The Socio-Economic Status of Afar under Federal Ethiopia: The Gap between Constitutional Theory of Self-Rule and Political Practice
| dc.contributor.advisor | Dereje Feyisa (Associate Professor) | |
| dc.contributor.author | Demillie Mollaw | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-12-27T07:14:20Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2023-12-27T07:14:20Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2023-06 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Federalism evolved and become an alternative system of governance in many countries. As a political arrangement federalism is appropriate to countries having multicultural societies as a means of accommodating the growing desire of people to preserve or revive the intimacy of small societies, and the growing necessity for larger combinations to mobilize the utilization of common resource better. Ethiopia witnessed a major turning point in the arena of national politics since 1991 by adopting ethnic federalism and restructuring its constituent units along ethnic lines. This political arrangement has enabled the Afar people to have their own regional state. By doing the system addressed the territorial quest of Afars for which they were politically mobilized long before the introduction of federalism in Ethiopia. When the federal system was introduced into the Ethiopian political system the peripheral areas mostly inhabited by pastoralists were categorized as Developing Regional States (Afar, SOmali, Gambella and Benishangul-Gumuz) lagged behind others. To promote the shared interests and common destiny of all Ethiopians, the federal government designed a special support project with the intension of accelerating the socio-economic development of these states. This study examines the socio-economic status of Afar under federal Ethiopia by analyzing the gap between the constitutional theory of self-rule and political practice. The study employed both descriptive and explanatory research designs. Data for this study were collected through qualitative and quantitative methods with a qualitative priority complemented by the quantitative methods. The instruments used in this study include key informant interviews, observation, focus group discussions, survey questionnaire and document analysis. Both the qualitative and quantitative datasets were collected and analyzed concurrently or side-by-side. The central argument of this study is that the socio-economic transformation of Afar Regional State in the three-decade experiment is still low unable to address the problems of the Afar people. The Contributing factors which this study investigate include federal intervention contrary to the rhetorical political empowerment of Afar, capacity limitation on the part of the regional leadership, less effective implementation of the provision of the special support and insignificant contribution of investments and development projects, adverse effects of inter-clan and enter-ethnic conflicts and the socio-economic and environmental impacts of the spread of Prosopis-Juliflora. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/1181 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | AAU | |
| dc.subject | Afar Regional State, Conflict Development Programme, Projects Federalism | |
| dc.title | The Socio-Economic Status of Afar under Federal Ethiopia: The Gap between Constitutional Theory of Self-Rule and Political Practice | |
| dc.type | Thesis |