems; and the
logic that political scientists use in their inquiries. It
overlaps law, philosophy, and the other fields of political
science.
 In 1971 John Rawls, a professor of philosophy at Harvard
University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, published A
Theory of Justice, which revitalized political theory.
Rawls’s book showed that it was still possible to generate
sophisticated and challenging philosophical arguments
about the way that political systems should be organized,
 and that political scientists should not just look to the ideas
of the great philosophers of the past.
D.PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
 Political scientists interested in public administration study
government organizations and their relation to other parts
of government. They investigate how these organizations
work, and try to devise methods of improving them. For
example, David Osborne and Ted Gaebler’s book
Reinventing Government (1992) inspired many national,
state, and local governments to adopt more-competitive and
less bureaucratic ways of delivering services to the public.
E. PUBLIC POLICY
• The field of public policy involves the study of specific
policy problems and governmental responses to them.
• Political scientists involved in the study of public policy
attempt to devise solutions for problems of public concern.
They study issues such as health care, pollution, and the
economy.
• Public policy overlaps comparative politics in the study of
comparative public policy; with international relations in
the study of foreign policy and national security policy; and
with political theory in considering ethics in policy making.
E.POLITICAL BEHAVIOR
F. Political behavior involves the study of how people
involve themselves in political processes and respond to
political activity.
G. The field emphasizes the study of voting behavior,
which can be affected by social pressures; the effects of
individual psychology, such as emotional attachments to
parties or leaders; and the rational self-interests of voters.
 H. The results of these studies are applied during the
planning of political campaigns, and influence the design
of advertisements and party platforms.
Government and Governance: Theories and
Approaches
 Government: is machinery that executes the wishes of the
state. A state must have some organizing force over its
population. The absence of such organization is anarchy.
 Government is an administrative wing of a state.
Governments come and go as politicians and civil servants
change in office.
 Harold J. Laski stated that “Every state, in short, is a
territorial society divided into government and subjects, the
government being a body of persons within the territorial
society, who are entitled to use coercion to see that these
imperatives are beyond.”
 The government is the machinery by which the state
maintains itself, pursue and excuse its objectives.
 It is a regulatory of society. It sets down the basic ground
rules that everyone must abide by. In part, a government is
able to enforce its rules (laws) because it controls the
supreme penalty of death and has a monopoly on the legal
use of force.
Governance
 Governance is the exercise of economic, political, and
administrative authority to manage a country’s affairs at all
levels.
 Governance comprises the mechanisms, processes, and
institutions through which citizens and groups articulate
their interests, exercise their rights, meet their obligations,
and mediate their conflicts.
 Governance is said to have three legs: economic, political,
and administrative.
 Economic governance includes decision-making
processes that affect a country’s economic activities
and its relationship with other economies.
 Political governance involves the formulation of
policy,
 Administrative governance is the system of policy
implementation
Government Vs Governance
 Government and governance are not synonymous terms,
although both share goals-oriented objectives.
 Government occurs when those with legally and formally
derived authority and policing power execute and
implement activities; by contrast, governance refers to the
creation, execution, and implementation of activities
backed by the shared goals of citizens and organizations,
who may or may not have formal authority or policing
power.
 Government is bureaucracy, legislation, financial control,
regulation, and force.
Governance, on the other hand, refers more like to a
growing use of non-regulatory policy instrument. This
policy instrument aspect focuses the attention towards
proposed, designed, and implemented cooperation by
non-state actors working together with state actors.
 Governance is a more encompassing phenomenon than
government. It includes non-governmental institutions and
informal, non-governmental mechanisms and how they
move ahead, satisfy their needs, and fulfill their wants.
 Thus, governance is a process whereby an organization or
society steers itself.
 Governance is not only about where to go but also about
who should be involved in deciding and in what capacity.
 Therefore, we found 5 areas or zones where the concept is
particularly relevant.
A.Governance in “global space,” or global governance,
deals with issues outside the purview of individual
governments.
