Introduction
Recent political discourse in Ethiopia is dominated by the idea of the ‘developmental state’. In fact, after the passing of the former prime minister Meles Zenawi, repeated declarations by officials of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) are about maintaining his legacy, progressing along the path he carved out and achieving his goal of freeing the country from the shackles of poverty and making it a middle-income country. Alex de Waal (2012), one of the Western scholars with a close association with the late prime minister, contended that Meles' primary preoccupation was eliminating poverty and bringing rapid development to Ethiopia.
After the 2001 split of the ruling coalition and the ascendancy of development as the primary party obsession, the model adopted was that of South Korea and Taiwan, the intention being to build a developmental state. This pronouncement and positive results in various economic growth indicators have been applauded by some. Others vilify the EPRDF, claiming that its real intention is to use ‘development’ as a guise to stay in and consolidate power. These concerns are especially based on the fact that developmentalism became more pronounced after the contested 2005 elections and that there was a concomitant increase in the rhetoric of building a ‘dominant party system’, in contrast to the previous rhetoric of building a ‘multi-party system’.
The intention of this article is not to examine the authenticity of the developmental discourse, nor is it to judge the developmental achievements of the past decade. Rather the attempt here is to examine the ‘developmental’ discourse used by the ruling coalition. As such, the literature consulted is primarily from the ruling coalition, the government and a book by Bereket Simon (2011), a long-serving higher official.
The contention advanced by this paper is that the EPRDF is securitising development, following conceptualisation of securitisation by the Copenhagen School and particularly relying on the seminal work of Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde (1998). The securitisation of a public issue gives credence to the immediate need for wider powers and mobilisation of resources (natural, financial and human) towards combatting a perceived existential threat. Thus, the main thesis advanced is that the securitisation of development1 by the EPRDF is rationalising the drive to aggressively extract and mobilise resources as well as increasing the power and stature of the ruling coalition.
Security as speech act: the Copenhagen School
After the end of the cold war, the objective nature of a security threat declined. The understanding of threats evolved into a subjective and socially constructed phenomenon (Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde 1998; Waever 1998). Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde (1998), who captured this trend, show how security discourses have come to be framed away from traditional politico-military understanding and usage. They succinctly summarise this development by saying:
… security is about survival. … [Securitisation is when] an issue is presented as posing an existential threat to a designated referent object … . The special nature of security threats justifies the use of extraordinary measures to handle them. The invocation of security has been the key to legitimizing the use of force, but more generally it has opened the way for the state to mobilize, or to take special powers, to handle existential threats. (Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde 1998, 21)
Broadly speaking, the nature of an existential threat depends on the ‘essential quality of existence’ of the referent object (Ibid.). In our case, the threatened object is the Ethiopian state and the threat is arguably emanating from poverty. EPRDF's contention is that the claim for the continued survival and sovereignty of Ethiopia is being threatened by poverty.
If one places public issues on a continuum, the non-politicised and the securitised hold extreme ends, while the politicised takes the middle ground. When considered worthy of public debate and action by the state, non-politicised issues become politicised. But if perceived as an existential threat, a public issue will be pushed farther from the normal limits of politics, as it demands emergency measures. Securitisation could thus be conceptualised as a mechanism used by political actors to put an issue above and beyond the realms of normal politics, out of the bounds of weighing and prioritising in political debates and procedures. It is the securitising actor – the state or social collectivities – that determines whether an issue is securitised or not through speeches (Ibid.). Therefore, security is ‘a self-referential practice, because it is in this practice that the issue becomes a security issue – not necessarily because a real existential threat exists but because the issue is presented as such a threat’ (Ibid., 24).
The Copenhagen School contends that the study of securitisation is the study of discourse (Ibid., 25). The securitising actor tries to convince the audience that an issue should take priority and be of a matter of utmost urgency (i.e. that it is an existential threat) deserving extraordinary measures. The audience is expected to acquiesce in, or tolerate, the violation of the normal procedures and the breaking of the rules of the game, as a consequence of the special actions to be taken. The securitising actor makes a case to securitise the issue (i.e. a securitising move), but an issue will be considered as effectively securitised only when the audience accepts the move, through a combination of coercion and persuasion (Ibid.).
