The modern history of Ethiopia is marked by episodic ruptures, passages of violent crisis that led to political reformation, and that are supposed to lead to a new relationship between the state and its citizens. These “moments” are well-known to students of the region's past: the seizure of power by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and the assertion of Eritrean independence in the early 1990s; the overthrow of the imperial regime and the rise of the Derg in the mid-1970s; the Italian invasion and occupation of Ethiopia in the 1930s; the struggle to oust of Lij Iyasu in the late 1910s. Certain themes are perennial, not least the demand for rights and representation among the marginalized, and the centrifugalism which periodically threatens to destroy the polity itself. The current situation, beginning in the mid-2010s, feels like a similar kind of moment. Over the past few years, we have...
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