Administrative Agencies Power in Ethiopia with Particular Reference to Administrative Rule Making: A Comparative Study
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Date
2015-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
In any democratic setting, the law making power certainly and indeed, rightly belongs to the
legislature. Going through the literature however, one cannot but acknowledge the existence of
the practice whereby the executive enjoy considerable law making power in addition to its
usual executive power. It is incontrovertible that the practice is a negation of doctrine of
separation of powers. But the practice seems inevitable given the exigency of modern
governance. As such, certainly, the idea of delegation of law making powers to administrative
bodies has come to stay. This is however depends on certain conditions, inter alia, that the
power under which the later emanates is that of delegable, the power should properly
delegated, and must be exercised within the scope by appropriate authority.
Despite this universally accepted and in fact applied principles, legislatures at both federal
and Oromia national regional government may not lay down any policy at all, declare its
policy in vague and general terms, not set down any standard for the guidance of the executive,
confer and arbitrary power to the executive to amend or modified the policy laid down in the
parent act, with out reserving for itself any control mechanisms over subordinate legislation.
In addition to the lack of a practical limitation on the part of the legislature that give rise to
excessive delegation, as well as due to luck of any standards that limits the exercise of
delegated power, the problem is more aggravated due to lack of post control of administrative
rule making power in Ethiopia. Despite the existence of legal basis, other organs of the
government like the court and the higher executive organs have no administrative rule making
control mechanisms. Due to these, administrative rules making power have been left with out
legal and practical limitation at both federal and state level.
With this in mind, this work meant to make a humble attempt at showing the problem with
practice and the legal gaps in administrative rule making power, procedure and control
mechanisms and coming up with some points of recommendation for policy and law reform.
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Keywords
administrative rules, excessive delegation, ultra virus, control mechanisms