It is the framing in public address of an issue as an absolute priority demanding extraordinary measures which effectively securitises it. Thus the analyst should not be engaged in appraising the genuineness of the threat, rather he or she should seek to understand the social construction of a shared understanding of the issue as an existential threat (Ibid.). With this conceptualisation, this paper shows the framing of poverty as an existential threat to the Ethiopian state by the EPRDF.
The emergence, conceptualisation and consolidation of the developmental discourse in Ethiopia
Getting the right development strategy has been a challenge for Ethiopia, and its rulers have been content with emulating models from elsewhere (Clapham 2006). Intellectuals of the early as well as mid twentieth century have called for ‘Japanisation’ and ‘rapid development’ if Ethiopia is to sustain its independence and pride (Bahru 1990, 2002). In a way, the calls of these intellectuals appear to be heeded a century later: the model however is not Japan, it is South Korea and Taiwan, which developed their economies following the Japanese model. The intellectual behind this drive to build a developmental state is Meles Zenawi.
The Ethiopian developmental state project started after the 2001 split in the ruling coalition and the Tehadso (Renewal) campaign afterwards (Clapham 2013; Vaughan 2011).2 Clapham (2013) suggests that at the root of this ‘grand project’ is the intention of resolving the crisis caused by the split and putting forward a renewed politics of Tehadso. As it emerged, the winning group, spearheaded by Meles, articulated the eradication of poverty as the paramount challenge the EPRDF and the state had to focus on. The ‘developmental’ nature of the EPRDF became ‘clearer’ in the official party mesmer 3 after the 4th Congress of the coalition in August 2001 (Bereket 2011).
A second shock of a very different nature, in the form of Ethiopia's most contested 2005 elections, led the ruling coalition to further strengthen the developmental discourse. Now the shock came in the form of the loss of at least a third of seats in the House of Peoples' Representatives to the opposition, and the post-election violence. According to Bereket (2011, 202) the appraisal that ‘the economy determines everything’ led to the increased zeal to ensure that the population got economic dividends.
The identity of Ethiopia's developmentalism is created in opposition to the neoliberal other. The usage of neoliberalism in current Ethiopian politics is analogous to the use of imperialism in the 1970s and 1980s by the Derg regime. By the time EPRDF took state power, the West had won the ideological war with the socialist East, and neoliberalism was presented as the ‘only game in town’, leading to a reduction in the size of government, slashing of public spending and generally making life worse in many African countries. This, Meles (2011) argued, is a new dead end, as reduction of the size of the state and its role in the economy will not in and of itself solve Africa's developmental abyss. Hence, the need for an alternative model which Meles found in South Korea and Taiwan, and which argued incessantly for increased state involvement and the building of a developmental state. The following section summarises the dominant features of these arguments.
Securitisation of development in Ethiopia: speech acts framing poverty as an existential threat and their dissemination
Security threat and developmental states: what can latecomers learn?
How South Korea and Taiwan transformed their economies in a few decades remains a preoccupation for development economists, but the crucial role of external security threats is often highlighted (Bates 2001; Woo-Cummings 1999). A more comprehensive investigation into the origins of developmental states puts security considerations among the three interactive conditions (labelled ‘systemic vulnerability’) which coerce leaders into technological upgrading (Doner, Ritchie, and Slater 2005). Such threats result in ‘the heightened need for foreign exchange and war materiel induced by national insecurity’ (Ibid., 328), which could comfortably be met by increasing productivity. Thus, one can argue that an external security threat could have developmental gains if the threatened state does not pillage the productive capacity of its population to meet (anticipated) demands from the war front, but augments it to increase productivity for a comfortable increase in military spending.
The inability of development economists to provide development blueprints should serve as a precursor to the difficulty politicians face in learning from the experiences of successful developmental states. The threat South Korea and Taiwan faced from their northern neighbours (North Korea and China) and the resulting urgent need to build a huge military force, which invariably demands massive resources, is well noted by EPRDF leaders (EPRDF 2006, 35–37, 47). Even if a ruler wants to follow in the footsteps of these countries, it will be next to impossible to objectively create an existential threat from outside of the state and make use of it to claim wider powers.
Is there anything to learn and adapt from the very crucial role played by the influence of a genuine external security threat on state building and improved productivity? Will a leader's genuine ambition to build a developmental state be doomed merely because of the absence of an existential threat from outside of the state? The EPRDF seems to have taken a creative way out of this constraint, by constructing poverty as an existential threat, and thus securitising development. The absence of an external threat did not stop the EPRDF from making rapid development a question of survival – an integral part of the enabling conditions for building a successful developmental state. The EPRDF (2006, 48) stresses that ‘all analysts agree that though the source of [this] deep-rooted belief and thinking [about severe insecurity, the prevalence of an existential threat] varies, it is one of the basic traits of developmental states,’ and firmly believes that the precondition ‘development is a question of survival’ is among the three preconditions for building a developmental state (2006, 2010) (the other two being maintaining state autonomy and ensuring that developmental thinking becomes hegemonic). Thus, the EPRDF (2010, 66–67) asserts:
The belief of our government that development is a survival issue does not emanate from distrusting either the population or any external power. It is based on a conclusion drawn from the experiences of neighbours and other African countries: that (if not eradicated) poverty, and lack of good governance and democracy, will lead to civil strife and disintegration. Thus, in the aftermath of the Tehadso [the Ethiopian government] took the unwavering stance that if we do not ensure rapid development and give hope to the population Armageddon will be unleashed in Ethiopia: We will consume each other … Although the source of our insecurity is significantly different from that of Taiwan and Korea, our conclusion is one and the same. Rapid development which benefits all sectors of the population is a survival question.
Threat is, in a way, desired as it ‘would be unimaginable to break out of the rent-seeking cycle’ (Ibid., 56), and build a value-creating developmental state without it. As the EPRDF (2010, 43) shows:
If there is no objective security threat which makes development a question of survival it would be very difficult to institute a state which could traverse to finish the challenging and complex developmental path. Taking development as a survival issue is one of the fundamental features of a developmental state and an unswerving belief in this feature of the developmental state and a strong determination that follows from this belief is necessary to persevere on the developmental path.
Thus, Ethiopia's security discourse is not only related to the articulation of poverty as an existential threat, but also it is perceived as a necessary precondition to ease the political difficulty of building a developmental state.
Framing poverty as an existential threat to Ethiopia
In post-1991 Ethiopia, the first securitising move towards development was made in 2001 as part of the Tehadso campaign.4 The winning faction of the EPRDF argued that the paramount problem Ethiopia faced was internal not external, that is, poverty not Eritrea. This faction equated the perceived danger to Armageddon, arguing that worsening decadence and rent seeking will result in bloodshed and chaos of biblical proportions (Bereket 2011, 31). Bereket (2011, 32) adds:
If decadence is entrenched, it will disrupt the country's peace by worsening poverty and hopelessness. Moreover, by fomenting civil strife it will lead to a dangerous situation in which the wellbeing of the peoples will be greatly worsened. This could happen in the form of massive deaths from famine. Or in the form of civil conflict … . A country entangled by rent seeking webs would have an increasing possibility of descending into a situation of mutual annihilation as a result of the conflict of interests between these networks.
