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200 Diagnosing Corruption in Ethiopia
• The post-1991 administration has reinforced the rule of law, but its interest
in it conflicts with its desire to maintain control (and thus with the law’s
application to its own activities and various requirements of accountability).
This poses some constraints, real or imagined, to optimizing
the independent operations of the judiciary and other sector organizations,
further complicating their situation as institutions unused to
independence.
• Ethiopia has a large, ethnically divided population, and the adoption of a
governance system based on ethnic federalism is still seen as a risky means
of holding the nation together (Turton 2006). There is a widespread perception
that some nationalities are favored under current arrangements.
Moreover, although the constitution does allow for regional
secession—and acceptance of that principle is one of the tests of constitutional
loyalty applied to judges—the ruling party’s own actions
demonstrate a more ambiguous stance.
• In line with a distinction made by corruption experts, the government’s
approach to controlling corruption is closer to the top-down (Singapore)
model than a bottom-up reliance on civil society monitoring (Zook
2009). This does not mean the Ethiopian government depends on
corruption to hold power (as appears to be the case in some African
nations), but the top-down approach can easily encourage this
development. 9 As a fully democratic polity, Ethiopia is still a work in
progress—as are the justice sector institutions that are central to its
completion.
The organization and operations of Ethiopia’s justice sector have
changed considerably since the 1960s, when the emperor controlled all
agencies and judicial independence was virtually nonexistent (although it
did figure in the 1931 and 1955 constitutions). Until 1987, the country
had a unitary court system, police, and prosecution, and it returned to a
unitary system in the early post-Derg years.
Judiciary and prosecution pre-1974. Even before the Derg’s arrival, the
judicial structure was relatively complex, with (post-1942) a supreme
imperial court; the high courts (numbering 118 judges in 1967 [Tesfaye
2004, 108]); provincial (teklay gizat) courts; district (woreda) courts; subdistrict
(meketel woreda) courts; and local arbiters (atbia dagnas). The
courts were placed under the Ministry of Justice, but the minister had no
legal authority to interfere in court proceedings. Post-1942, the minister’s
powers were further reduced, but he retained the responsibility for