Progressivism Anchored by Constitutionalism

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For Dignity & Hope
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“Politics and political institutions are the processes by which a society chooses the rules that will govern it.
Political institutions include not only written constitutions and whether society is a democracy, but also
how political power is distributed [in it].”
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David Sainsbury, former minister of Science & Innovation of the UK, under Tony Blair`s government.
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This is a note not written with the intention of forming a political party. Neither has
this an ambition to produce a political manifesto in the service of a particular group.
At best, it is meant to be a humble contribution in taking the political discourse
forward, identifying a gap in a platform that meets the demand, aspiration and needs
of a growing constituency in Ethiopia: a generation with a heart for civic nationalism.
In a way, it is a call for a political and social movement that is progressive but
anchored by Ethiopia`s constitution.
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The political movement and a generation that spearheaded the formation of the
current federal political structure codified its worldview in the existing constitution.
It is a view informed mainly by a Marxian understanding of the world and relations
between various groups in society. Yet, there is an element of pragmatism in it, where
those the works of constitutional crafting were outsourced to had managed to
incorporate their liberal views in it.
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A quarter-century down the road, the constitution remains a battleground between
essentially two major political forces, while a small but growing group on the margin
appears to be a bystander, as indifferent and passive as it may seem. The unfolding of
events following the “deep renewal” by the ruling EPRDF a couple of years ago has
brought forth political forces with an integrative approach, calling for a “united and
undivided country under a homogeneous identity.” It is a political view that abhors
multiculturalism espoused in the constitution, to the great dismay of its foes in the
ethnocultural camp. This is a force to be reckoned with for it is a political view
appealing to a large base.
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For this base, the nation resonates as a single most important source of identity to
citizens, to whose eternal existence everything the individual embodies should be
given up. This is a political force that is a proponent of the politics of eternity, where
history - a controversial subject in as much as it can be selective - serves as reason
d`etre to defend the present in a way that appears to be a divine requirement for the
nation`s existence. It is also a view that accepts “the suppression of individual
reason” is justified “in favour of national submission.” *1
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It is a zero-sum engagement where the politics of eternity “consumes the substance
of the past, leaving only a boundless innocence that justifies everything.”*2 Not only
does this view convolutes the concepts of the “state” and the “nation”, but also
overlooks the fact that nations are products of imagination and can be invented,
hence reinvented. This form of romantic nationalism overlooks the clannishness of
human psychology as fundamental.
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Identities, whether they are rooted in reality or the fantasy of shared ancestry,
remain central in the politics that is within and between nations.*3 Social identities
are not something we can do away with. They bring significance to the lives of [those
who belong to them] by connecting the small scale of daily existence with large
movements, causes and concerns. It is also Hegelian view which sees the struggle for
recognition as an “ultimate driver of human history, a force that is key to
understanding the emergence of the modern world.” To the contrary, the integrative
worldview believes that humanity has always lived in a community that is a
monocultural and monolingual nation-state.
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But, failure to acknowledge and appreciate the diversity in society and encouraging
its constructive expression, as Ethiopia`s constitution promotes, has dire
consequences even to the grand design of forging a united, prosperous and robust
nation-state.
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“The unities we create fare better when we face the convoluted reality of our
differences.”*4
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This is simply because, “the real source of people`s view . . . is the understanding of
their identity, and their effort to protect it.”
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Amy Chua is a professor at Yale Law School who studied the correlation between
ethnic as well as cultural identities; free market economic system; and political
governance. She has authored and co-authored several books on the subject,
including her highly acclaimed book titled, “World on Fire.” She persuasively argues
that it is inherent human nature to group alongside ethnic, religious or clan fault
lines.
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“Humans aren`t just a little tribal. We`re very tribal, and it distorts the way we think
and feel.”*5
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Of the multiple forms, ethnic identification is the one that is the most “combustible
sources” of political mobilisation, and “it is at its strongest when one group feels
threatened - in danger of being extinguished - by another.”*6
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True, the reality of linguistic and cultural variations within a community can be in
tension with the romantic nationalist vision of the many in the same community.*7
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This tension, a rule than the exception in the world, is what those in the opposite side
of the political spectrum have tried to resolve. They are forces with preferences for
the primordial approach where ethnicity is employed for political mobilisation. This is
a worldview primarily informed by the need to devolve political power and fiscal
decisions from the centre to regional constituencies in vertical power distribution. It
is expressed in the notion of federalism. Indeed, there exists an ample repository of
research establishing the fact that in societies as polarised and divided as Ethiopia`s,
a federal system is strongly recommended due to its effectiveness over a central
system of government for it provides checks and balances on the largest and dominant
groups.
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This too is a political force that presents a great deal of collective insecurity to others
because its proponents equate an identity based on linguistic-cultural formation as
primordial, some preexisting national commonality cannot underwrite a shared
identity that exists from the beginning of time, unable to accept political unity.
However, identity-based social mobilisation is inclusive of only those with shared
identities while excluding others who are deemed to be “outsiders.” It is a political
force that primes its cause in victim championship and employs negative mobilisation
to galvanise the emotions of its base.
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Politics conducted in an emotionally charged environment does often bring the
destructive energy in groups and often is illiberal in its nature.
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It is this fear that prompted the political thinker Francis Fukuyama to warn of the
dangers of contemporary identity-based politics. On the surface, it is driven by the
urge for equal recognition by groups that have been marginalised in society. The
undercurrent, however, is a potential for the demand for equal recognition to “slide
over into a demand for recognition of the group`s superiority.”
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Like the eternity politics, the ethno-nationalism draws its inspiration from the past,
albeit in a way that challenges the present and the status quo. It actively shares
eternity`s force in depriving the individual in society the right to make personal
choices, but compelling her to identify with the already defined group. It is the
politics of minimum common denominator, where individuals are grouped merely
because they share a common identity that comes due to the accident of birth, in
large part.
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Politics based on ethnonationalism creed promotes the idea of the majoritarian rule,
thus becoming a source of insecurity to others. It believes in the sheer size of the
population identified in a particular group, whether formed from religious or lingo-
cultural fault lines. In its practice, it often creates a sense of isolation on others who
fail to demonstrate their “authentic” lineage and belonging to the designated group.
It is a force that seeks the idea of a defined set of people for a state rather than a
state for people of diverse background. Identity formed on the views of common
ancestry aspires to annihilate, assimilate or expel those deemed as “others”.
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“To set out to govern identities is to set out to govern the ungovernable.”*8
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Contemporary thinkers who have taken time and effort to understand the
phenomenon of lingo cultural expressions, from Appiah to Fukuyama and Chua, have
warned on the dire consequences of the legalisation and institutionalized function of
ethnicity. They all agreed that often the politics of identity falls prey to the
demagogues on every side of the political divide to mobilise popular support, not on
sensible policy proposals but instead appealing to their respective support base
stoking historical grievances and exploiting group fears and anger.
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Indeed, both political persuasions of the integrative and primordial camps are forces
of polarisation, with hardly any desire to compromise to a centrist ground. They have
a political culture of winner-takes-all, thus weakening the state power in the process,
and undermining social and political institutions in their bid to serve partisan agendas.
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In the middle are the multiculturalists, who have had a force to dominate the political
landscape over the past 28 years. Drawing their source of strength from the leftist
culture of a social organisation, a segment of the student movement had used the
ethno-culturalist card for social mobilisation only to evolve, upon holding state power
in 1991, to multiculturalism. What was meant to be a tactical choice for political
mobilisation against the most massive army in Africa; it was concluded as a
permanent system of rule, leaving both on the integrative and the primordial political
camps disgruntled. The few in the civic nationalism camp are as much left
marginalised.
