How Has The Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front Changed Ethiopia's Political System?

Since its arrival to power in 1990 by ousting the former military government, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has fundamentally reformed Ethiopia’s political system in many ways. The regime's radical transformed the highly centralized unitary state into a Federation of nationalities that redefined citizenship, politics and identity on ethnic grounds. The intent was to correct past wrongdoings and create a democratic and just society.

In order to rebuild from centuries of ethnic based discrimination, the new government led by a coalition of former insurgent movements took an ideological approach to federalism based on ethnic units defined largely by language and common ancestry. As Melese Zenawi, the leader of EPRDF and prime minister of the country (1991 -2012) once attested, “previous regimes centralized approaches and lack of recognition to ethnic identities has led to elitism, despotism, authoritarianism, and the sacrifice of ethnicity on the altar of transcendent

There are few countries with a history as vast and controversial as Ethiopia. While Ethiopia is an ancient country and the only African country to resist and remain independent from European colonization, it emerged with its present territorial boundary and ethnic makeup during the second half of the nineteenth century after a massive southward expansion of the Norther Abyssinian Empire (Jalata 1993). With no shared history of statehood, its people are fragmented into dozens of often mutually antagonistic ethnic kingdoms and tribes. A History of Modem Ethiopia is essentially an account of the construction of a unitary and modern state during the span of a hundred years, roughly between 1855 and 1955, under the auspices of four successive monarchs and in the face of domestic resistance and foreign aggression (Zewde,