Revisiting The National Reform And Its Institutionalization In Ethiopia

The principal objective of this study is to assess the 2018 national reform and its institutionalization. A quantitative and qualitative mixed approach was employed for data collection and analysis. Primary data was collected from 2116 federal, regional, and city administration office employees, mainly from the Ministry of Finance, Civil Service Commission, General Attorney offices, Police Commission offices, Investment Commission offices, and Political party offices was collected through a structured questionnaire. In addition, 30 key informant interviews and 22 focus group discussions were conducted. Published materials about the reform were used as secondary sources. The qualitative approach was used to assess the current national reform being implemented in terms of its nature, content, and direction. The quantitative approach was used to examine its institutionalization and associated factors. The qualitative part of the study was examined using content and discourse analysis and the quantitative analysis employed Chi-square to identify factors associated with the institutionalization of the reform and Bonferroni Chi-Square Residual Analysis as a post hoc test to identify which of the associations are significant using SPSS version 23. The findings of the study revealed that the reform suffers from marginal consideration of the context, adoption of a gradualist non-sequential reform approach, lack of consensus on the reform agenda, and lack of government capacity for enforcing the reform exposing it to ex-post constraints that can lead to its reversal. Also, exposure to information about the reform across time and issues as well as allocation of resources for reform implementation is associated with higher levels of institutionalization. The recommendations provided based on the results of this paper range from modifications of the contents of reform through cascading and institutionalization.