B.Governance in “national space,” i.e., within a country:
this is sometimes understood as the exclusive preserve
of government, of which there may be several levels:
national, provincial or state, indigenous, urban or
local.
 C. Organizational governance (governance in “organization
space”): this comprises the activities of organizations that
are usually accountable to a board of directors. Some will
be privately owned and operated, e.g., business
corporations. Others may be publicly owned, e.g.,
hospitals, schools, government corporations, etc.
 D. Service space governance: It reflects the idea of
governing local, regional, and national service spaces,
consisting of various service providers from private, public,
and the third sector.
 E. Community governance (governance in “community
space”): this includes activities at a local level where the
organizing body may not assume a legal form and where
there may not be a formally constituted governing board.
Theories and Approaches in Governance
 There is no one theory of governance in political science
and public administration. Rather it is a field where
 scholars have used a variety of theoretical
lenses/approaches to examine what is going on.
 However, there are five groups of theories that draw
attention to governance in relation to public administration.
1. Network Management Theory: claim that governing
is about the operation of networks of a complex mix of
actors and organizations.
2. Theories of delegation:- It view governance in to
perspectives that focus more on the dynamic of
delegation and the creation of appropriate incentive
regimes to steer governance.
3. Social Interpretive theories:- It looks at how
interests are articulated, communicated and
conditioned by a governance discourse and how
identities and trust might be built.
4. Bounded Rationality School :- It is one of the least
developed in its application to governance issues.
 It suggests that the process of choosing what to do is more
complex because there is a fundamental human problem in
processing information, understanding a situation and
determining consequences given the limits of our cognitive
capacities and the complexities of the world we operate in.
5. Cultural Institutional Theory:- The starting point of cultural
institutional theory is to recognize, as rational choice theory
does, that individuals are active, creative thinkers but it sees
them as more deeply affected by their social context than
rational choice allows. People are not only influenced by social
relations that permit or constrain their choices but they adopt
socially influenced principles to guide those choices; principles
that can be ‘used for judging others and justifying’ themselves to
others.
 From the perspective of cultural institutional theory
people’s interests are the product of social relations and the
‘origins of their preferences may be found in the deepest
desires of all: how we wish to live with other people and
how we wish others to live with us.
 Thus, what brings home the relevance of cultural
institutional theory to governance is its recognition of how
these patterns of social relations in which individuals are
embedded in help to determine their choices and in turn
enable people to make decisions in the context of limited
information and extensive complexity.
1.2 The State, Nation and Nation-States, Nationalism,
Nation-building and Ethnicity
 State
 Nation and Nation-States
 Nationalism
 Nation-building and Ethnicity
 The State
 A state is a political association with effective
sovereignty over a geographic area and representing a
population.
 A state usually includes the set of institutions that
claim the authority to make the rules that govern the
exercise of coercive violence for the people of the
society in that territory, though its status as a state
often depends in part on being recognized by a
number of other states as having internal and external
sovereignty over it.
 Within a federal system, state also refers to political units,
not completely sovereign themselves; however, these
systems are subject to the authority of a constitution
defining a federal union which is partially or co-sovereign
with them.
 In casual usage, the terms "country," "nation," and "state"
are often used as if they were synonymous; but in a more
strict usage they can be distinguished:
 Country denotes a geographical area.
 Nation denotes a people who are believed to or
deemed to share common customs, origins, and
history. However, the adjectives national and
international also refer to matters pertaining to what
are strictly states, as in national capital, international
law.
State refers to the set of governing and supportive
institutions that have sovereignty over a definite territory
and population.
The Nation-State
 The nation-state or by its common name a country is a
certain form of state that derives its legitimacy from
serving as a sovereign entity for a nation as a sovereign
territorial unit.
 The state is a political and geopolitical entity; the nation is
a cultural and/or ethnic entity.
 The term "nation-state" implies that the two geographically
coincide, and this distinguishes the nation state from the
other types of state, which historically preceded it.
 If successfully implemented, this implies that the citizens
share a common language, culture, and values — which
was not the case in many historical states.
