What is the policy making process in Ethiopia?

Answer 1

Ethiopia is not a democratic country and the executive branch makes all the policy decisions. The process of policy making and decisions are strongly influenced by a long history of centralized and hierarchical systems of control. Specially, the Prime Minster is the influential person in both agenda setting and specification of policy ideas. In Ethiopia, the House of Peoples' Representative is just a symbol without clear power as a law making branches of the Ethiopian governance system. In examining Ethiopia's policy making process, understanding the political governance system is vital. In policy making, the context in which a dynamic interactions among knowledge, power, and politics of various groups in the development of policy ideas that either competes, conflicts, or comfort is widely determined by the nature of the political environment. Since the overthrow of the socialist military regime in 1991, Ethiopia claims that the existence of multi-party systems to facilitate democratization and good governance as a means to effect sustainable development (FDRE, 2004). However, open policy debates among political parties on key socio-economic issues are not a common practice. Hence, agenda setting either to develop or change existing policy remains mainly in the hands of government. In relation to this, Article 5 of the House of Peoples' Representatives of the FDRE rules of procedures and members' code of conduct regulation shows, initiating public laws is defined as a duty of the government (House of Peoples' Representatives [HPR], 2005). According to HPR, members of the house, committees, parliament groups, and other bodies authorized by government shall initiate a public law or policy. This code of conduct prevents opposition political parties to initiate alternative policy proposals. The ruling party enjoys an absolute power in the process of policy making that involve both agenda setting and designing policy proposal.

Some information regarding the economic policies and policy making can be found in the following links : http://www.bds-ethiopia.net/investment.html http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/poiteipcm4.en.pdf http://www.mkeever.com/ethiopia.html