Bureaucracy and Ecopolitics in Ethiopia’s Political Transition – on the Role of Environmental Bureaucrats in Democratisation

The proposed project studies how bureaucrats influence the success or failure of environmental policy processes during periods of democratic reform.

In charge of implementing and enforcing policies and often involved in policy formulation, bureaucrats influence success and failure of policy processes.

Existing research has spanned many different policy areas, but only few studies exist on bureaucrats involvement in environmental policy.

Moreover, while success of democratic transitions depends on democratic reforms, including reforms guaranteeing citizens’ environmental rights, the capacity and willingness of bureaucracies to support such reforms has been nearly completely neglected in previous research.

The research gap is surprising, given the importance of environmental policy for sustainable and democratic development.

We will conduct an empirically grounded case study of bureaucrats’ involvement in environmental policy in Ethiopia since 2018, to produce unique and much needed knowledge on how bureaucrats can both facilitate and hamper attempts at sustainable and democratic development.

Combining document analysis with interviews and observations, the four-year project (1) analyses the organisation of the Ethiopian civil service; (2) explores how bureaucrats have supported and implemented or subverted and opposed environmental policy and (3) studies the relationships between the Ethiopian bureaucracy, politicians and experts involved in environmental policy processes.