Suchergebnisse

It is impossible to think about democracy without elections. The litmus test of any electoral process in any country is the possibility of a one time minority to become a majority at another time and a peaceful transition of power. In many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa though the multi-party elections appeared to be competitive they failed the acid test of democracy: peaceful regime change in a free and fair election. Failure to solve electoral disputes might lead to bloody electoral conflicts as witnessed in many emerging democracies in Africa. The aim of this paper is to investigate electoral conflicts in Africa since the end of the Cold War by using the 2005 post-election violence in Ethiopia as a case study. In Ethiopia, the coming to power of the EPRDF in 1991 marked the fall of the Derg dictatorial military government and the beginning of a multi-party democracy. The country held multi-party parliamentary elections in 1995, 2000, and 2005 where the ruling EPRDF party "won" the elections through violence, involving intimidation, manipulation, detentions of political opponents, torture, and political assassinations. The 2005 electoral violence was the worst electoral violence in the country-s political history that led to the death of 193 protestors and the imprisonment of more than 40, 000 people. It is found out that the major causes of the 2005 Ethiopian election were the defeat of the ruling party in the election and its attempt to reverse the poll results by force; the Opposition-s lack of decisive leadership; the absence of independent courts and independent electoral management body; and the ruling party-s direct control over the army and police.

The major aim of this paper is to investigate the opposition politics in Africa. The paper also examines the status and the role, the contributions and the weaknesses of opposition1 political parties in Africa, particularly in transitional democracies that emerged in the 1990s. In Africa, many of the opposition parties appear or become active only during an election, and disappear when the election is over. It is found out that most of the opposition parties in Africa are established around the personalities of individuals, lack internal democracy, suffer from inter-party and intra-party conflicts, have severe shortage of finance, and lack strong base and experience. Their weaknesses also include bad organization and weak connection with the popular constituencies. The paper concludes that most of the weaknesses of the African opposition parties emanate from the incumbents- hostile policies, which are mostly aimed at fragmenting and weakening the opposition groups.

One of the approaches to democratization is the fostering of civil society organizations. In Africa, civil society organizations did not fully play their role in the continent-s democratization process due to many factors including the repressive regulations imposed on them by governing parties. In Ethiopia, for the first time in the country-s political history, the civil society played a very active role in the 2005 multi-party election. The involvement of the civil society in this election has far-reaching consequences. One of the objectives of this paper is to assess the consequences of such involvement for both the civil society and the political society in the country. The paper also examines the peculiarities of civil society formation in Africa in general, and in Ethiopia in particular by assessing both the "traditional" and "modern" civil society organizations.

Since 1991 Ethiopia has officially adopted multi-party democracy. At present, there are 89 registered political parties in the country. Though political parties play an important role in the functioning of a democratic government, how to fund them is an issue of major concern. Political parties and individual candidates running for political office have to raise funds for election campaigns, and to survive as political candidates. The aim of this paper is to examine party funding problems in Africa by taking the case of Ethiopia as an example. The paper also evaluates the motives of local and international donors in giving financial and material support to political parties in emerging democracies and assesses the merits and de-merits of their donations.

In a representative democracy political parties promote vital competition on different policy issues and play essential roles by offering ideological alternatives. They also give channels for citizens- participation in government decision-making processes and they are significant conduits and interpreters of information about government. This paper attempts to examine how opposition political parties and rebel fronts emerged in Ethiopia, and examines their present conditions. In this paper, selected case studies of political parties and rebel fronts are included to highlight the status and the role of opposition groups in the country in the three successive administrations: Haile Selassie (1930-1974), Derg (1974- 1991), and EPRDF (1991-Present).