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Multiculturalism was instrumental in writing the incumbent`s constitution in the
mid-1990s, ensuring that it incorporates substantial component to guarantee the
rights of what its advocates describe as “nations and nationalities.” Although in large
part the Constitution furnishes an architecture that is a liberal form of state
structure, it has nonetheless elements incorporated ensuring the sovereignty of
regional states formed along the lines of linguistic cultural formation, granted them
veto power in constitutional amendments, and constitutionalized the ownership of
land (a critical means of capital formation) under their ownership.
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This feature of the constitution is a matter that is keenly emphasized by Mehari
Tadele (PhD), a leading scholar on peace and security in the Horn of Africa. He
believes Ethiopia`s constitution has “redefined Ethiopianism and re-conceptualised it
as egalitarian, inclusive and multicultural identity drawn from a federation of diverse
cultures.”
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Nonetheless, a force sandwiched between those with the integrative approaches and
centrifugal forces, the multiculturalists are in fact consociational in their approach to
political competition in a country with powerful regional cleavages. The federalism
they institutionalised in Ethiopia aims to check the power of the dominant group,
hence deprive a majoritarian rule by recognising even a community with the smallest
size of constituency such as those in Harari Regional State.
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Aspiring to build a social justice community, a multicultural nation wants to see the
formation of states that recognises and promotes the collective rights of each ethnic
community within society to different forms of autonomy, resource allocations and
political representation. And it is this form of state reformation the EPRDFites have
had envisioned and institutionalised in the Ethiopian political order for nearly three
decades. The tenet of the constitution they thus codified emphasises political and
social mobilisations along four components: Identity; group rights; distribution of
power and resources; and, the dichotomy of minorities and majorities.
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Multiculturalism sees the ethnic community as a primary source of identity, hence
compel the state to protect and enhance their assertiveness. Suffice the declaration
of faith in Ethiopia`s constitution in its very first line, which reads, “We, the Nations,
Nationalities and People`s of Ethiopia.”
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However, multiculturalism is not a panacea to a polarised polity such as Ethiopia`s. It
is not a social and political mobilisation without its pitfalls.
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Proponents of multiculturalist Ethiopia do not necessarily reject the place of the
individual in the polity. Nonetheless, they remain tactfully ambiguous on the subject,
pledging that the individual has a place in the collective and individual rights are
derivative of the resource allocation and political representation of the collective.
They are unable to reconcile their celebration of the diversity of many nationalities
with the promise they make to ensure the right of the individual is observed despite
cultural and moral limitations often imposed by communities.
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Although the multiculturalist worldview is designed to protect ethnic minorities from
ethnocultural majorities by granting them equal share to resources and
representations to political power, it is not guaranteed that the majoritarians do not
outvote the minorities.
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In both the ethnocultural and multicultural worldview, the nature of the state and its
abilities to license and apportion group identities - as its capabilities in managing
resource and power allocation - matters most. Its success or failure in creating myths
of overriding national identity, and its widespread acceptance, determines its
legitimate intervention in times of crises and inter-communal conflicts. It was no
doubt a powerful indictment on both ethnocultural and multiculturalism that,
“Human power depends on mass cooperation, mass cooperation depends on
manufacturing mass identities - and all mass identities are based on fictional stories,
not on scientific facts or even on economic necessities.”*9
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It is this Achilles hills the Ethiopian state is currently struggling to climb, in its
desperate bid to see political stability and social unity is maintained in an imagined
political and economic space.
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The state`s role in defining ethnic identities, hence their use as a basis for resource
allocations, runs it the risk of prioritising one identity and its version over multiple
other identities.*10
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“Instead of celebrating the multiple and fluid identities available to each in the
society, the state aims to preserve the heritage of cultural differences that have been
given by a certain kind of history. This cementing of static ethnic categories might
well be intended to maintain hegemony and class domination. But, instead of
achieving its aim of depoliticisation, it serves - potentially - to institutionalise the
new political contention of ethnic claims.”*11
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This superbly characterises the Ethiopia that is reconstructed under the EPRDF`s
worldview. It has a status quo receiving punches from competing forms of nationalism
whose proponents hardly have conversations with each other for having antithetical
premises and visions. The political landscape is overwhelmed by fronts, movements
and organisations whose “populist reassertion of ethnocultural nationalism through
which marginalised classes within the ethnic majorities are reactively expressing
resentment at their exclusion both from the social justice vision offered by
multiculturalism.”*12
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The politics of nationalist contention is a politics of ideological confrontation which is
inherently resistant to management and compromise. “Nationalist confrontations are
not fundamentally clashes of interest, but of ideologies.”*13
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It is this political culture a progressive movement needs to redraw so that politics
becomes defined by interest, departing from conflicting narratives of the past.
