In a significant departure from the tradition of African states, Ethiopia has ventured on a bold experiment of marrying federalism with ethnicity. Ethnicity is the basis for the internal organisation of the federal state. Nine regional states that are largely delimited along linguistic lines constitute the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. The phrase asymmetry truly captures the variation that characterises the size and character of the subnational units. The problem of an Ethiopian federation that would be affected by ‘a deeply unstable bipolar system’ remains unexplored. This paper seeks to unravel the repercussion of the disproportionate nature of the existing ethnically defined states on the federation as a whole, ramifications that, this paper argues, will likely come into effect when competitive politics replaces the political space that is currently characterised by ‘one-party dominance’.
