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The People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Masking and Unmasking Tragedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Forrest D. Colburn
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton University
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Abstract

Recent scholarship on Ethiopia describes the central oudine of events in the aftermath of the country's 1974 revolution. But the books that should be the most insightful, because of the theoretical ambitions of the authors, often disappoint because they obfuscate politics with abstract discussions of the "state." Three shortcomings of state theories are evident: they underestimate the impact of individual leaders, discount the content of ideology, and lead, disturbingly, to moral neutrality.

Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1991

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References

1 Ethiopians are usually referred to only by their first name.

2 Skocpol, , States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Weber, , The Theory of Social and Economic Organizations, trans. Parsons, Talcott (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1947), 156.Google Scholar

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5 Ibid.; Moore, , Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Skocpol (fn. 2).

6 Sartori, Giovanni, “Concept Misinformation in Comparative Politics,” American Political Science Review 64 (December 1970), 1033–53, at 1034.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 For a comprehensive study of the Kampuchean regime, see Jackson, Karl, ed., Cambodia 1975–1978 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

8 Many names in Ethiopia do not have consistent spellings. Tigray is also written Tegray, Tegrai, and Tigre.

9 The kind of work that could have been fruitfully consulted include Horowitz, Donald, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Connor, Walker, The Nationalist Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Esman, Milton, “The Management of Communal Conflict,” Public Policy 21 (Winter 1973), 4976Google Scholar; Nordiinger, Eric, Conflict Regulation in Divided Societies, Occasional Paper no. 29 (Cambridge: Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 1972).Google Scholar

10 See Colburn, Forrest, “The Tragedy of Ethiopia's Intellectuals,” Antioch Review 47 (Spring 1989), 133–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Figures are from Franzel, Steven et al., “Grain Marketing Regulations: Impact on Peasant Production in Ethiopia,” Food Policy 14 (November 1989), 347–58, at 348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 The Provisional Office for Mass Organizational Affairs; Agitation, Propaganda and Education Committee, Basic Documents of the Ethiopian Revolution (Addis Ababa: Provisional Office for Mass Organizational Affairs; Agitation, Propaganda and Education Committee, 1977), 1847.Google Scholar

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14 See, for example, Rahmato, Dessalegn, Agrarian Reform in Ethiopia (Trenton, N.J.: Red Sea Press, 1985)Google Scholar; and Franzel (fn. 11).

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16 An example of the kind of comparative analysis that could be profitably consulted is Morawetz, David, “Economic Lessons from Some Small Socialist Developing Countries,” World Development 8 (May-June 1980), 337–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar