Learning from history is one thing that the ruling Revolutionary Democrats fail to get right in over 20 years of governing one of the most populous nations in Africa. In almost all cases of governance, from partisan politics to macroeconomic management, they seem to take comfort in making similar mistakes again and again. Their learning curve seems to also be getting flatter with each day.
If there is one aspect where this is vivid, it is the issue of public participation. Little has changed in the practice of letting the public effectively participate in the planning and execution of development activities that the costs of reluctance have grown considerably. The latest incident between residents and law enforcement agencies in Bahir Dar could be considered as a showcase to the very contradiction in the development model of the EPRDFites.
Indeed, such incidents recurring from Bahir Dar to Ambo and Ma’ichew towns signal to the fact that the country is at a threshold, knife-edge as that, of a country moving forward or alarmingly regress to the abyss. The outcome depends on choice leaders of the country – not only of the ruling party – are willing and able to take.
Of course, this latest case is not an isolated one. It rather is an extension of a long overdue problem that remains to cost the nation hugely, in both direct economic costs and human lives. It could even be considered as the major flaw of developmentalism, a relatively young policy approach that puts higher emphasis on building the physical and financial capital base of economies, which, sometimes, comes at the expense of the basic human rights and security. Traces of such outcomes could be found in the development histories of countries that the ruling EPRDFites take by example, such as China, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam.
It has not always been like this, though. The Revolutionary Democrats were relatively sympathetic towards the human element of development in their early years of power. They were known for their strong culture of consulting local communities on issues that resonate to them, be it security or development.
As if to take stock of this culture, the reconstruction plan of the Transitional Government of the early 1990s was bold enough in putting people at the centre of the development process. Alike neoclassical economic textbooks, the plan document even argues that the threads of development start and end with people.
The EPRDFites were committed to involving local communities in development activities. Their leadership style was also sufficiently pragmatic. They were ready to learn from the community as much as they were committed to give what they had. It was this openness that facilitated the fast reconstruction of the war-torn economy of the nation, which most critics categorised at the time as hopeless.
This was indeed the time that the economy of the country started to get consolidated. The era of negative growth ended. Growth volatility decreased significantly.
Agriculture, the mainstay of the economy, started to witness a rare growth in total production and productivity per unit of inputs. Whatever industrial production capacity was left from the spoilage of the central planning and quota-based production of the Dergue regime started to obtain momentum. Investments in infrastructure, social services and technology became the new spending lines of the public sector.
As the economy enters into the growth trajectory, though, the Revolutionary Democrats started to shift away from their pragmatic approach to development. They started to discount the importance of proactive public participation. Instead of effectively engaging the public in the process, they resorted to what development textbooks consider as ‘planner arrogance’ – a situation where development policy planners consider themselves as more knowledgeable than those in the local communities.
Planners infected with such a syndrome prefer to live under a top-down approach wherein they craft plans in their offices and shove them down to the public’s throat for implementation. That is exactly what the EPRDFites are doing.
In fact, the case with the EPRDFites has become worse that they categorise those criticising their approach as ‘anti-development’. It has almost become impossible for communities, and their representatives, to disagree with the state as they might face retaliation.
If one is to go by the books of basic economics, though, development is an endeavour undertaken for the people. The starting point of it all, therefore, is the needs, wants and desires of citizens. As such, development is considered to be an activity of expanding the essential freedoms of individuals.
There are normative and practical benefits in such an approach. Normatively, this gives the whole process the highest moral value. Practically, it is the best way to achieve and sustain development.
For a government that proclaims to have adopted developmentalism as its ideological centre point, then, the latest shift away from proactive public participation entails essential contradiction. There is no way that development could be sustained by rolling out plans with little or no public consensus. So is it impossible to further economic progress without having strong and vibrant institutions of public participation.
It is not the level of the plan that matters here though. Instead, what is vital is the policy commitment, institutional structure, fundamental cultures of the development sphere and above all system as well as instruments of accountablity. Putting public participation at the centre of the process is important if the goal is bringing sustainable development in the country.
Be it constructing roads and irrigation schemes or integrating the development plans of cities, effective development is a result of building consensus between communities and the state. As both have their own unique advantages, their complementarity is vital. The absence of any one of them from a given development process would have considerable negative impact.
That should be how the recent cases in Tigray, Amhara and Oromia regions ought to be perceived. They are inherently resultant outcomes of a conflict between a state that gives little attention to public participation and citizens demanding their inalienable right to be consulted. Bringing a lasting resolution to this conflict is, therefore, key to sustain economic growth.
For the EPRDFites, then, this recurring conflict is a push factor to improve their learning curve by going back in history. Their own history books are full of development activities that succeeded fundamentally because public participation was given its due.
But such retrospective investigation could not be the end. After all, the nation still lacks the institutional basis of public participation. Even the activities done in 1990s were not systemic in their implementation.
Experiences in countries, such as South Korea, China and United Kingdom, show that institutionalising public participation is the lasting solution to the problem. It is this very endeavour that the EPRDFites ought to respect and implement. Ensuring accountablity of the state, through upholding the rule of law – and not rule by the law – which can sustain an Ethiopian society that come to terms with itself.
In the short-term, though, they have to invest in changing the attitudes of the bureaucracy. It should be known to them that development is meant for the people. Consulting the people, thus, should not be a luxury in the development process. It rather has to be the essential prerequisite of any activity, be it a project or a programme.
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