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Paper short abstract:

Employing an ethnographic research approach, this paper aimed to explore the process of collective identity formation and the production of violence taking a case from Ethiopia’s contentious politics since the 2018 transition.

Paper long abstract:

This article unearths the process of identity formation and the production of violence in the context of Ethiopia’s contentious politics following the transition in 2018. The article employed an ethnographic research approach to unpacking how identities are made and used to produce violence in Ethiopia. Using constructivist alliance theory, the article argues that identity formation has formally been in the making since the introduction of the ethnolinguistic federal system in 1991 and intensified following the democratic opening in the early days of 2018. It also argues that the regime’s lack of clear terms on how the political forces participate in the transition and its indifference to the call for a negotiated transition led to the political forces, which are marginalized and pushed to the periphery of the new political landscape despite their role for the new political landscape to emerge, to produce violence mobilizing their local allies along ethnic identity lines in pursuit of reconfiguring, repositioning themselves to the center of and dominate the new political landscape. Thus, recognizing the participation of the political forces where the demands and aspirations of all are negotiated is needed for a peaceful and democratic transition through a careful application of consociational democracy to lessen the violence.