Revolution and evolution in Ethiopian land tenure: Strategic interests and ideological shifts during 50 years of reform

Following the 1975 revolution, Ethiopia conducted a far-reaching land reform establishing a system of state ownership that remains to the present. This appears to justify the common narrative that subsequent governments have maintained the rural land tenure regime established by the revolution. However, this paper shows that rural tenure has changed significantly in the subsequent 50 years. After 1975 farmers held general rights to a share of community land, whereas subsequent reforms have established individual rights to particular plots. Incremental change culminated in a 2024 rural land proclamation that provides for rights of inheritance, rental and mortgage, all of which were prohibited in 1975. The process by which these changes came about also challenges the standard portrayal of Ethiopian federalism as a fiction to mask centralised domination: evolution took place through sub-national policy innovations and subsequent diffusion to the federal level. Theoretically, the paper engages with theories of property rights change. While acknowledging economic incentives and demography as contributing factors, it rejects simplistic ‘evolutionary’ theories of property rights. Instead, the paper emphasises the importance of a political economy approach, grounded in analysis of rulers’ strategies for maintaining power and their ideological commitments. Based on a process tracing methodology, which draws on key informant interviews and archival research conducted over 15 years, the paper shows that incremental change in land tenure reflects the shifting ideological commitments and survival strategies of an authoritarian regime, with periods of uncertainty and intra-elite divisions opening space for ideational transfer, sub-national experimentation and policy diffusion.