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Ethiopia Regional and Local Government
Regional Administration
When it assumed power in 1974, the Derg only slightly
reordered the imperial regime's pattern of administrative
organization at the national level. By contrast, the new
regime saw existing local administration as anathema to the
objectives of socialist construction, and its reform efforts
were initially more evident on the local level than in the
central bureaucracy.
Immediately after assuming power, the Derg reorganized
Ethiopia's fourteen provincial administrations and replaced
all serving governors general. The fourteen provinces
(teklay ghizats) were relabeled regions (kifle hagers) and
were divided into 102 subregions (awrajas) and 556 districts
(weredas). (By 1981 the number of administrative divisions
had increased to sixteen with the addition of Addis Ababa
and Aseb.) The restructuring was a major step toward
dismantling feudal privilege. Moreover, all new appointees
were either military men or university-educated individuals
who were considered progressives.
The main charge of these new administrators initially was
to promote development, and the maintenance of law and order
was considered only of secondary importance. Despite the
commitment to rural development and to the staffing of
regional administrative positions with young, dynamic,
educated people, not much could be done to accelerate the
process of change. Field bureaucrats had few resources to
work with, their staffs were small, and their budgets were
committed almost exclusively to salaries. By the mid-1980s,
the relief and rehabilitation contributions of foreign
private voluntary organizations in some cases made more
resources available at the local level than did the regional
administrations.
After having concentrated on a gradual transformation of
the state's administrative structure, with the promulgation
of the 1987 constitution the Mengistu regime prepared for a
further reorganization of regional administration. Hence, at
its inaugural session, the National Shengo enacted a
government plan for the administrative reorganization of
regional government. As a result, twenty-five administrative
regions and five autonomous regions were created (see
fig. 1;
fig. 2). The autonomous
regions
consisted of Eritrea
(broken further into three subregions in the north, west,
and south), Aseb, Tigray, Dire Dawa, and Ogaden. The change
promised to alter significantly Ethiopia's traditional
pattern of administrative organization.
If the plan were to be fully implemented, this
reorganization would have required a dramatic expansion in
the government and party bureaucracy. Relatively new
institutions, like regional planning bodies, would have been
eliminated and replaced with new planning agencies in the
various regions. Some observers suggested that this plan was
initially endorsed to pursue a Soviet-style approach to the
nationalities problem. They argued that the regime was
trying to organize regional administration along ethnic
lines. Consequently, this reform had little positive effect
on enhancing the regime's legitimacy and in fact limited its
control over the general population.
The primary organs of state power at the regional level
were regional shengos. These bodies were responsible mainly
for implementing the central government's laws and
decisions. Regional shengos could draft their own budgets
and development plans, but these had to be approved by the
National Shengo. Regional shengos also possessed some
latitude in devising and enforcing local laws and
regulations and in electing local judges. By the summer of
1989, however, regional shengos had been elected in only
eleven of the twenty-five newly designated administrative
regions and in only three of the five regions designated as
"autonomous."
Data as of 1991
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