Development is not only conceptualised as a formula to improve public welfare, but also as ‘a means to ensuring the continued survival of the Ethiopian state and its people’ FDRE 2002. It also seems that Meles was convinced that poverty is an existential threat to Ethiopia as he confided to de Waal (2012, 7): ‘I am convinced that we will cease to exist as a nation unless we grow fast and share our growth.’ The contention is that Ethiopia's primary security threat is poverty, and that without eradicating it the state will be vulnerable to the slightest external threat and that:
the root causes of wars and instability are poverty, lack of democracy and good governance, and that security threats emanate from vulnerability due to the aforementioned factors … Poverty could, out of desperation, lead the population towards destructive ways; remaining backward can make the people vulnerable to the manipulation of anti-peace forces, thus serving as a source of wars and instability. Recognizing that the poverty we are in constrains our defence capabilities neighbourhood bullies might try to create problems for us. Failing to properly handle our diversity by entrenching democracy and good governance, we might find ourselves in civil strife. Neighbourhood bullies might exploit this and create challenges for us. Thus, if we want to dry the very roots of war and instability and pursue the renaissance path without interruptions we have to speedily combat poverty and build a democratic system that nurtures our diversity. (EPRDF 2010, 113)
The securitising act: securitisation of development by the EPRDF
The claim that ‘development is a question of survival to Ethiopia’ is a securitising move by the EPRDF. This speech act frames poverty as an existential threat to Ethiopia's national security, sovereignty and the very existence of the Ethiopian state. A securitising speech act has a specific rhetorical structure composed of two major focus areas: ‘survival’ and ‘priority of action’ (Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde 1998, 26). In addition to quotations claiming that ‘poverty is Ethiopia's main enemy’ elaborated in the previous section, more is added here from Ethiopia's Foreign Affairs and National Security Policy and Strategy document (FDRE 2002) to firmly establish that the discourse that securitises development is fully articulated, and thus requirements are met.
If foreign affairs and national security documents are meant to protect national interest, according to FDRE (2002, 7), ‘rapid development that benefits the population should be at the centre of Ethiopia's security.’ Thus ‘[a]ll other [national security] issues are secondary to, and based on, these fundamentals' (Ibid., 8). This policy document further stresses that Ethiopia's ‘main security threat is of an internal nature. The danger is that widening poverty may lead to our collapse … This threat can be removed through overcoming poverty, through development and economic initiative’ (Ibid., 28–29). If the above was not illustrative enough:
Rapid development is not merely important in raising the standard of living of the people, but [is] also a guarantee of national survival. Unless we can bring about rapid development that benefits the people, we will not be able to avoid chaos and disintegration. Therefore, assuring accelerated development and raising the living standard of our people is critical in preventing our country from disaster and dismemberment. This is a fundamental issue on which the interests and the survival of the people of Ethiopia depend. (Ibid., 6)
The second part of the distinguishing structure of a securitising act intends to ‘upset the entire process of weighing (between public issues) as such’, leading to the argumentation that ‘If we don't tackle this problem, everything else will be irrelevant (because we will not be here or will not be free to deal with it in our own way)’ (Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde 1998, 24). Ethiopia's developmental discourse seems to follow a similar logic. Bereket (2011) tells us that Meles prioritised issues based primarily on their specific contribution to the anti-poverty ‘war’. The fight against poverty, it is argued, should become the supreme priority. This becomes very clear if one considers the recent qualifier added to the issue of respect of group rights. Now it is argued that the equality of ‘nations, nationalities and peoples' will be realised only if there is palpable development, otherwise, the EPRDF (2010, 115, 121) seems to believe, gains in this respect could easily be reversed. This implies that the constitutionally guaranteed group rights could only be ensured as long as the root cause of poverty is tackled. Otherwise, the contention goes, there will not be an Ethiopia to talk about. Without development (and democratisation), FDRE (2002, 23) warns, the ‘prospect of disintegration cannot be totally ruled out … [Thus, development should be expedited to] ensure our existence as a nation, and preserve our honour.’
The borrowing of words from traditional military vocabulary in the developmental discourse adds impetus to the securitisation process. Ethiopia's development is expected to be hastened by the formation of a lemat serawit (development army) through a tsere-dehenet tegel (anti-poverty struggle) by the active agency of the lemat arbegna (development patriots) who become jegna (heroes) and at times would have to pay the ultimate sacrifice and be martyred. The private sector is categorised into two parts: lematawi (developmental) and kiray sebsabi (rent collector/seeker); and government officials are also blamed for being rent seekers, or encouraging/not discouraging such behaviour. The most degrading political insult now has become kiray sebsabi (Vaughan and Mesfin 2011) or being labelled tsere-lemat (anti-development).
