Citizens, Civil Society, and Activism under the EPRDF Regime in Ethiopia: An Analysis from Below

There has been a political and public discourse on how the oppressive Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) regime fell down in 2018, and this book offers an answer by discussing the collective and individual as well as internal and external actors, using the mainstream or social media activism in the process. It is a novel book, which precisely articulates how Civil Society Organizations (CSO)s and a [non]-violent civil movement emerge, relate to the state, operate, and brought a change in an authoritative and a repressive rule in Ethiopia. The introduction section presents an innovative theoretical framework in understanding the dynamics of state–society relations. The first chapter examines the historical genesis of resistance against the EPRD, and this shed light on understanding the dynamism of the evolution of non-violent struggle in African imagined undemocratic and authoritarian states, and the role of civil society activism in the process, by taking the processes leading to Ethiopia’s 2018 political change. It situated the resistance to the mistrust relations and how the state manages CSO.