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Decentralization to the Household: Expansion and Limits of State Power in Rural Oromiya
Editor(s)
Abbink, Jon; Hagmann, Tobias
Book title
Reconfiguring Ethiopia: The Politics of Authoritarian Reform
Publisher
Routledge
Place of publication
London
Pages
137-158
ISSN/ISBN
978-0-415-81387-7
Keywords
State, Decentralization, Development, Authoritarianism, Party Politics, Ethiopia
Abstract
This article sheds light on the impacts and dynamics of the latest decentralization phase in Ethiopia, which seeks to professionalize and democratize local government. Based on recent field research in Oromiya Region, we draw attention to the paradoxes inherent in the top-down decentralization of public administration within an authoritarian one-party state. On the one hand, decentralization in Oromiya has empowered kebele administrations and facilitated the expansion of service delivery into rural hinterlands. In particular the sub-kebele state and party structure is instrumentalized by local governments to mobilize and control households. On the other hand, state authority remains limited as peasants resist and subvert state-led development works and kebele officials must rely on clientelistic networks to implement policies. Consequently, decentralization and kebele reform in post-1991 Ethiopia have so far neither altered the tradition of hierarchical statesociety relations nor improved the lack of genuine representative democracy at kebele level.
