Forecast for Political Change in Ethiopia: An Urban Perspective

This chapter utilizes a control and facilitation theoretical perspective in analyzing the basic urban origins of political transformation in Ethiopia and in forecasting the impact of political change at the center on urban politics and development. It analysis confined to the Ethiopian political system and its functional subsystems. Change tends to occur at an uneven pace within the various functional subsystems of a political system, and special attention is given to leads and lags in interrelationships among the several functional subsystems of urban political systems. Obstacles to political change could be overcome in Ethiopia once power was mobilized by urban collectivities that grew in strength and allied with one another as a result of shared deviant ideological persuasions. Traditional socializing structures, including the Amhara family and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, promoted values of hierarchical rather than egalitarian social and political relationships, obedience to authority, and acceptance and maintenance rather than change of the existing social and political order.