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Reading Marie-Anne Valfort’s Ethical altruistic voting in multi-ethnic developing country: Evidence from Ethiopia__________________________________ By Getachew Mequanent Marie-Anne Valfort’s research paper, Ethical altruistic voting in multi-ethnic developing country: Evidence from Ethiopia (March 2006), has become the latest source of controversy in the political debate of the Ethiopian Diaspora. It was even taken up as an issue during the online “questions and answers” exercise with Sufian Ahmed, Ethiopian Minister of Finance and Economic Development. The controversy was triggered by someone who cited information from Valfort’s paper to allege that the EPRDF government has a policy of preferential treatment towards the Tigrean region. For example, it was alleged that per capital budget allocation for Tigreans was two to three times greater than for Oromos. This irritated others, EPRDF supporters, who wrote to criticize both Valfort and those who used her research to advance a political agenda. The controversy continues. I do not know the circumstances under which Valfort’s paper was posted on the Ethiopian Diaspora web sites and ended up creating a controversy. But, certainly her paper is not about how the Ethiopian government allocates a budget. The paper is concerned with political participation in Ethiopia. My contribution will then be to help understand the paper in its full context, as opposed to solely focusing on the issue of allegation of EPRDF’s policy discrimination against non-Tigreans and non-supporters of EPRDF. After drafting my comments from reading of this paper, I decided to go to Valfort’s personal web page in order to check her academic and professional background. She is a doctoral student. I also learned that she has revised the paper. See http://ceco.polytechnique.fr/home/valfort/FR for the latest version dated May 2006. Her latest paper reflects major changes, and more important, the source for Table 3 (which shows Ethiopian government preferential treatment of Tigreans) has been updated: Merera Gudina is the source, not the Central Statistics Authority of Ethiopia (as indicated in the earlier version). Valfort has also made an effort to relate her research findings to the political developments which resulted from the 2005 election. All in all, the latest (May 2006) version shows improvements in writing and presentation. Nevertheless, most of my comments from the paper that I read (March 2006 version) are still relevant to her research. This paper was also posted on two Diaspora web sites (Ethiopian Media Forum and Ethiopia First) and it might have influenced public opinion as evidenced by the ongoing controversy surrounding the allegation of Ethiopian government preferential treatment of Tigreans. Therefore, the paper deserves a response on the basis of its merit. I have sent Valfort my comments and I hope that she will find them useful in enriching her research experience, more so since she intends to replicate her Ethiopian research in other African countries (she mentions this plan in her preliminary research report of 2005. Source above). Valfort’s study focuses on “the case of developing countries” particularly on “citizens’ altruism when they vote for a fair public goods allocation rule (p. 3)”. She states the purpose of the Ethiopian study as investigation into “whether ‘altruistic voting’ exists” considering that “ethnicity has been widely politicized over the past decade by the Tigray-based ruling party EPRDF (p.4)”. Data for the study were gathered by conducting a survey of Addis Ababa university students which recorded their views on politics/political parties as well as their anticipation of the outcome of the 2005 election. The study is interesting and even important, given its practicality in terms of addressing current political issue. As far as I know, Valfort is also one of the very few researchers to design a study which utilizes pubic opinion data to assess progress on democratization in Ethiopia. However, her paper (March 2006) which presents the results of the study appears to lack a proper context and clear line of argument including a theoretical framework that is less relevant to the Ethiopian context; a methodology that is limited; and an analysis of survey results that focuses on the negation of the political culture of the Ethiopian people and the EPRDF government. There is nothing wrong with criticizing a popular political culture and government, especially a government like EPRDF’s which is still struggling to “perfect” itself. But a research paper of this importance should advance criticism that is fair, balanced and constructive. I assess Valfort’s paper on the basis of its research merit and I very much appreciate if my comments are not politicized. Theoretical framework. Marie-Anne Valfort’s research interest was in investigating the level and extent of political participation of Ethiopians on the basis of a case study of the voting patterns of Addis Ababa university students. The students were surveyed to document their political opinions on eight Ethiopian political parties which were grouped as follows: 1) Ethiopia-oriented