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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how the Ethiopian government has (re)formulated, maintained and adapted dominant narratives of the Ethiopian state since the mid-1990s, and how these narratives have shaped its foreign policy of active engagement to 'stabilise' the Horn of Africa.

Paper long abstract:

Past and present political struggles to define a dominant narrative of the Ethiopian state are not only relevant to domestic politics and successive state-building projects, but also to Ethiopia's international relations. This paper explores the relationship between the post-1991 Ethiopian government's dominant biographical narrative of peace and development and its foreign policy of active engagement to 'stabilise' the Horn of Africa. In this context, it highlights the role that dominant national narratives play in seeking ontological security for the Ethiopian state as a distinct polity. The paper explores how the EPRDF-led Ethiopian government's narrative of peace and development was formulated in the 1990s, and how it defined Ethiopia's relationship with 'the region' by projecting Ethiopia as an international 'force for peace' and creating existential boundaries of the Ethiopian state that necessitate a foreign policy of active engagement to shape developments beyond its territorial borders in the Horn of Africa; a foreign policy outlook that was consolidated after the Ethio-Eritrean war. It further explores how the Ethiopian government has responded to challenges to its identification as an international 'force for peace' in the context of its military engagement in Somalia, drawing attention to sustained political efforts to maintain a discursive link between this core self-conception of the Ethiopian state and its international engagement. The paper builds on a discourse analysis of Ethiopian government representations since the mid-1990s and is based on newspaper archives and interview data collected during a year of fieldwork in Addis Ababa.