The Political Economy of Indigenous Governance: The Ancient Kushite Ethiopianist Framework and Oromo Leadership in East Africa

This doctoral dissertation investigates indigenous governance as a political economy and advances the Ancient Kushite Ethiopianist framework as an alternative analytical foundation for understanding governance, legitimacy, and state formation in Ethiopia and the wider Horn of Africa. Anchored in decolonial political economy, historical institutionalism, and moral political economy, the dissertation reconstructs the Gadaa system as a constitutional republican order and argues that governance failure in Ethiopia arises from institutional displacement rather than institutional absence. Using qualitative, historical, and interpretive methods, the study repositions the Oromo from the political periphery to the political center and advances indigenous constitutional restoration as the basis for durable political legitimacy and stability.