Christopher Clapham

Third World politics : an introduction

An example introductory textbook on the politics of Third World Countries, this book draws on examples from Latin America, Africa and Asia to analyse their role in the global political economy.

Transformation and continuity in revolutionary Ethiopia

List of tables Preface and acknowledgements List of acronyms Glossary of Amharic words Map of administrative regions of Ethiopia 1. Revolutions 2. Monarchical modernisation and the origins of revolution 3. The mobilisation phase, 1974-8 4. The formation of the party, 1978-87 5. The Ethiopian state: structures of extraction and control 6. The control of the towns 7. Rural transformation and the crisis of agricultural production 8. The national question 9. The external politics of revolution 10. Conclusion Postscript to the paperback edition Notes Bibliography Index.

Rethinking African States

This contribution sketches the paradoxical contrast between Africa and Europe. Europe is the homeland of the strong state, founded on nationalism and sustained by centuries of history. African states are weak and artificial, the result of an arbitrary colonial partition, lacking internal coherence, failing, dysfunctional, even collapsed. What accounts for this difference? Are African states resilient enough to survive the kind of challenges that saw European boundaries change? Are they living on borrowed time on the edge of an abyss that will shortly do to many of them what it has already done to Yugoslavia? Or are they simply different kinds of creatures, marching to their own drums, with the expectation that they will continue in much the same way, despite the upheavals transforming other parts of the world? Understanding what Africas conflicts are about depends on the answers to these questions.

Post-war Ethiopia: The Trajectories of Crisis

This article addresses current crises of governance in Ethiopia. Internal conflicts within the ruling coalition arise from its origins in a localised insurgency and its flawed capacity to create a broader political base. In the national context, particularly in the major towns, it rules only by effective force and not through dialogue or negotiation. A policy of ethnic federalism promised devolution of powers to local areas, but founders on the difficulty of reconciling autonomous systems of power and authority within a common political structure. Internationally, Ethiopia has had considerable success, presenting itself as a model of ‘good governance’ with donor approval. Having accepted the basic tenets of neoliberalism, it also backed the ‘global war on terror’, giving it scope to promote its own agenda, with US backing, in Somalia. Its cardinal problem remains the management of diversity and opposition.

Democratisation in Africa: obstacles and prospects

The events of the last few years have given a substantial boost to the process of democratisation in Africa, and have opened up at least the prospect of reshaping the African political order into forms which would be startlingly at variance with those through which most of the continent has been governed during the three decades or so since independence. The changes currently under way are moreover, at least in my view, much more than the simple backwash into Africa of events in Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Even though the timing of events in Africa has been affected by the upheavals in Europe, and though the African scene is inevitably influenced by the transformation of the international order, the democratisation process reflects a crisis in the African state itself which was in any event becoming clear. Whether this process is likely to lead to the creation of a reasonably stable democratic order is, however, quite another matter, about which I remain extremely sceptical. This article therefore seeks to place the recent democratic upsurge in Africa in the context of the continents recent history and continuing problems, in the hope of illuminating both the background to democratisation and the continuing obstacles which it has to face.

Ethiopian Development: The Politics of Emulation

Abstract Since the mid-nineteenth century, Ethiopian rulers have sought to ‘develop’ by emulating models from more developed but ostensibly comparable states. The first such model, imperial Russia, was followed by Japan, and after the Second World War by the United Kingdom and other Western states. The 1974 revolution led the new military regime to turn to the Soviet Union, which provided the most devotedly followed of Ethiopias exemplars. Its overthrow in 1991 led not to a return to Western models, but to a revised Marxism distinguished especially by adherence to Stalins theory of the ‘national question’. None of these models has ‘worked’. Several of them, indeed, became discredited in their countries of origin not long after their adoption in Ethiopia. The search for an ‘Ethiopian road to development’ remains unfulfilled.

Discerning the New Africa

In his introduction and overview to this issue of International Affairs, Christopher Clapham takes a broad look at Africa’s post-colonial past and the often impracticable inheritance bequeathed to it by the colonial powers. With reference to the articles in these pages, he assesses the decline in African statehood and the problems associated with projects of external governance. However, in looking to an uncertain future, he finds emerging from within Africa itself reforming leadership and new movements, which are proving hopeful in the search for political reform.

The challenge of democratization in Ethiopia

Introduction The rapid transition to multi-party democracy of many African countries over the last fifteen years has been one of the most encouraging developments in the continent. In every region of the continent, there are now states where it has become normal for citizens to participate, every four or five years, in elections at which they are free to vote for the party that they wish, and where the victory in those elections of an opposition party leads to a peaceful change of government. Though inevitably it takes time for changes in political arrangements to be reflected in long-term changes in social and economic conditions, there is also now mounting evidence that democratic governance does indeed contribute significantly to improving the often miserable condition of Africas peoples.1 The often self-serving claim that Africa was in some way unsuited to democracy has been convincingly rebutted. It would, however, be unreasonable to expect democratic habits and institutions to be adopted equally easily and unproblematically in every part of the continent. There can be no single blueprint. Political arrangements everywhere and especially democratic ones, since these necessarily reflect the cultures and identities of the peoples to which they are applied must be adapted to specific circumstances, which may be far more conducive in some places than others. Most obviousl}; the existence of a structure of order and government must logically precede the way in which that government is chosen; and though a government chosen by the people whom it governs is likely to be far more effective than one that is imposed on them, it has been amply demonstrated that one cannot simply use elections as a means to create a viable and legitimate government,

The Ringed Plover Populations of Morecambe Bay

Large numbers of Ringed Plovers pass through Morecambe Bay in spring, believed bound for Greenland. In autumn, when numbers are smaller, two separate stocks are involved: a moulting population drawn from temperate Europe (some of which overwinter), and birds of arctic origins which pause to put on weight but do not moult there.

The socialist experience in Ethiopia and its demise

Marxism‐Leninism in Ethiopia had an indigenous appeal which explains its adoption both by the central regime after the 1974 revolution, and by its main opponents. For the military government, it combined ruthless centralization with radical social change. For regional opposition groups, it was a doctrine of insurgent warfare. Both the central government and the Eritrean EPLF saw it as an aid to multi‐ethnic nation‐building. At the centre, it failed both economically (especially in agriculture) and politically. The insurgents, who seized power in 1991, abandoned it in their search for Western support. Some elements nonetheless remain, especially in Eritrea.