Let us ask the first question that differentiates “the politics of nationalism” from “ethnic politics”: Which approach may better explain the situation in Ethiopia? In the discourses of identity politics and nationalism, the terms ethnicity and nationalism are interrelated but not identical. Sociologically, both share that a group should possess a common language, identity, history, customs and values, and psychological make-up to be regarded as an ethnic group or national group. But nationalism goes beyond these common defining features as it includes the desire for “national self-determination,” or home rule in the national territory. If we regard their basic differences as mere stages in the development of social grouping, then a nation is a politically developed and articulated people than an ethnic group. But in general, national groups are historically instituted as self-governing territorial groups, and the central government came to them (and incorporated), not the other way around, as illustrated by Will Kymlicka who defines ethnic groups as voluntary immigrant minorities that demand multicultural inclusion and proper integration into the dominant nation-state, and national groups as those forcibly annexed indigenous peoples that focus on their self-government rights and special political representations within the broader multi-nation state . The latter version of nationalism often led to a multinational federation as was the case in Canada, Belgium, and Spain. In Ethiopia, the most significant sociopolitical forces that have expressly fought for self-rule have been those historical self-governing national-regional entities, which were later conquered and incorporated. Immigrant communities who migrate from one region to the other for different reasons have either developed their own distinctness within, or integrated into, national groups.
With all its problems, the 1995 federal constitution of Ethiopia attempted to federalize the polity of Ethiopia by way of responding to nationality questions by institutionalizing the social conditions of federalism in the society. It gave a structural meaning to the already existing driving forces of federalism.
Therefore, national groups and hence politics of nationalism became the building blocks of the Ethiopian federation–a real attempt to match the state with the society in the constitution. The term “ethnic group” was not mentioned in the constitution anywhere. So, “ethnic politics” has no constitutional roots in Ethiopia. I would rather argue that it was deliberately framed into post-1991 politics in Ethiopia as a way to de-legitimize and offer negative connotations to the right to national self-determination fought for by national groups and entrenched in the constitution.
Therefore, it would be helpful to closely observe how members of national groups in Ethiopia identify themselves and articulate their fundamental political interests and desires. Advocacy for self-rule and shared-rule, which is a normative notion of federalism as a social precondition, has already been in play in Ethiopia since the 1960s. What has been desired and fought for is a federation that practically matches and institutionalizes this social condition in a bottom-up approach.
The pre-1991 dominant state politics, which ideologizes a centralized unitarist state in the name of unity by undermining the right to national self-government, has re-surged in full force; and a once hegemonic TPLF itself rejoined national movements for self-determination, often known as federalist forces, which it sidelined and oppressed for over a quarter century. Thus, the mismatch between Ethiopian federal society and Ethiopian polity could be seen as the underlying social/structural roots of the ongoing conflicts in Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian state needs to be reformed afresh on an inclusive social contract. War creates a state and maintains it is an obsolete polity. It is to be seen whether Ethiopia would choose a multinational bargaining and federalizing path or stick to its uncompromising stance which would further weaken it as a viable polity in the strategic Horn of Africa region.
