Lahra Smith

The Politics of Contemporary Language Policy in Ethiopia

Language is political in Ethiopia because it has both structured and symbolized the nation-building project, and because, in the context of limited resources, any language policy change would require a significant realignment of resources. In modern Ethiopia, the historical distribution of the political goods of communication, recognition and autonomy has been highly skewed, benefiting native Amharic-speakers disproportionately. Since the early 1990s, the decentralization of language choice under the federal constitution has led to the use of other languages by members of select ethno-linguistic communities. This study considers the politics of language choice, drawing from the rich literature in political theory which addresses the role of language in the identity politics of multiethnic and multilingual societies. The historical trajectory of language politics in Ethiopia is presented, but the focus is on evidence gathered in parts of Ethiopia in 2001 and 2003. These findings indicate the relationship between language identities, citizenship formation and identification in the country. They are based on structured interviews and participant observation in select regions of the country.

Explaining violence after recent elections in Ethiopia and Kenya

A comparison of recent contested elections in Kenya and Ethiopia points to divergences in the forms of political violence. While both countries saw the use of excessive force by members of the security services, Kenya experienced more widespread and deadly inter-ethnic violence than Ethiopia. This article considers these two countries in light of competing explanations for inter-ethnic violence, and concludes that variation in the extent of constitutional reforms is critical in influencing citizens’ responses to close electoral contests. In Kenya, there has been a lack of meaningful constitutional and institutional reform since the introduction of multiparty politics in the early 1990s. By contrast, Ethiopia has seen extensive and substantive constitutional reform in a similar period, but without a negotiated pact among political elites. In both cases, electoral procedures have heightened the stakes of politics and therefore led to significant and escalating political violence, but in unforeseen ways. The important electoral issue of regionalism or devolution in both countries is also briefly considered here. The violence surrounding the elections raises concerns about how to sustain citizen engagement with elections and other democratization activities when these fail to meet voter expectations over several electoral cycles.

Voting for an ethnic identity: procedural and institutional responses to ethnic conflict in Ethiopia

The literature on democratisation in diverse and divided societies suggests that procedural and institutional innovations can help create the conditions for democracy by adjudicating among groups with competing claims for recognition and inclusion. Some of the most critical assumptions about the relationship between ethnic identity and formal political institutions have been tested in Ethiopia since the early 199os. Ethnic federalism is a unique and controversial attempt to account for the contested nature of ethnic identities in contemporary Ethiopian politics through a variety of mechanisms, including the use of a referendum to determine ethnic identity. In 2oo0 the Siltie people voted to separate from the Gurage ethnic group. With this political manoeuvre, the Siltie accessed greater levels of political power and greater resources, but also recognition under the constitutional arrangement as a distinct ethnic group. The Siltie case suggests that formal political institutions have a limited, though important, role in resolving contested citizenship claims. At the same time, it raises vital questions about the challenges of procedural solutions in the context of contested citizenship and democratic transition in sub-Saharan Africa.

Nurses’ perceptions of mental healthcare in primary-care settings in Kenya

ABSTRACT Kenya maintains an extraordinary treatment gap for mental health services because the need for and availability of mental health services are extraordinarily misaligned. One way to narrow the treatment gap is task-sharing, where specialists rationally distribute tasks across the health system, with many responsibilities falling upon frontline health workers, including nurses. Yet, little is known about how nurses perceive task-sharing mental health services. This article investigates nurses’ perceptions of mental healthcare delivery within primary-care settings in Kenya. We conducted a cross-sectional study of 60 nurses from a public urban (n = 20), private urban (n = 20), and public rural (n = 20) hospitals. Nurses participated in a one-hour interview about their perceptions of mental healthcare delivery. Nurses viewed mental health services as a priority and believed integrating it into a basic package of primary care would protect it from competing health priorities, financial barriers, stigma, and social problems. Many nurses believed that integrating mental healthcare into primary care was acceptable and feasible, but low levels of knowledge of healthcare providers, especially in rural areas, and few specialists, would be barriers. These data underscore the need for task-sharing mental health services into existing primary healthcare in Kenya.

Nurses’ perceptions of universal health coverage and its implications for the Kenyan health sector

Abstract Universal health coverage, comprehensive access to affordable and quality health services, is a key component of the newly adopted 2015 Sustainable Development Goals. Prior to the UN resolution, several countries began incorporating elements of universal health coverage into their domestic policy arenas. In 2013, the newly elected President of Kenya announced initiatives aimed at moving towards universal health coverage, which have proven to be controversial. Little is known about how frontline workers, increasingly politically active and responsible for executing these mandates, view these changes. To understand more about how actors make sense of universal health coverage policies, we conducted an interpretive policy analysis using well-established methods from critical policy studies. This study utilized in-depth semi-structured interviews from a cross section of 60 nurses in three health facilities (public and private) in Kenya. Nurses were found to be largely unfamiliar with universal health coverage and interpreted it in myriad ways. One policy in particular, free maternal health care, was interpreted positively in theory and negatively in practice. Nurses often relied on symbolic language to express powerlessness in the wake of significant health systems reform. Study participants linked many of these frustrations to disorganization in the health sector as well as the changing political landscape in Kenya. These interpretations provide insight into charged policy positions held by frontline workers that threaten to interrupt service delivery and undermine the movement towards universal health coverage in Kenya.

Africa in the Political Science Curriculum

In the summer of 2005 I was developing a course entitled, ‘‘Comparative International Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity.’’ I was familiar with the theoretical literature on which the comparative study of race and ethnicity would be based, and I had a solid grounding in the case studies from sub-Saharan Africa that would best illustrate conceptual points. Recent coursework in graduate school gave me a secondary set of literature from the Middle East, North America, and western Europe, but where was I to find good case studies to illustrate conceptual and theoretical points from Latin America, East and South Asia, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Australia and the Pacific? In this, I sought methodological variation, theoretical depth, and geographic representation. I spent hours reading through articles from database searches to ensure that each regional or country example was relevant to the course and appropriate for undergraduate students who were not necessarily political science majors. Undoubtedly, most of us have been in a similar situation at some point. Political scientists teaching in the sub-fields of comparative politics and international relations often have the distinct challenge of teaching courses on regions of the world far outside their own areas of specialization. This is particularly so in light of the demands of methodological innovation and theoretical depth, which make our own research that much more detailed and focused. When developing courses with a global, thematic, or cross-regional scope, most of us are not personally familiar with the most rigorous and engaging scholarship in all regions or countries. A course on democratic transitions, U.S. foreign policy, or global environmental politics is surely enriched by meeting the twin goals of broad global representation and critical contemporary theories of the topic. As educators, we may be aware that the most important theories on a specific topic may have come from empirical work in a particular part of the world, but we may not have at our disposal references for current, high-quality scholarship that has been done by scholars of that region. This occurs not only in the context of globalization of the undergraduate curriculum, but as political scientists who study global and comparative politics