Force-field analysis: Is momentum for change gathering in Ethiopia?

 A force-field analysis suggests that Ethiopia is experiencing strong pressure for political change, but that pressure is still contested, fragmented, and not yet consolidated into a single national momentum. In other words, the system is under strain, but strain alone is not the same as a coherent transition.

Force-field analysis: Is momentum for change gathering?

In Kurt Lewin’s terms, political movement depends on the balance between driving forces pushing change and restraining forces preserving the status quo. In Ethiopia today, the driving forces are substantial: prolonged conflict in Amhara and Oromia, instability in Tigray, economic hardship despite reform, shrinking civic space, and widening distrust between society and state. These do not automatically produce regime change, but they do increase pressure for political reconfiguration.

Driving forces pushing change

1. Multi-front armed conflict is eroding state legitimacy.
The federal government still faces insurgent violence in Amhara and Oromia, while Tigray remains politically fragile after the 2022 Pretoria agreement. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has also warned about renewed fighting around the Tigray-Amhara-Afar borderlands. This means the state is not confronting a single crisis but a layered security burden, which historically increases demand for political change.

2. Political space is narrowing rather than widening.
A joint statement by 41 countries at the UN Human Rights Council warned that full civil and political rights, plus a free civil society and media environment, are preconditions for free and fair elections in Ethiopia. Human Rights Watch likewise said the government intensified pressure on independent media and civil society ahead of the 2026 elections. When legal channels narrow, pressure often moves into informal, oppositional, or insurgent channels.

3. Economic reform is real, but socially costly.
Ethiopia’s IMF-backed reform program has continued, with the IMF board completing its fourth review in January 2026 and releasing another tranche of funding. At the same time, debt restructuring remains contentious, and external shocks are weighing on African economies broadly. So the government has reform momentum, but reform also creates losers, inflationary pain, and public impatience if security and livelihoods do not improve fast enough.

4. Regional entanglements are raising strategic pressure.
Relations with Eritrea have sharply deteriorated, with Ethiopia accusing Eritrea of sending ammunition to Amhara rebels. Reuters also reported evidence pointing to Ethiopia’s involvement with Sudan’s RSF, which, if accurate, deepens regional militarization and stretches state capacity. External entanglement often amplifies domestic instability instead of containing it.

Restraining forces holding the current order

1. The federal state still retains the core instruments of coercion.
Despite multiple insurgencies, there is no clear evidence that the central state has lost national command capacity. The government still controls the federal security architecture, the formal bureaucracy, the fiscal relationship with international lenders, and the election machinery. That matters because momentum for change usually succeeds only when state cohesion breaks at the center.

2. Opposition pressure is fragmented, not unified.
The anti-government space is divided geographically, ideologically, and organizationally: Amhara insurgency, Oromo insurgency, Tigrayan internal splits, formal opposition parties, diaspora actors, and civil-society critics do not form one coherent bloc. Tigray itself remains divided, and conflict dynamics differ sharply between Amhara and Oromia. Fragmented opposition can generate pressure, but it often cannot convert pressure into orderly transition.

3. Elections may absorb some pressure without resolving the crisis.
The National Election Board is preparing for the 7th general election in 2026, so there is still an institutional channel on paper. But external observers have already warned that shrinking civic space undermines the conditions for genuinely free and fair competition. That makes elections a possible safety valve, but not necessarily a transformative one.

4. Economic stabilization gives the government breathing room.
The IMF program, debt talks, and official growth projections provide the government with an argument that reform is working, at least macroeconomically. Even if ordinary citizens do not fully feel the benefit, macro-financial support can delay political rupture by sustaining the state’s ability to pay, borrow, and govern.

Net assessment

My assessment is this: momentum for change is gathering structurally, but not yet converging politically. Ethiopia today resembles a system under cumulative pressure rather than a system facing one decisive revolutionary wave. The driving forces are stronger than they were a few years ago in breadth, but the restraining forces remain stronger in organization. Put differently, the desire for change is diffuse; the machinery of change is not yet unified. This is an inference from the current pattern of conflict, civic restriction, economic reform, and elite fragmentation.

What would indicate that momentum has truly crossed the threshold?

Three signs would matter most.

First, elite fracture at the center: defections or open splits inside the ruling coalition or security establishment. Second, cross-regional convergence: if grievances in Oromia, Amhara, Tigray, and urban centers begin to align around a shared political program instead of parallel anger. Third, institutional blockage: if the 2026 electoral process is widely seen not merely as flawed, but as incapable of channeling political competition at all. Those are the conditions under which accumulated pressure becomes real transition momentum.

Bottom line

So, is Ethiopia gathering momentum for change?
Yes—socially, militarily, and structurally.
Not yet—organizationally, institutionally, and strategically.

The country is moving closer to a pre-transition condition, but it has not yet reached a point where the forces for change clearly outweigh the forces of regime survival. The present danger is therefore not only abrupt change, but also prolonged unstable stalemate.