parties (EDP, CAFPDE and EDUP), 2) vote-oriented party (EPRDF) and 3) ethnic-oriented parties (AAPO, OLF, ONC and SEPDC) (Figure 1, p. 27). The research assumptions were the following (p. 46-47): “-egoistic people tend to vote for their ethnic-based party The theoretical framework of the research has been articulated in the context of Aristotle’s political theory of democracy (pp. 1-4). Aristotle developed his theory in the context of political relations that were evident in the city states of ancient Greek. He particularly opposed aristocrats or oligarchies who were claiming birth rights to public offices. He saw democracy as a means to achieve a “fair allocation of public goods” and to end the institutionalized discrimination of the masses by the ruling class. He also saw participatory politics as a means to mediate conflicts among competing interest groups in society, and “altruistic voting” as a means to promote the common good in the political process. The challenge, according to Valfort, is that, in multi-ethnic countries such as Ethiopia, the presence of ethnic-based political parties and “egoistic” voting behaviour can influence election outcomes which, in turn, legitimize procedures that do not foster the fair allocation of public goods. To ensure a legitimate democratic election, there must be a population committed to “ethical altruistic” voting or voting for the common good. She writes “[e]thical altruistic voting as regarding public good allocation in a multi-ethnic developing country will thus consist in the individual’s renouncement of voting for an ethnic party that will favour his[/her] ethnic group at the expense of all others regarding public goods allocation, so as to promote instead an ‘Ethiopia-oriented’ party struggling for an equitable allocation of public goods among ethnic groups. This may require...strong altruism specially in the context where elites instrumentalize ethnicity to get a better access to power and then maintain it (p. 4)”. In Ethiopia, we do not have city states or competing interest groups. We have “competing” ethnic groups. If we were to accept the Hellenes as a distinct ethnic group in ancient Greek society, we must be provided with sufficient explanation of the relevance of their experience of “ethnicity” in modern society. Valfort’s equations of “interest groups” with “ethnicity” and Aristotle’s notion of aristocratic or oligarchic “birth rights ”with modern day “ethnic interests” can be misleading in the Ethiopian context. More misleading is to equate Aristotle’s “altruistic voting” with “ethnic voting”. For example, when Aristotle talked about altruistic voting, perhaps he meant that rich people should vote for politicians from poor socio-economic backgrounds or that poor people should vote for politicians of rich and aristocratic backgrounds, since voting along class lines (rich, aristocracy vs poor) would not result in an election outcome that promotes the common good. But, all this has little to do with the people of Ogaden, Tigray, Afar, Oromia, Sidama and others electing politicians from their own local areas. It is possible, even likely, that someone from Addis Ababa gets elected in these areas, but the fact of the matter is that political parties would recruit and nominate local/ethnic electoral candidates in every region of Ethiopia, since party leaders and strategists know that people elect politicians who understand their language, culture and socio-economic situations. Therefore, it can be wrong to assume that, in Ethiopia, all those who vote for ethnic-based parties are egocentric. In fact, Ethiopians have a proud tradition of politics. My late brother worked with Melaku Tefera (Mengistu Haile Mariam’s right-hand man) in Gondar while I languished in a refugee camp in Sudan along with thousands of other Ethiopians who had escaped from the red terror. This story is common across the country. The Derg-MEISON-EPRP political battles were fought along ideological, not ethnic, lines. What do we think of the Swiss who vote strictly along ethnic lines? How about the Scottish and Wales in Britain who have voted to create their own (ethnic) parliaments? Are they egocentric? Although the literature review in Valfort’s paper (pp. 5-14) is adequate, it does not provide us with a full picture of political developments in Ethiopia’s recent history. To illustrate, Haile Sellassie succeeded in creating a highly centralized state mainly by subordinating regional and local nobilities. This included the establishment of a central taxation system - thus depriving the nobilities of their income sources - and an appeasement strategy which involved keeping powerful nobilities happy by giving them money and prestige. Meanwhile, the Ethiopian people were left to fend for themselves with the effects of underdevelopment and poverty. Many areas did not even have effective government administration, so that shiftas and criminals robbed and terrorized communities. The feudal system ended in 1974, thanks to our elder brothers in the university and military. In the 1980s, Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Workers Party sought to organize the Ethiopian state around administrative areas