The main objective of this study is to examine operational challenges and opportunities of interest free banking in Ethiopia. Interest free banking was introduced in Ethiopia as an alternative to the banking industries within the existing conventional bank in window bases, and strictly operates in line with the principles of Shari'ah. However, its operations have been constrained partly by, legal and regulation framework, misunderstanding and lack of standardization, limited market, and sharia experts and man power. The study used descriptive methods of analysis, Primary data was used by preparing questionnaires to test stated research hypotheses and to answer the research questions. To achieve the objectives of the study respondents were drawn from one government banks and four private commercial banks since they started IFB financing and saving service. Data was collected through questionnaire by using random sampling from a sample of 180 IFB staffs 126 were properly filled and returned the questionaries. The data collected from the questionnaire were analyzed using SPSS version 20 statistical tools such as percentages and frequency. The result showed that proper legal and regulatory framework is the major setback to the operation of interest free banking, lack of sheria experts and man power significantly lagged the operations of Interest free banking; limited market makes very limited provision for the operation of Islamic banking in Ethiopia; and these key findings show that a major setback to the operation of IFB in Ethiopia and above all, misunderstanding and lack of standardization of IFB concept are the major challenges of IFB operation in Ethiopia. Further the finding of the study showed that interest free banking is an effective mechanism to subjugate the liquidity and inflation problem. Thus, regulatory governance and banks should give more emphasis for the challenges that they face on the operation to have those mentioned opportunities and inclusive growths.

Since the end of the Cold War, Western donors have been following a strategy of democracy promotion to Africa that involves giving assistance to both the state and the non-state actors including governments (as part of good governance program), parliaments, courts, political parties, civil society, electoral management bodies, election observation missions etc. The paper explores both the positive and the negative impacts of such assistance to African emerging democracies by using Ethiopia as a case study. The paper primarily deals with three sub-sectors of democracy promotion program: assistances to political parties, international election observation missions, and civil society. In this study, I argue that human rights and self interest (economic, political or both) shape the foreign aid policy of Western donors including democracy assistance. Moreover, the paper attempts to prove that democratic reversals or backsliding and human rights abuses in the recipient states can trigger aid reduction or termination only when the recipient states are neither economically nor strategically valuable to the Western donors.

In any democratic country the media serves as a watch dog of events and decisions and assists citizens to be informed about what is going on in the country. Free media also plays a very important role to conduct democratic elections. The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of the media in the African democratization process particularly in the multi-party elections that widely emerged in the continent in the 1990s. The paper investigates the contributions of the media in the emerging African democracies by using the performance of the media in the 2005 multi-party parliamentary election in Ethiopia as a case study. The paper also attempts to assess the Ethiopian press laws of 1992 and 2008, which are the only press laws in the history of the country. ; In any democratic country the media serves as a watch dog of events and decisions and assists citizens to be informed about what is going on in the country. Free media also plays a very important role to conduct democratic elections. The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of the media in the African democratization process particularly in the multi-party elections that widely emerged in the continent in the 1990s. The paper investigates the contributions of the media in the emerging African democracies by using the performance of the media in the 2005 multi-party parliamentary election in Ethiopia as a case study. The paper also attempts to assess the Ethiopian press laws of 1992 and 2008, which are the only press laws in the history of the country.

The aim of this article is to assess the democratization process in Africa in general and the multi-party elections in particular. The decolonization process in Africa (1960s and 1970s), which was known as the "first liberation" completed by the emergence of many, new independent African countries. In most of the newly liberated countries the political parties that led the anti-colonial struggle established one-party domination after independence. The rapid democratization process ("second liberation") in Africa began in the first half of the 1990s, particularly with Benin's multiparty election in 1991. In this period, multi-party elections had taken place in most of African countries. These transitions led to "limited" democracies, characterized by a lack of liberal freedoms, low levels of popular involvement (except at election times), narrow range of civil liberties and the concentration of political power in the hands of small elite groups. Holding an election is a milestone, but it is not the key to Africa's democratic legitimacy. Many elections in the African region have failed to meet the internationally accepted standards for free and fair elections. Though Africa's record on free and fair elections is mixed, at present, most of Africans have embraced elections as indispensable mechanism for determining their future course.