Country profile
Ethiopia
YeItyop'iya Federalawi Demokrasiyawi Ripeblik
Africa · Sub-Saharan Africa
ET · ETH
- Capital
- Addis Ababa
- Population
- 111,652,998
- Area
- 1,104,300 km²
- Democracy index
- 28
- Regime type
- Electoral Autocracy
Events
Ballots from Ethiopia
The latest elections, referendums, and opinion polls from Ethiopia. Community totals are not official results.
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Classification
Democracy profile
The score and regime label are assigned by Porto Voto using our in-house democracy index and classification framework, not ratings from governments or external agencies.
Democracy index
28/100
Regime type
Electoral Autocracy
Ethiopia is currently characterized by a facade of political competition, as the government maintains a firm monopoly on power while preparing for electoral exercises that largely function as performative rituals rather than meaningful democratic contests. The executive branch exerts pervasive control over national institutions, effectively stifling opposition and critical dissent through the systematic suppression of freedom of expression and assembly. Widespread instability, fueled by ongoing ethnic conflicts, state-led violence in regions such as Amhara, and significant humanitarian crises, continues to undermine the rule of law. With independent judiciary and civil society spaces severely constrained, the political environment is defined by the central state's dominance and a lack of authentic pathways for peaceful power transition, rendering the nation an electoral autocracy.
Last evaluation:
How we classify regimes →World Factbook
Country background
A concise introduction to Ethiopia, together with notes on how power and law are organized, to put local ballots in context.
The area that is modern-day Ethiopia is rich in cultural and religious diversity with more than 80 ethnic groups. The oldest hominid yet found comes from Ethiopia, and Ethiopia was the second country to officially adopt Christianity in the 4th century A.D. A series of monarchies ruled the area that is now Ethiopia from 980 B.C. to 1855, when the Amhara kingdoms of northern Ethiopia united in an empire under Tewodros II.
Many Ethiopians still speak reverently about the Battle of Adwa in 1896, when they defeated Italian forces and won their freedom from colonial rule. Emperor Haile SELASSIE became an internationally renowned figure in 1935, when he unsuccessfully appealed to the League of Nations to prevent Italy from occupying Ethiopia from 1936 to 1941. SELASSIE survived an attempted coup in 1960, annexed modern-day Eritrea in 1962, and played a leading role in establishing the Organization of African Unity in 1963.
However, in 1974, a military junta called the Derg deposed him and established a socialist state. Torn by bloody coups, uprisings, drought, and massive displacement, the Derg regime was toppled in 1991 by a coalition of opposing forces, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). The EPRDF became an ethno-federalist political coalition that ruled Ethiopia from 1991 until its dissolution in 2019.
Ethiopia adopted its constitution in 1994 and held its first multiparty elections in 1995. A two-and-a-half-year border war with Eritrea in the late 1990s ended with a peace treaty in 2000. Ethiopia subsequently rejected the 2007 Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission demarcation.
This resulted in more than a decade of a tense “no peace, no war” stalemate between the two countries. In 2012, longtime Prime Minister MELES Zenawi died in office and was replaced by his Deputy Prime Minister HAILEMARIAM Desalegn, marking the first peaceful transition of power in decades. Following a wave of popular dissent and anti-government protest that began in 2015, HAILEMARIAM resigned in 2018, and ABIY Ahmed Ali took office the same year as Ethiopia's first ethnic Oromo prime minister.
In 2018, ABIY promoted a rapprochement between Ethiopia and Eritrea that was marked with a peace agreement and a reopening of their shared border. In 2019, Ethiopia's nearly 30-year ethnic-based ruling coalition, the EPRDF, merged into a single unity party called the Prosperity Party; however, the lead coalition party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), declined to join. In 2020, a military conflict erupted between forces aligned with the TPLF and the Ethiopian military.
The conflict -- which was marked by atrocities committed by all parties -- ended in 2022 with a cessation of hostilities agreement between the TPLF and the Ethiopian Government. However, Ethiopia continues to experience ethnic-based violence as other groups -- including the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) and Amhara militia Fano -- seek concessions from the Ethiopian Government.