Origins and spread of the securitising act
Ethiopia's developmentalism is born out of the 2001 split in the ruling party and entrenched after the 2005 elections. Between the two major crises, however, the EPRDF's executive committee meeting of November 2002 assessed the post-Tehadso progress and concluded that if the situation continues as it is, it is very likely that Ethiopia will cease to exist as a state (Bereket 2011, 37). The proposed solution, in Meles' words, was to run as fast as a person would when an avalanche comes his or her way:
Our Tehadso movement is similar to a person running towards a refuge in order to save himself from an avalanche coming his way at very high and yet increasing speed. If this person does not know where the refuge is located and a short cut to it, there is no doubt that he will be buried by the avalanche. Even if he takes the right path, if the person cannot outpace the avalanche it does not make a difference whether he is buried far away or one step away from the refuge. Therefore, pace is as much a question of survival as the path to be taken. … Our situation is that we have taken the right path but are unable to outpace the danger, thus the likelihood that we will definitely succumb to the danger is imminent. (Quoted in Bereket, 2011, 38)
This decision and the appraisal that rent seeking is the main threat to the country, according to Bereket (2011, 32), came a little too late. By the time the right policies were being implemented, signs of Armageddon were visible (cited examples being hunger and the riots of the early 2000s). Apparently, two years of well-performing economic growth was not enough to stop signs of Armageddon from resurfacing. The loss of votes at an unprecedented level in 2005 was perceived as a sign that Armageddon-like conditions were much worse than the EPRDF believed (Ibid., 102, 125). Interpreting the votes the opposition got as ‘protest votes’, and the post-election violence as ‘a small but sufficient’ (EPRDF 2010, 67) indicator of what might happen if the developmental mission is not pursued effectively, the EPRDF started to further entrench developmentalism, using securitising discourse, with the self-proclaimed intention of bringing about rapid development that benefits all sectors of the population. This decision was reflected upon and adopted at the 6th EPRDF Congress, and the message was passed through various channels.5
What followed appears to be a wide-reaching enlisting of members to the ruling coalition, leading to a more than a sixfold membership increase from an estimated 760,000 in 2005 (Tronvoll 2011) to 5 million in 2010 (Bach 2011, 245). State structures created below the kebele (lowest government administrative level), the mengestawi budin (government team) and ye-limat budin (development teams), in addition to bringing the government closer to the population in post-Tehadso Ethiopia (Vaughan 2011), could be instrumentalised to create the hegemony of the ‘developmental culture’.
In the early 2000s more emphasis was given to having a clearer picture of the developmental mesmer and firmly establishing a consensus on it within the party. Later on the discourse became increasingly directed at the wider public, through developmental journalism (Skjerdal 2011) and media, newly recruited EPRDF members, mengestawi budin and ye-limat budin, disseminating the securitising discourse widely, especially after the 2005 elections. The EPRDF intensified political education, partly to not have a repeat of 2001 or 2005 but also to make the ‘developmental’ mesmer hegemonic. To this end, the Front relieved most of its senior politicians of bureaucratic responsibilities, enabling them to concentrate on political duties (Vaughan 2011; de Waal 2012). Their efforts are perceived as making good strides towards the intended target of making developmental thinking ‘an internalised set of assumptions' (de Waal 2012, 6) in public culture and contributing to the effective securitisation of development; however, the task is not yet completed (EPRDF 2010).
A public issue could be effectively securitised by using a mix of persuasion and coercion, and, given Ethiopia's political culture, it is reasonable to assume that the latter's share would not be inconsequential. The predominance of developmentalism did not materialise only through consultation, dialogue and fair argumentation with alternative sources of ideas, information and power. Free-press activities were restricted.6 Civil society organisations were labelled rent seekers, and their activities curtailed through various legal and administrative procedures, primarily after the Charities and Societies Proclamation was enacted.
The consequences of securitising development
A securitising actor pushes a public issue beyond the scope of political debate, that is, it securitises an issue in order to get a freer hand to deal with it – in the same way that an actor would in dealing with an external political-military threat. Thus the executive can do things which the public would not have accepted, or tolerated, at times by breaking/ignoring the rules of the political game. In minimally accepting the speech act, the public is, in a way, tacitly approving the need for an urgent solution through avenues the authorities deem necessary. Resistance against such extraordinary measures will be treated similarly to wartime dissidence. Labelled tsere-lemat (anti-development), such individuals or groups might be attacked by the state apparatus.
