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Concept-stretching expresses, and its continued use accentuates, the erosion of the cultural confidence and imagination of Ethiopians to conceptualize, understand, and resolve their problems through their own critical reflections on their history.
This paper proposes an Ethiopian Democratic Millennium Goal that articulates freedom, development, and social justice. It examines how the conceptual stretching of democracy, nation, and civil society has created epistemic obstacles that prevent Ethiopian political thinking from pursuing such a goal. It proposes an approach toward a Millennium Democratic Goal based on an interpretation of democracy as a "form of society," of "development as freedom," and of freedoms as "capabilities." It brings out the role of political society as the midwife of a democracy that Ethiopians can recognize as their solution to the political and economic riddles of their history.
Introduction
Ethiopians ushered in their Third Millennium on Enkutatash, Meskerem 1, 2000, as a people without the power to lead a life free from endemic poverty and oppression.1 Ethiopia has been in a political crisis since the 1960 failed coup d'etat against Emperor Haile Selassie. The Derg took power in 1974 and imposed a government whose repression led to armed resistance in various parts of the country, leading to its overthrow by the Tigrai People's Liberation Front (TPLF) in 1991 (Young 1997). The TPLF reorganized the country on an ethnic basis and created an assortment of ethnic parties.the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).through which it ruled the country (Pausewang, Tronvoll, and Aalen 2002; Tesfaye 2002). The ethnic politics of the EPRDF regime triggered resistance from other ethnic and pan-Ethiopian groups; however, the regime claims to be democratic and conducted ethnic-based, tightly scripted elections in 1995, 2000, and 2005, all of which it won. Nevertheless, its victories did not dampen the crisis, which erupted in mass demonstrations during the general elections of 2005. In response, it imprisoned the leaders and supporters of the opposition, and cracked down on pro-democracy militants, the press, and human-rights activists (Ethiopia Human Rights Council 2005, 2006).
Ethiopia's political crisis is embedded in an economic crisis. According to the United Nations Development Programme (2006), Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world, with 23 percent of the population subsisting on less than one dollar a day,...