 A world of nation-states also implements the claim to self-
determination and autonomy for every nation, a central
theme of the ideology of nationalism.
Nationalism
 Nationalism is generally associated with wars, conflicts,
and freedom struggles. It goes without saying that
nationalism is a broader term that encompasses many other
aspects of our lives.
 Nationalism can be understood in terms of cultural
distinctiveness of various nations, and also includes other
features like language, religion, race, area, political system,
public administration, and education system.
 In simple words, nationalism is that how people perceive
themselves as part of this larger world community.
 Nationalism, on one hand, play a very important role by
bringing people together and removing petty differences
among them. It created the feelings of love and assimilation
for its fellow beings.
 On the other hand, it is also used as an instrument for
dividing the world in different camps and groups. It also
sowed the seeds of hatred, enmity, and intolerance among
the people belonging to different races, religions, and sects.
 According to Janus Face, English and American
nationalism was revolt against absolutism, while the
cultural form of nationalism which emerged in the third
world countries was primarily driven by political
consciousness against non-participant feudal or imperial
system of governance.
 Their movement was based on not in reason but in emotion,
not in the present but in the past, turning inwards, to the
imagination, to tradition, to history and to nature
 However, in fact, nationalism was very smartly used by
many third world leaders to motivate and unite people on
one platform against the nexus of local feudalistic system
and foreign rule, which would not have been possible in
such divided and backward societies.
Nation-Building and Ethnicity
 Nation-building is defined as constructing or structuring a
national identity using the power of the state. It is a
fascinating and fertile field of political science.
 It aims at the unification of the people within the state so
that it remains politically stable and viable in the long run.
'State building' is a general term used to describe the
(re-)construction of functional countries, in other words
countries that are capable of providing their citizens with
basic functions and services and that meet their
responsibilities and obligations as members of the
international community. State-building is successful
by enhancing the capacity of state institutions, building
state-society relations and also external interventions.
What is Ethnicity?
 Ethnic identity refers to ethnicity as an individually
experienced phenomenon.
 Ethnicity itself is an abstract concept which includes an
implicit reference to both collective and individual aspects
of the phenomenon. Thus, ethnicity can be said to have
both an objective and a subjective dimension.
 The incorporation of ethnicity into political legislation
seems to be crucial if the threat of ethnic warfare is going
to be removed.
 The option of federalism seems to have been left relatively
untouched, despite the fact that it has the mechanism and
 potential within it to incorporate ethnic diversities in such a
way that does not threaten the nation’s profile.
 With resources becoming scarcer every day and dwindling
price of oil, the intensity of ethnic feeling is only going to
increase, and ignoring ethnic profiles within African states
could become increasingly dangerous.
 Still such a strong sense of ethnicity in Africa points to the
area of economics.
 There is a very straightforward correlation between
economic dissatisfaction and the strengthening of the ethnic
roots.
 Ethnicity can be an important factor in undermining the
economic growth of countries.
 Ethnic conflict contributes to the political instability and
deterioration in law and order which in turn leads to the
destruction of infrastructures, lower levels of investment
and loss of skilled people.
 The relationship between ethnicity and nation-building
became complex and it continues to be challenge for
scholars in the field.
 Nation-building is essentially a process of unification. It
involves the creation or discovery of commonalities and
imagining a shared destiny.
 However, the rise of ethnic and regional identity is a major
challenge to the process of nation-building. It becomes
even more acute in multiethnic societies.
Since most ethnic and regional movements are linked
with ethnicity, the causes of their rise are inherent in the
society.
 Preservation and protection of its identity is a natural desire
of any ethnic group.
 A common cause for the rise of ethnic strife has been
discrimination in the sense of unfair treatment of a person
or group on the basis of prejudice-and consequent
resistance and retaliation.
 Many scholars suggested that the high state capacity to
deliver public goods, well developed voluntary
organizations, and low levels of linguistic diversity enhance
nation building because they make it easier to extend
networks of political alliances across an entire territory. It is
more important for explaining contemporary nation
building than political institutions (including democracy) or
the legacies of imperial rule.