Intra-Party Competition and Authoritarian Party Durability in Ethiopia

• In Event: Intraparty Politics: Groups, Networks, and Competition

Abstract

The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has been in power since winning a 17-year civil war in 1991. As a party with its origins in a victorious liberation struggle its stability is explained in part by the legacies of the armed conflict, particularly with regard to leadership coherence and experience in administering liberated territory. In 2018, however, a period of sustained protests led to a new leadership to gain control the ruling party and government. The long-term dominant faction within the EPRDF coalition, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), lost its position in intra-party competition and Abiy Ahmed, from the long marginalized Oromo People’s Democratic Front (OPDO), was named prime minister. In this paper we argue that the TPLF’s demise and the OPDO’s rise are rooted in the internal logic of the EPRDF. We posit that the intra-party dynamics and patterns of leadership promotion within the EPRDF explain both the period of authoritarian stability (1991-2017) and the surprising new party leadership in 2018. We argue that TPLF’s principle initial advantage came from the organizational maturity it developed while waging war as a rebel group. Yet, because that advantage was not etched into EPRDF’s permanent institutional structure and erodes over time, the TPLF’s privileged status gradually dissipated, thereby ushering in a more equitable power-sharing arrangement among its coalition partners. The key point we are making, then, is the following: The EPRDF is institutionally agnostic with regard to its coalition members, which is in part why the OPDO could rise in power and displace the TPLF as the dominant force. We support our argument through a close analysis of an original dataset of party leadership that demonstrates significant variation in appointments to member party central committees over time and between the constituent parties of the EPRDF.

Authors

• Terrence Lyons, George Mason University

• Leonardo R. Arriola, University of California, Berkeley

• Josef Woldense, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities