Assessing Leadership Opinion on Selected Issues of Federalism in Ethiopia

Abstract

In political science, one approach to studying federalism is to examine the attitudes, opinions and value constructs of individ-ual citizens as well as political leaders as these pertain to vari-ous issues of federalism. Accordingly, the main objective of this study is to assess the opinions of political leaders on selected issues of federalism in Ethiopia. The assessment employed a sur-vey method to gather the opinions, as expressed on a five-point Likert scale, of selected political leaders in various spheres of government. A total of 164 leaders were purposely selected from a range of leaders working in different capacities, including low-, middle- and high-level leadership. The study examined their opinions on nine issues, doing so in order both to illuminate how leaders understand these issues and to gauge the functionality, stability and continuity of Ethiopia’s multinational, multi-ethnic federation. The study utilized version 23 of the SPSS software to analyze the results of the opinion survey. The outcome shows that leaders ’understanding of the issues ranges from low (27.27 percent) to moderate (72.73 percent). Based on the finding of this preliminary survey, the article recommends that leaders in Ethi-opia’s multilevel system of government be provided with training on issues of federalism.