ABSTRACT
This chapter starts with a discussion on the comparability of the politics of sub-Saharan African states and by justifying why some anomalous historical cases, such as Ethiopia, deserve in-depth investigation by scholars of comparative politics. Therefore, by stating the resilience of an authoritarian coalition made up of four political parties known as the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, it presents the research question: why did such an unpopular political coalition have the resilience to survive for such a long time? Moreover, the chapter also presents the most important issues that anyone studying Ethiopian politics is highly likely to encounter. After explaining three important issues for consideration in the study of Ethiopian politics – the making and remaking of the state every few decades, challenges caused by recurrent conflict and civil wars, and the current ethnic federal arrangement – the chapter concludes that the federal system has made it easier for the survival of authoritarian political elites and their organizations. In addition, the chapter discusses the underlying rationale of the methodologies used to conduct the research, and briefly describes the subsequent chapters.