The developmental path is perceived to be best implemented without interruptions (EPRDF 2010) by inculcating developmentalism into the ‘internalised set of assumptions' of the society (de Waal 2012, 6) and when ‘the society accepts this [developmental] path and makes it the society's own thinking and culture’ and there is a ‘national consensus' on the issue and the developmental thinking becomes hegemonic (EPRDF 2010, 50–51). Advances toward this are apparently being made partly by ignoring/breaking the rules and norms which have been in place since 1991. This move can be discerned in what seems to be a retreat from the self-proclaimed position of standing for the respect of diversity, the self-determination of ‘nations, nationalities and peoples' of Ethiopia, up to and including secession. The premise is that Ethiopians are now building a new Ethiopia – where there are no oppressors and oppressed, where every citizen is equal and is given equal opportunity to participate in the building of the new joint venture, and where there are no aliens and special citizens, no exploiters and exploited – and that nationalities and religion are the last refuges to rent seekers. The intention here seems to build ‘Ethiopia Inc.’ (FDRE 2002: 56–57). Based on this premise, the EPRDF (2010, 117) goes to the extent of stating:
Hereon, if anyone takes refuge in the nation's past history intending to be a special citizen, or intending to look across the border like an alien, it is not because he has good ground, but because he is a rent seeking parasite or because he has fallen for rent seekers.
This in effect is the reversal of a previous position of accommodating or encouraging ethnic entrepreneurs. Now such groups are equated with rent seekers. This should be an indicator of what appears to be an increasing tendency of centralisation to meet the demands of ‘developmental’ targets. Many agree that the federal and developmental state projects are incompatible (Aalen and Asnake 2012; Assefa 2013; Clapham 2013). Assefa (2013) argues that the two projects are at least in tension and that the latter furthers the ethnic – federal dilemma Ethiopia is in. While the federal project intends to devolve power and authority to regional states, the developmental state demands a stronger executive, hence the centralisation of decision making (Aalen and Asnake 2012). At the extreme end, Clapham (2013) contends that the developmental state project is replacing the primacy of the federal exercise. We can get a clearer grasp of how the two projects fare in the decades to come, but now it is certain that the two projects are competitive, not complementary, and emphasis is placed on developmentalism.
The ‘focusing [of] society's energy and resources' on the perceived existential threat, and breaking the normal political process (Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde 1998, 24), is another consequence of securitisation. The mobilisation and direction drive is not restricted to ‘society's energy and resources'; popular culture is also funnelled towards the same goal through the use of developmental media, mass associations, theatres and the like. If the Derg said ‘everything to the war front,’ the EPRDF-led government is saying ‘everything to the fight against poverty.’ If we were to believe the state-controlled media, the country appears to be single-mindedly pursuing and directing human and material resources towards economic development. Development is framed as an apolitical issue whose dictates everything else should comply with (EPRDF 2006, 48, 72, 99). Even national unity is desired, according to EPRDF (2006, 99), because it augments efforts towards creating economic development by ensuring a massive labour force as well as market.
The aggressive mobilisation of resources can be seen in various forms: efforts to increase savings, increase tax collection capacity, centrally manage pensions from all employers as well as forcing commercial banks to buy National Bank of Ethiopia bonds with 27% of their lendable capital. A more interesting break from the earlier practice of the EPRDF is the recent surge in transfer of land to foreign as well as domestic investors.
Conclusion
The discourse of building a developmental state has dominated other political discourse in Ethiopia in recent years. The preferred mode of discourse frames poverty as an existential and imminent threat to Ethiopia which should be dealt with immediately, whatever the cost, for the continued survival and peaceful co-existence of the society. Through these speech acts the EPRDF is securitising development, and justifying the emboldened role of the state in social life, the increase in power and stature of the ruling elite and government, the resource mobilisation drive of the state and retreats on previously agreed rules and declared political aims.