Politics should be reoriented as containment of disagreement, rather than the
impossible task of finding for their definitive resolution. It has to be anchored on
individual citizens present welfare, away from a mystical past that is a source of
despair for members of differential groups.
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A progressive movement should uphold the part of Ethiopia`s constitution that
accords individuals of both ethnic majorities and ethnic minorities equal status as
citizens of a state so long as they demonstrated their primary loyalty to the state,
which is an institution that protects the common good grounded on shared values:
Tolerant, pluralist, self-questioning, and with a cosmopolitan modernity. It is a form
of shared commitment to govern a common life as the French Historian Ernest Renan
would have it; a sharing of life under a modern state united by its systems, laws and
institutions.
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Ethiopia`s constitution can serve as a bare minimum departure point to chart a
shared future on the values of civic nationalism. Although it will be inevitable for
several political forces to challenge a shared destiny defined in such worldview, the
rise of a progressive movement can ignite sufficient passion among a critical mass of
the Ethiopian public to forge a nation-state on the values of civic nationalism.
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The progressive movement should aspire to redraw the state`s orientation and
refocus its energy to do what is it core to such a powerful but potent institution. The
essential role of the state is to keep citizens safe and secure their right to own
properties. A progressive force should not lose sight of re-engineering society that can
hold the state to its true and fundamental role while promoting the formations and
the dynamic existence of non-state groups which hold the state to transparency and
accountability.
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It is not sufficient to rely on the structural instruments of checks and balance of
power provided in the constitution. Ethiopia`s experience over the past 25 years has
demonstrated that when a hegemonic ruling party and a powerful leader collude, the
constitutional safeguards have no force to hold the state`s power over society. It is
equally vital for the media and the civil society to remain proactive in ascertaining
the limits of the state and its proper place in society. The primary task of a
progressive force should be to help social organisations outside of the state remain
true to their causes and aspirations.
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Progressive forces should be wary of the trap in seeing change and reform through the
pinhole of political power. A social movement is about developing a widened aperture
for societal transformation. It should be about an environment within a defined
territory and geography of a nation-state and a rethink of a political system and its
culture installed, thus the nature of the state that is to be created.
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It is also in consideration of the type of demography that dominates such an
environment and how wealth is created and distributed through the introductions of
economic policies that are friendly to the dreams and aspiration of the individual
citizen. Nonetheless, it should also be about the state`s ability to form systems and
institutions to provide public goods in the form of security, health, education,
infrastructure and the administration of justice. Finally, it is about a system that
protects the underprivileged in society and the provisions of welfare to the
marginalised. Poverty is not only about the deprivation of material goods as it is
equally about the marginalisation and isolation of the individual from taking
advantage of the available social capital that exists in the community.
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The American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, John Dewey, is
credited for his pioneering thoughts on pragmatism and functional psychology. He
argued that the cause-rationale for a just society is in its resolve to construct a
positive and favourable legal, political and economic institutions, while determined to
remove abuses and overt oppression to the individual. These conditions, or the
absence thereof, may “restrict, distort and almost prevent the development of
individuality.”
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Behind such favourable institutions should lay a capable state whose commitment
strongly lies to institute the individual`s right to private property and freedom of
contract, values that are most fundamental to the existence of free society.
Progressive groups in Ethiopia`s society should thus aim to refocus the state to charge
its energy and resources to serve this purpose. For in public choice theory, political
action is a product of the efforts of self-interested individuals and institutions to
move the state in their preferred directions.
