Transformation and Continuity in Revolutionary Ethiopia

This 1988 text traces the continuities between revolutionary Ethiopia and the development of a centralised Ethiopian state since the nineteenth century.

Christopher Clapham (Author)

9780521396509, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 25 October 1990

320 pages
22.8 x 15.3 x 1.9 cm, 0.4 kg

This pioneering study was first published in 1988. It examines the effects of revolution on one of Africa's largest states. Christopher Clapham traces the continuities between revolutionary Ethiopia and the development of a centralised Ethiopian state since the nineteenth century, emphasising the institutionalisation of the revolutionary regime since 1978. He pays particular attention to the establishment of a Leninist political party and its associated mass organisations, the new apparatus of physical and economic control, and - critically important in Ethiopia - the effects of revolution on agricultural production. He also assesses the impact of revolution on national integration and regional conflict, and the reversal of Ethiopia's international alignment through alliance with the socialist states. A postscript to the paperback edition outlines events in Ethiopia between 1987 and 1990.

List of tables
Preface and acknowledgements
List of acronyms
Glossary of Amharic words
Map of administrative regions of Ethiopia
1. Revolutions
2. Monarchical modernisation and the origins of revolution
3. The mobilisation phase, 1974–8
4. The formation of the party, 1978–87
5. The Ethiopian state: structures of extraction and control
6. The control of the towns
7. Rural transformation and the crisis of agricultural production
8. The national question
9. The external politics of revolution
10. Conclusion
Postscript to the paperback edition
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP]