By Zelalem Teferra (Ph.D)

Contemporary Ethiopia moves along an ambiguous market economy. Ambiguous not because it moves along market economy, but because the type of market economy it adheres to is ambiguous by itself. The state declared a transition to free market economy starting from 1991/1992, but even after 10 years of journeying along this way, a light at the end of the tunnel could not be seen; we can't see a free market where every economic subject competes freely. Declared private ownership remained partial, because there is no private ownership on the most important means of production - "the land". There is no free movement of commodities and manpower throughout different regions of the country. Because of language, ethnic, legal and institutional barriers set artificially, people cannot move freely in every direction in search of a better life, job opportunities, settlement and career development. They are obliged to be confined and act in their local ethnic boundaries to which they naturally belong. Generally speaking contemporary Ethiopian society is struggling with an array of seemingly intractable problems. There is as usual, much that is wrong with this country.

There is indeed always much wrong with Ethiopia, but it seems that there is something extraordinarily unsettling about our current plight. What is unique about this era may be stated as follows. First, there seems to be a sense that, not only are there many problems, but things seem to be getting worse. Literate observers - and there seems to be more of them than ever before - can read of continually escalating problems such as political instability, lack of infrastructure including roads, bridges, transport, healthcare system etc. and a future in which acts of disorder and rebellion are increasing. A good example may be the recent student uprising and related riots in Addis.

Much of the population suffers from untreated disease and malnutrition. There are unprecedented deficits and increasing foreign debt. There is little confidence in public education. The cost of environmental degradation, the continuing spread of AIDS, inadequate and insufficient housing are visible to all. There is a measurable decline in standard of living in cities; public servant's real wage is deteriorating from time to time; the so-called civil service reform seems to remain being a virtual reality. On the contrary bureaucracy and corruption is growing at an alarming rate.

These problems are manifested in the growth of permanent disenfranchised underclass amidst unprecedented prosperity of certain corrupted groups and party members.

The distinctive concern of contemporary Ethiopian society is that it seems to be there is little hope that effective remedies to these problems can be found. There is certainly little promise offered by our political leaders. Currently they are caught by their internal power struggle; hence no effective management of social problem could be expected.

Given the enormous scope of these problems - the intensification of public conflict and public problems, this lost confidence, this deterioration of civic life, someone may ask what are the reasons for our current plight? Is it only current or a recurring problem? What kinds of remedies could be found? And mainly who should find these remedies: Our discussion will revolve around these questions.

Speaking of causes and reasons, it is possible to list series of them. It is not difficult to find major or minor reasons for the social problems of Ethiopia, because the causes are lying bare. The essences of our problems are economic, political, social and even cultural. Therefore, they need a complex approach and systems vision, but something is always evident in Ethiopia - the immense and often adverse influences that politics and governance have on the rest of public life. Governance and governments always determined the whole social activities in this country; they either accelerated or hampered socio-economic development, but unfortunately for us Ethiopians the latter is always true. The prime political problem in this country can be termed as the "crisis of governance", which is dramatized by inability of authorities to govern, legislative, judicial and administrative gridlock. This manifested itself in administrative over regulation and incompetence, judicial abuse and overload.

The "crisis of governance" is a manifestation of the systems crisis; it is a single part of management crisis. As some of us may think, social management is not equivalent to social administration or social governance. It is much broader. It is a process of social relations through explicitly spelled out objectives. It is an open-ended process of coordinating purposeful individuals whose action stem from applying their unique interpretations to the particular situation confronting them. And this is precisely what is missing in our traditional form of governance and current ethnocratic system. In Ethiopia still dominates traditional view on management, where to manage is like being in a control room checking certain variables on a panel of instruments and pressing buttons or pulling levers in order to bring any deviating variables within their normal range of operation. What is exactly remarkable about this view is that, it simply equates management with control. However, this is only one side of the coin. The other side is that there is an internal relationship between a knowing manager and the system he or she manages, which messes up as Beer (1973) put it in his book "The surrogate world we manage: the models through which one views the world are not mere mirrors upon which the world is passively reflected, but in an important sense, our model also helps constitute the world experience.

It is real that quite often, systems formally set up to serve laudable objectives may end up doing more harm than good - the solution often becomes the problem. Just like that, in desire to map social reality for the purpose of influencing it at will, our current political leaders end up with erecting system of "ethno-bureaucratic: regulation, which is in constant oscillation and is permeated by paradoxes. What is more interesting is that our current model of social management is leading eventually to the management of problematic 'solution' instead of the management of original problems which the system is set up to deal with.

What our current political leaders need to know is that managing the social system is not simply controlling and decision-making. Rather it is a practical activity, which is inextricably bound up with making two assumptions: First, assumption about the nature of social system as well as about a relationship between the latter and a manager. Second, assumption about manager's knowledge of social system as well as about the type of knowledge that is desirable in assisting its management. In other words, managing presupposes answers to two fundamental questions: what are the salient properties of social system I am supposed to manage? What do I need to know about this system, and how can I increase my knowledge of it so that I become more effective? Answering to these questions will avoid the shortcomings that currently engulfed Ethiopian state management, where mechanistic approach is dominant. If we know the society in which we live, its diversity and complexity, we as leaders and managers stop thinking that, which contributes to the strength and productivity of the current form of governance is good, and that challenges the given notion is bad. Because, without a challenging environment, there will not be effective management in general and governance in particular. This is not a question of sympathy or antipathy to the persistent social order, but it is a question how to manage a society so as to exclude stagnation and bring desirable prosperity to our people, and finally avoid prevailing public conflict. Because the ability to reconcile competing public interest is necessary in order to formulate a good public policy. But a sustainable democratic society requires much more than good public policy. It requires neighborhoods and communities where people are about, as well as care fore one anther. And it requires process of governance with both demand and reward of such qualities as honesty and integrity, respect & tolerance, fairness & compassion, and individual & corporate responsibility.