defined along language, culture, economic activity, proximity to administrative centers and other factors. In his State and Revolution in Ethiopia (Review of African Political Economy, 1989), Christopher Clapham noted that the Workers Party sought to impose a highly centralized state and party structure “as a solution to the problem of national unity, almost regardless of regional diversities which demand, at the very least, substantial opportunities for local autonomy (p. 18)”. Hence, for example, in his Closing the Transition: The May 1995 Elections in Ethiopia (Journal of Modern African Studies,1996), Terrence Lyons observed that when EPRDF came to power, it “chose to construct a political system that reflects ongoing realities (p. 124)”. In a volume on regional planning by the United Nations Centre for Regional Development, Japan, Fraser Taylor and I contributed a chapter which analysed the opportunities and constraints of the federal structure created by EPRDF in supporting decentralized planning processes. All this is not to argue that the current federal system is perfect. It is rather to argue that the system can address the political and social reality of Ethiopia provided that there are opportunities to modify, revise or amend it through democratic processes and procedures. By relying on literature critical of EPRDF - critics like Merera and Pausewang were cited too frequently - Valfort’s approach fails to shed at least some positive light on EPRDF’s ‘rule’ strategy. Valfort can be right in assuming that Ethiopian elites instrumentalize ethnicity to get access to the resources of the Ethiopian state. During my stay in Ethiopia (doing a doctoral dissertation research) from 1996 to 1997, I heard some people talking about del meles elites (del meant “victory” and del meles meant post-victory = people who had entered politics after EPRDF seized power). They included teachers, judges, health workers, civil servants, intellectuals, professionals, traders, police offers and they were motivated more by the opportunities for accessing the material resources of the state than by a belief in or acceptance of EPRDF’s party ideology. I followed local and national news announcing the dismissal of some of these elites accused of accepting bribes, abuse of authority and related misconduct. In Gondar, I observed how Woreda and local officials behaved when they were implementing the Amhara regional state’s land redistribution policy. They were harassing, intimidating and arresting anyone who had appeared to be opposing the new land policy. Last year, government security forces shot and killed pro-opposition demonstrators in the streets of Addis Ababa and other urban areas. The fact of the matter is that even Meles Zenawi had gone public to admit that his ruling party had failed to bring about significant impact on Ethiopian society. This should include protection of human rights and changing the political culture of EPRDF itself. Valfort has raised issues like these and I am not going to disagree with her. Yet, EPRDF has established parliamentary committees and rules and procedures that support work on government budget planning processes. Ethiopia does not experience a “tag-of-war situation” of clan politics mentioned by Goran Hyden. Thousands of public facilities are being built across the country and this is a measure of government efficiency and effectiveness, even though, naturally, things could be done better. As we will see later in the description of survey results, Valfort appears to cling to an argument that EPRDF has a policy of discrimination in favour of Tigreans and other groups that vote for the party. In particular, referring to the March 2001 report by the Central Statistics Authority (CSA) of Ethiopia (a wrong source), she shows that, in 1999/2000, the Tigrean region had received a relatively larger share of the federal government budget (Table 3, p. 11). For example, she alleges that the Tigreans had received 30.6% of the capital expenditure, 49.4% of federal subsidies and 16.1% of foreign loans and aid, compared with, for example, the share by the Oromos of capital expenditure (13.5%), federal subsidies (27.4%) and foreign loans and aid (6.9%). In her revised paper (May 2006), she says that these figures were in fact compiled by Merera Gudina. Merera is now a member of parliament of Ethiopia and he could have a say in how the EPRDF government allocates budgets for regional governments. My online search for information on federal government block grant transfers to regions for the period 1999/2000 was not successful. I sent an e-mail to the CSA office in Addis Ababa requesting this information and got no reply (those CSA bureaucrats should be taught how to send out courtesy notes. They get paid to serve the public!). Allow me then to simply comment on the issue. One would not necessarily dispute this story if it was about Tigreans getting access to scholarship programs and government jobs or a road construction project being deliberately taken to Shere, Wester Tigray area. These kinds of things can happen in Ethiopia and other countries. But it is hard to accept an allegation that per capita government resource allocation for