EL CRIMEN DE AGRESIÓN Y LA CORTE PENAL INTERNACIONAL

In doing so, the first task becomes how to divide the modern history of the country and how to identify the critical historical episodes that aid our attempt to draw causal explanations from. The age of the nation’s history, after all, has divided mainstream historians as well as diverse sets of scholars who look at the Ethiopian state from different lenses. Teshale Tibebu (1995), in his work entitled, ‘The Making of Modern Ethiopia’ explains that, “it is more customary to cite three possible times scales for Ethiopian history: (1) Ethiopian history is 3000 years old; (2) it is 100 years old; (3) and it’s 40 years old” (pp. xii). Tibebu indeed eventually explains that instead of delving deep into arguing why a certain approach could be considered wrong than the other, it is vital to consider the values that each approach contributes to our further understanding of the

22 _{Merera Gudina’s paper presentation prepared mostly from his book entitled, ‘The Elite and the Quest for}

case at hand23. Although I concur with his peacemaking approach in general, I tend to look at the making and unmaking of the modern Ethiopian state by closely looking at the political eras that are associated with leaving behind the many political, societal and economic changes behind them. As a result, the imperial regime under Haile Selassie I will be explored starting from the years that preceded the second Italian invasion of the country in 1935. This is mainly because the first major attempt (a practical one for that matter) in constitution writing in the country was accomplished during that period. The socialist regime in the country, which overthrew the imperial regime in 1974 and the uniqueness of its legacy for where the country is today is also very much significant and deserves and a great deal of attention. At last, today political regime led by the EPRDF coali- tion, since 1991, which offered “the synthesis of the Ethiopian state formation”24 will bring us close to full circle of our historical understanding of the Ethiopian state. Before presenting such historical explanations and the somewhat similar attributes of the political culture of such eras, I also will bring in the historical discussion of the prior few regimes in the first decades of the mod- ern era in the nation’s history given today’s elites’ debates usually go as far back to these times especially when making arguments with respect to their groups’ history of oppression by others is voiced.

Here, we need to keep in mind that the first part of the dissertation project so far has laid out the literature as well as the theoretical foundations for which we can use to of understand what

23 _{Teshale Tibebu’s explanations such historical periods came up as a result of what many debate as to the}

age of the Ethiopian empire and such differences are inherently related with the historical and cultural identities of the political and intellectual elites that write about it.

24 _{For more, see Merera Gudina’s work that analyzed the Ethiopian state’s historical evolution and its quest}

today’s sustained challenges of the Ethiopian state emanated from. Moreover, explaining the cur- rent ethnic federal setting and its proponents’ rationale in coming up with it in the first place, deserves careful scholarly consideration in studying the historical episodes that preceded it. Using process tracing in learning from the trajectories of Ethiopian history and identifying path depend- ent scenarios therefore lays out the most needed surface to build the arguments in the second part of the dissertation, which entirely focuses on ethnic federalism and the authoritarian survival strat- egies that the EPRDF coalition depended upon for extending its rule in the last 26 years of its domination of the political space. My invoking of path dependence does not actually fully indicate that a certain political actor might have used prior’ era actors’ decisions in altering or building new ideas. However, throughout the research, it will also be clear that each political regime’s political elite, despite carefully attempting to undone the past, have always fallen back into using similar political strategies for survival’s sake. In that regard, through a historical lens, the chapter attempts to look at contemporary Ethiopian political discourse from cultural and institutional perspectives while marrying them into the strategic interests of the political elite across different political eras.

Firstly, I argue that the continuing nature of political culture in Ethiopia outweighs every constructive attempt of the political elite, which always vied to redefine the political discourse of a state that is considered multi-ethnic as well as multi-national. Unlike experiences in Sub-Saharan African states that passed via the misgivings of colonialism (and as a result their political culture is somewhat constructed along), the case in Ethiopia is very much different.25 In understanding the

25 _{David Laitin’s argument in his study of the Yorubaland in Nigeria shows that the experiences of Sub-}

Saharan African countries is that political culture could be constructed. For more see:Laitin, David D. He- gemony and religious conflict: British imperial control and political cleavages in Yorubaland. Cambridge University, 1985.

ever present political culture in terms of the patterns of elite interaction that we witness in contem- porary Ethiopia, we see how the old patrimonial political culture evolved by closely looking at the three political eras that the chapter analyzes throughout. In such chapters, I argue that patrimo- nial political culture is what laid out the foundations and paved the way for the emergence of a neo-patrimonial clientelistic state. Secondly, we see that in the evolution of the Ethiopian state, the notion of ethnicity and competing ethnic interests that I also touched upon above, remain em- bedded in the political discourse, which further necessitates a closer and detailed look. Thirdly, the role of the intellectual elite in the country and its influence is understudied. The “most celebrated” Ethiopian student movement in the 1960’s and the products of that generation also remain very influential to this day, which further necessitates a detailed explanation so our understanding of the perception of the intellectual elite in Ethiopia and its significance becomes more clear. Before attempting to explain each one of them however, our understanding of the concepts of patrimoni- alism and neo-patrimonialism is important. Thus, next I present what the social science literature (mostly from sociology and political science) has to say about such concepts within the broader context of such terms.