Abstract:
here is a debate on the nature of Ethiopia’s political-economic system.On the one hand,the
government and/or the ruling party advocates and legitimizes the system as being purely
democratic developmental state model as it experiences a constitutional democracy and the one
which scored a double digit economic growth for about a decade.While others specially
international institutions and observers endorsing the developmental model by the economic
growth the country has scored question the democracy.Where as,others specially on the side of
political opposition reject both argumenst as both democracy and development of Ethiopia are
of an aborted attempts.They add the democratic model of the ruling party,revolutionary
democracy,is paradox as there have not been any revolution since it was installed as a
government.Besides,the alleged development barely improved the number of the rural farmer
percentage from 85% to 83% with 27 years hence,the development is ironic.The study tried to
examine the politics of developmentalism being provoked by the ruling party by looking some
contending narratives on this and counter narratives of political opposition like
neoliberalism.Besides,it tried to explore if the impact of neoliberalism on the developmental
model of Ethiopian political economy is abundant.To achieve this objective the study employed a
qualitative approach relying on primary and secondary sources of data.The key informants were
a purposively selected interviewees.The research finding revealed that the Ethiopian political
system though developmental in its behavior as the government advocates,authoritarian
developemtalist model best explains its nature than democratic developmentalist.This is because
those constitutional principles,enshrined under FDRE constitution theoretically,faced problems
of practical political application.Besides,the research found that both in political & economic
aspects,attributes of liberalism are seen putting their impact on the developmental model of the
state.The main conclusion made from the findings is that on both development and democracy on
political & economic aspects,the Ethiopian system lacks coherent ideology & is therefore a
mixture of develpemental & liberal while adopting some attributes of an authoritarian
developmentalist like Korea & Taiwan and liberal democratic developmentalist like
Japan.Finally,recommendations are made esteemed from the major research findigs.