Tigreans (6% of the Ethiopian population) is two to three times greater than for Oromos (32% of the population). True, there might have been special programs like food security and safety net programs targeted at drought affected areas most of which were in Tigray. Television images out of Ethiopia also often originated from Northern Ethiopia and this could have attracted international NGOs to enter the region. The Tigrean Diaspora has continued to mobilize resources. If these types of activities were considered and measured, per capital resource flows to the Tigrean region could have been greater, but they would have little to do with a government policy of preferential treatment. Having said all this, Merera Gudina must have access to sources for the data presented in Table 3. He has used this information to make a serious allegation of EPRDF preferential treatment of Tigreans. And one doesn’t have to be a “staunch” supporter of CUD, EUDF or any other party to take up this issue. Somebody should follow up to set the record straight. Methodology. The survey consisted of 331 students at Addis Ababa University who self-identified themselves as Amharas (39.3%), Tigreans (26.6%), SNNPs (11.8%), Oromos (20.8%), Gurages (7.3%) and others (6%) (Table 2, p. 7). The survey was conducted in 2004 and we are told that part of the survey was conducted by someone from a Swedish university, which is not a concern to us. The timing of the survey was right, since students were not influenced by all that 2005 election rhetoric. However, there are problems with the survey method. First of all, historically Ethiopian students have a different political culture - whether one calls it militancy or active resistance to oppressive rule - so that their views do not necessarily represent those of the Ethiopian masses. Second, we do not know what proportion of the students were born and raised in Addis Ababa or came from different regions of the country; for example, those who were born and raised in poor rural households in regions would have perspectives different from those cohorts from Addis Ababa. The concluding section of the paper including the footnote on page 47 seems to indicate that the survey was meant to cover the Addis Ababa area (i.e., a survey of only students from Addis Ababa). If this is the case, and if the sample had included students from different regions of Ethiopia, one is legitimate to question the appropriateness of the sampling method. Finally, the sample is not representative. For example, Tigrean students were over represented (26.6%) in comparison with Oromos (20.8%), given that Tigreans were less in number in Addis Ababa (7.6%) (see footnote 51 for source) and in the general population (6%). In her preliminary report, entitled Democracy and voting survey: first results from Ethiopia (2005), Valfort acknowledged that the survey exercise had encountered problems. She pointed out that Oromo and SNNP students were under represented in the survey in part because many from these groups of students, particularly the Oromos, were less inclined to participate (for political reasons). She also said that some people who were “aware of [the] research program tried to bias [the] results (if possible in a favourable way for the ruling party) by promoting a massive recruitment of supposedly pro-government students (p. 16))". Yet there must have been other ways of ensuring the equal participation of Oromo and SNNP students, such as organizing focus groups or arranging structured and semi-structured interviews. Considering these and other factors, the research methodology was poorly managed and ineffective. In her paper, Valfort acknowledges that the results “cannot be considered as representative of the Ethiopian population (p. 4)”, as the students are a ‘very special’ group. She also says that Ethiopian authorities would not have allowed her to conduct an extensive survey of urban and rural households (why?). All these are implicit statements which help little to defend a weak research methodology. If a researcher carries out research knowing that his/her methodology is limited, he/she can be criticized for “doing research for the sake of research”. Analysis of the survey. The survey results (Table 7, p. 30) and the comparison of “actual and extrapolated voting results” (Table 24, p. 47) found EPRDF to be the winner of the 2005 election. The “Ethiopian-oriented” parties ranked second, while the “ethnic-oriented” parties including AAPO were less favoured. Valfort attributes the survey responses in favour of EPRDF to the respondents’ perception of the absence of a strong opposition and to some of the progresses of development achieved under EPRDF. This can be a reasonable explanation. For instance, at the time of the survey (in 2004), CUD and UEDF were not yet formed, and consequently, the university students would not have thought of the coming to existence of strong opposition parties capable of competing against EPRDF. However, one would also expect Valfort to mention the influence of the sampling method on this outcome. For example, the survey results show that Tigrean (who were over represented in the survey) would support EPRDF. Thirty-one