Ethnic Federalism in a Dominant Party State: The Ethiopian Experience 1991-2000 Lovise Aalen r 2002: 2

A brief account of Ethiopian constitutional history
The term constitutionalism refers to the idea of limiting the powers of
government. These limits are in some sense self-imposed and are aiming at
making the rulers accountable to the law and preventing arbitrary actions
(Elster and Slagstad 1988: 2-3). Most countries abide by this principle through
a commitment to a written constitution or well-established unwritten customs.
Ethiopia got its first written constitution under the rule of Haile Selassie in
1931. The country has constitutionally significant documents which are dated
before 1931 such as various law codes and administrative and protocol
directives, but these did not impose any fundamental restrictions on the
Emperor, who was seen as above the law and the source of all governmental
powers (Fasil Nahum 1997: 17). The principle of imperial sovereignty and the
Emperor’s ability to impose his will on the subjects, however, was in practice
restricted by the power of local and regional nobility. As the imperial rule
became increasingly consolidated, the Emperor tried to minimise the regions’

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control over him. The constitutions under Haile Selassie were therefore not as
much means to limit the power of the ruler, but more a way of securing the
sovereignty of imperial rule (Aberra Jembere 1994: 67). The Derg’s
constitution of 1987 followed this pattern. It provided for the establishment of
a system of symbolic and cultural regional autonomy, but gave still room for
centralisation of power, sustaining a strictly unitary form of administration and
arbitrary rule (Clapham 1988: 204). Essentially, the pre-1991 constitutions in
Ethiopia were not efficient in making the rulers abide by the principle of
constitutionalism.
The constitutions under Haile Selassie – means of centralisation
Haile Selassie’s constitution of 1931 aimed at institutionalising and
consolidating imperial power as well as entrenching the principle of unitary
government at the expense of the regional lords’ autonomy. Clapham (1969)
claims that the two pillars of the 1931 constitution were centralisation and
modernisation: it provided the formal basis for a process of centralisation that
was necessary for both national unity and effective modernisation. As a sign of
modernisation, the constitution made the establishment of a bicameral
parliament possible, delegating some of the tasks that had previously been left
to the imperial prerogative. The members of the chamber of deputies in the
parliament (the first/lower chamber) were appointed by regional nobility while
the members of the senate (the second/upper chamber) were assigned by the
Emperor. But otherwise the constitutional guarantees were meagre, and the
Emperor was even now perceived as above the law (Clapham 1969: 35). He
gained the entire executive power over both central and regional government
and the constitutional provisions did not prevent him from practically
controlling both the legislature and the judiciary.
A revision of the 1931 constitution took place in 1955. The 1955
constitution secured a limited set of human rights, provided for the
establishment of an independent judiciary and a more democratically elected
legislature. Nevertheless, substantial constitutional restrictions on the imperial
power were still lacking, and the Emperor was allowed to rule by emergency
decree and was the one who appointed members of the senate, judges and
ministers, civil and military officers and regional and local administrators
(Aberra Jembere 1994: 72). Thus, the 1955 constitution did not limit the power
of the Emperor in any fundamental way, but rather maintained and enhanced
the central control over regional forces that Haile Selassie had institutionalised
through the 1931 constitution.
The Derg constitution of 1987 – civilising military Marxism?
In the period from 1974 to 1987 Ethiopia was ruled without a constitution.
The Derg administered the country by prerogatives and proclamations until a
new constitution was ratified in 1987. This document was supposed to ensure
the hand-over of power from a military government (Provisional Military
Administrative Council, PMAC) to the Workers Party of Ethiopia (WPE) and a
new set of Marxist-Leninist institutions.

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The process of drafting a new constitution started in 1983, with the
establishment of the Institute for the Study of the Ethiopian Nationalities. This
institute should be providing the Ethiopian government with more knowledge
about the country’s national groups and projecting the process of constitutional
drafting. It did obtain some information about the nationalities, but this was of
little practical use in the drafting process. A preliminary draft was presented in
1984, but this was later amended by higher authorities. The Constitutional
Commission established in 1986 was serving to give the impression that the
drafting had a nation-wide participation, but it was otherwise nothing more
than a “rubber stamp body” and was totally dominated by Mengistu’s WPE
(Clapham 1988:92).
Although the new constitution did not lead to any fundamental change in
the way Ethiopia was ruled, the document provided for some administrative
rearrangements. During Haile Selassie, there was a uniform hierarchy of
administrative units. The country was divided into 14 regions (kifle hager), and
these were subdivided into 102 provinces (awraja) and at the lowest level, 600
districts (woreda). All the regional leaders were appointed by the centre. With
the Derg’s new constitution, five out of thirty administrative regions, including
Eritrea, Dire Dawa, Tigray, Assab and Ogaden, gained the status as
autonomous (Ofcansky and Berry 1991: 223). But the powers enjoyed by these
regions were strictly delegated and did not have any constitutional guarantees.
Despite the stress on “the realisation of autonomy”, the constitution stated
unequivocally that Ethiopia “is a unitary state in which all the nationalities live
in equality” (Harbeson 1988: 190). Although the regional administrators that
were appointed originated from the regions themselves, the new administration
as a whole remained centralised due to the fact that the bureaucracy in the
regions was still centrally assigned. The regional parliaments were
subordinated to the national parliament (shengo) (Clapham 1988: 204). The
1987 constitution formally ended the military rule, but the power of the WPE,
which operated according to the Leninist principle of “democratic centralism”,
remained unchallenged by the constitutional provisions (Harbeson 1988:191).
The transfer of power from military to civilian rule was therefore “cosmetic”,
because the people on the top remained largely in the same positions and
maintained the same amount of power after the constitutional change
(Clapham 1998: 92). Formally, some of the regions obtained autonomy, but
the national groups became gradually more suppressed and less empowered
than before.