‘Decentralised There, Centralised Here’: Local Governance and Paradoxes of Household Autonomy and Control in North-East Ethiopia, 1991–2001

Abstract

AbstractThis article discusses whether Ethiopia's recent reorganisation into broadly decentralised, ethnically based regions was also accompanied by significant changes in the images and administrative practices through which state powers have been locally understood and experienced by ordinary citizens. Different scholars and politicians have viewed the local effects of these changes differently. Government officials and some scholars report ‘radical reversals’ from decades of monarchial despotism and socialist dictatorship to enhanced local autonomy and self-governance, while others counter this by noting the ‘continuation’ of earlier administrative practices. I draw on ethnographic material from fieldwork in Aba Sälama, a local administrative unit in Amhara, to show that decentralisation has increased the significance of local government as a site for competing interpretations of household autonomy and local-governance. Party members and elected farmer officials used the newly enhanced constitutional powers and funds of the local government to strengthen their own personal standing vis-à-vis their superiors at the district capital and fellow farmers in the community. Farmers for their part seized the rhetoric to demand more autonomy from local government which they still viewed as an extension of central state control over their lives and resources. As a consequence, one observes in Aba Sälama both decentralised and centralised administrative practices as local officials seek to accommodate this tension when performing their governmental duties.