ABSTRACT
In an attempt to break with the centralist and authoritarian legacy of the Ethiopian
state, the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF)
has overseen an ambitious decentralization agenda since assuming power in 1991.
While a four-tiered institutional set-up consisting of regional states, zones, woreda
(districts), and kebele (local government) was broadly maintained, Ethiopian state
institutions were restructured in successive and partly overlapping phases of
decentralization in the past two decades.1 A first round of federal restructuring
took place under the Transitional Government of Ethiopia (19911994) and ended with the adoption of the new federal constitution (December 1994), instituting nine
predominantly ethnic-based regional states. A second phase was launched in 2001
with the District Level Decentralization Program (DLDP), increasing the adminis-
trative autonomy and capacity of district or woreda administrations.2 Decentraliza-
tion entered its third phase with various reforms, political as well as administrative,
implemented at the kebele or local government level since the mid-2000s.
