Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation Research Professor at The Fletcher School, Tufts University, launched a book in collaboration with IPSS at Hilton Hotel, Addis Ababa

2. ‘Who, whom.’
Lenin defines politics

5. “There are two things that are important in politics.
Senator Mark Hanna
(R-Ohio), also
President William
McKinley’s campaign
manager 1896 and
1900
The first is money . . . and I can't remember
what the second one is.”

6. Majzoub al Khalifa
(NCP-Khartoum),
Sudanese party
manager and chief
negotiator for
Darfur peace talks
‘What is important in politics is having the
political budget [sanduq al siyasi] needed for
the political market [suq al siyasi].’
The second one is political business skills ….

7. Key Concepts
• The political market
– Supply and demand for loyalties/political
services
• The political budget
• Political business management
...and turbulence

9. ‘The stable, cumulative, and systemic concept of
institutions … becomes, blunt and illogical when
applied to a reality that seems, to those who live
it, altogether less settled. [Africans] have to
apply reason and judgment to horizons of
contingency rather than applying a narrow
calculative rationality to given variables.’
Jane Guyer

11. 1970s1970s

12. 1990s

13. 2010s

17. Government of Sudan spending; coups (red) and successful peace
agreements (green); and military or democratic government; 1970-2012
Data from World
Bank. Consumption
expenditure is used
as a closer proxy for
political budget

22. ‘War belongs to politics, and violence derives
from the situation rather than from radical
enmity. War is not waged because there are
enemies; there are enemies because a war is
waged.’
Marielle Debos

27. Somalia

31. Somaliland

32. A business-political contract...
or the allocation of commercial rent to state-building

36. ‘Political Market’ Challenges for Ethiopia
• Domestic context
• Regional environment
• Extra-regional environment
• Global environment
Intersection between them

37. Domestic challenges
• A contemporary developmental state must be
democratic
– And must avoid ‘intellectual rent-seeking’
• The centralization of rent allocation places
vast discretionary power in the hands of the
authorities
– There will be (some) corruption: the question is
how much and how it is organized

38. Regional challenges
A turbulent region in which the facts regularly
change requiring us to re-think
• Growth of an integrated regional political
market
• Ethiopia’s national security and its
developmental project are inextricably inter-
linked
• Regional political, security, infrastructural and
trade integration are strategic

39. Extra-regional challenges
• The Horn of Africa is becoming part of the Red
Sea security complex
– Within the strategic security perimeter of Saudi
Arabia
– 13% of the world’s maritime trade and 50% of
Europe’s maritime trade
– Increasing flows of security cooperation and
peacekeeping funds

40. Global Challenges
• Economic globalization and the risks of
turbulence
• Global inequality and the rising cost of politics
– Both intensifying the marketization of politics
• Militarization of the Greater Middle East
• Climate change