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Therefore, the social and economic policy directions the Ethiopian state should take
ought to be of great concern to the progressive forces, whose primary preoccupation
should be the reorientation of the state to be one that is enabling to the creative
power of citizens. State institutions need to get reorganised taking it away from its
interventionist character, now defined by inefficiency, corruption, and abuse of office
by those entrusted to lead it.
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The primary task of progressive forces should be to aim to reorient the nature of the
Ethiopian state, reforming its structures, and redirecting its energies keeping in mind
that the crucial importance of bringing it back to its core mission in society:
guaranteeing individual liberty, ensuring social justice and creating the ecosystem for
economic efficiency.
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The state should be one that builds institutions that are efficient in collecting taxes
and provide welfare with the mission to educate the youth; provide pension to the
old; support the disabled and the jobless, and offer healthcare for all citizens. It
should tax labour less and capital more so that it will have the ability to reinvest
resources in the sectors where it matters most: provision of public goods.
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It may be too elusive to aim for a laissez-faire system in the Ethiopian social and
political evolution. Progressive forces should bear in mind this important fact. Their
immediate task should be to liberate citizens from an authoritarian, intrusive and
surveillance state, hence the economy from the bureaucratic state. However, they
should prepare to compromise in accepting the fact that a free market cannot mean a
market free of the state. The question should not be whether the state should have a
place in the affairs of the nation, whether it is in the economic and social policies, if
not the political landscape. It is instead about the nature of the state and to what
extent should it be allowed to get involved in the collective business of citizens.
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Ensuring relative equity in society should be one aim any state worth its name should
pursue. But it should be the mission of progressive forces to ensure that its powers in
doing so are checked and the equality it may attempt to bring should not be made at
the expense of political and economic stagnation.
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One of the most influential economists of the 20th Century, J. M. Keynes was a
celebrated economist whose ideas and works have transformed economic
policymaking after the Second World War. Informed by the Great Depression in the
United States in the 1930s, he believed in the rightful role of the state in a nation`s
economic management. His thesis urges to make the state the creator of aggregate
demand in times of economic recession through massive investment by the state in
public infrastructure. Not even Keynes, that celebrated economist who believed in
the might of the state with the capability to stimulate economic growth, would want
to see a bureaucratic state in a society operating in the guise of developing a nation
with no bounds to its horizons.
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“The most important agenda of the state relates not to those activities which private
individuals are already fulfilling, but to those functions which fall outside the sphere
of the individual, to those decisions which are made by no one if the state does not
make them. The important thing for the government is not to do things which
individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to
do those things which at present are not done at all.”*14
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The economic prosperity of the many cannot happen in a nation that is not geared
toward creating wealth. And the process of wealth creation is as a result of much of
citizens active participation and not of an endowment. The productive involvement of
citizens is active if only encouraged to be channelled through firms that are organised
in producing higher and raising level of productivity in services and products with
greater efficiency. The state should not be here to deliver the products and services
provided to the market, but rather it should create the enabling conditions for
citizens, and firms they chose to form, which give them hope in their lives and
dignified life from the intrusions of the collectives.
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REFERENCES:

1.
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“The Road to Unfreedom,” Timothy Snyder, professor of History, Yale University.
2. Timothy Snyder.
3. “The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity,” Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy and
law, New York University.
4. Kwame A. Appiah.
5. Dan Kahan, professor of law, Yale University.
6. Kwame A. Appiah.
7. “Political Tribes,” Amy Chua, professor of law, Yale Law School.
8. Amy Chua.
9. Kwame A. Appiah.
10. “21 Lessons for 21st Century,” Yuval Noah Harari, professor of history, Hebrew University.
11. “Contemporary Nationalism: Civic, Ethnocultural & Multicultural Politics,” David Brown,
professor, Murdock University.
12. David Brown. pr
13. David Brown.
14. David Brown.
15. John M. Keynes, economist, “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.”