percent of the Amharas (another over represented group) would also vote for EPRDF (Table VII. 10, p.59). Considering this factor (two over represented groups supporting EPRDF), we are not surprised that EPRDF scored high in the survey responses. Valfort’s preliminary research report of 2005 indicates that she had become aware of methodological problems and the possibility of getting skewed results in favour of EPRDF, to the extent that she had mistrusted the people that she hired to organize the survey. The point here is that her paper should have explicitly stated the limitations of her methodology so as to ensure caution in the treatment of the survey results. Valfort’s lack of sensitivity to her research “subjects” is evident in some of her descriptions of results of the survey. For example, at one point (p. 12) she accuses Tigrean university students of lacking “objectivity certainly because they are precisely the beneficiaries of [EPRDF’s] discriminatory policy”. At another point, she does not appear to consider the results of her own analysis. For example, on pages 30 and 31, the analysis indicates that 84% of Tigreans would vote for EPRDF and 33% of Oromos for OLF; conversely, thus, 16% of Tigreans do not favour EPRDF and 66% of Oromos do not vote for OLF. The appendix (Table VII. 10, p.59) also indicates that 31% of Amharas would support EPRDF, compared with 44% who do not. Surprisingly, instead of appreciating this diversity of political opinions among Ethiopian students, Valfort wrote the following which is worth to quote in length (p. 31): ...the first ones [the 84% Tigreans] are benefitting from the current ruling party which restored the dominant position they had during the Aksumite times. Among those who are conscious of such an advantage [she is referring to, for example, the 31% Amharas voting for EPRDF], the cost of having Ethiopia-oriented parties elected [therefore rejecting EPRDF] would be very high. Moreover, one should add to these clear-minded privileged people those (a majority of Tigreans) who consider EPRDF as Ethiopia-oriented. This short-seeing perception may be affected and only a mean for Tigrean to have good conscious. It may also be sincere. Indeed, being a more favourable position than one’s fellow citizen sometimes lead to considerably underestimate this discrepancy in terms of well-being. Later on, the statistical figures show that both Oromo and Tigrean students preferred Ethiopia-oriented parties (p. 35), hence, contradicting Valfort’s initial argument that altruistic voting (voting for non-ethnic parties) is costly for Tigreans and Oromos. For example, “63.5% of respondents appear to deserve the ‘ethical altruist’ qualification, with no major variation along ethnic groups [with] the exception of Oromos who are less ethical altruists than others (53.6% for Oromos, against 67.7% for Amharas, 64.1% for SNNPs, and 64.8% for Tigreans)”. This result appears to have puzzled Valfort and so she sets about to further analyze the data. And, the results show that 45.7% of respondents preferred that Ethiopia should remain united, of which 53.4% were Tigreans, 48.5% Amharas, 48.7% SSNPs and 29% Oromos (p. 35). These figures are lower than those above, but they are politically significant. It is regrettable that Valfort does not appreciate this trend. She instead refers this group of students as a biased altruist (= an opportunist!). Conclusion. Democracy is about representation in the political system. What determines an outcome of an election is not only voting behaviour (altruistic or egoistic), but rather the way the political system is structured. The current federal structure is not perfect, but it enables all communities across the country to be represented in the Ethiopian parliament. Marie-Anne Valfort’s paper reviewed here suffers from a methodological limitation and careless interpretation of research data. Her writing style lacks maturity of expression. She might have also gone too far in expressing her political bias against EPRDF. Nevertheless, her study contributes to our understanding of political participation in Ethiopia. The study shows that Ethiopians would vote for EPRDF, OLF, CUD (AAPO, EDP, EDUP), ONC and UEDF (SPEDC and CAPDE). And, when they vote for each party, they vote in large and small numbers, which is how democracy works. Valfort’s contribution could have been enhanced if the scope of analysis of her study had focused on the voting behaviour of young Ethiopians or other youth-specific political issues, instead of arguing about the political behaviour of the Ethiopian people and the political ideology of the ruling party, EPRDF. Finally, an occasion like this provides us with an opportunity to get engaged in public debate on Ethiopian politics, economy and society. We bring discussions that present different perspectives of understanding the issues, which is very important considering that public opinions both at home and in the Diaspora are highly polarized. I am encouraged by a growing number of nonpartisan writers who have begun to contribute to the ongoing debate on Ethiopian national issues. I hope that this trend continues.
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