A Nash equilibrium analysis and incentive-based supplement to the four-phase national roadmap on and for Ethiopia
Aklog Birara (Dr)
Policy discussion paper
Executive proposition
Ethiopia’s political impasse can be understood as a self-reinforcing non-cooperative equilibrium. Government leaders, opposition parties, armed actors, and civil-society institutions may all prefer a peaceful, prosperous country to protracted confrontation. But they do not.
The application of this or any other theory to unbundle Ethiopia’s deeply rooted problems requires moral and spiritual anchors. When we unbundle, we must try to understand the political cultures and behaviors of political elites in Ethiopia.
Why did they form political movements like the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP. the All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement (MEISONE, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD). Ethiopian Citizens for Social Justice (EZEMA), Coalition of Ethiopian Democratic Force, Hibr Ethiopia and more that collapsed?
This requires more in-depth research and analysis. What is the missing link? Is it cultural? Is it moral? Is it spiritual? Is it psychological? Is it greed? Is it individualism and individual ego? Is it lack critical thinking? Is it lust for power?
Cooperation is far better and essential for mutual survival than recurrent fighting that entails deaths and destruction. All Ethiopians deserve recognition that they are human and share the same needs—dignity and human warmth, peace, stability, fair treatment, food, drinkable or clean water, sanitation, health, education, and shelter. This can only happen through cooperation and not through self serring initiatives and single ethnic elite hegemony.
The magnitude of the problem must inform what we do and what we demand.
Yet each actor or contestant tends to believe that yielding first will invite repression, exclusion, territorial loss, or humiliation. There is a persistent trust gap. When commitments are not credible, confrontation becomes individually defensible even though cooperation would make society better off.
The policy task is therefore not to preach consensus; it is to redesign the strategic environment in which leaders and civil society make choices.
Ethiopian society cannot afford to continue with the same paradigm of thinking as the conflict ridden past.
The analysis is a diagnostic model, a tool. It is not a claim that all actors are equally powerful, culpable, or motivated. The state carries special legal and practical obligations regarding protection, rights, public administration, and its use of coercive power. Sadly, for Ethiopia, the state is no longer impartial. In many respects, it is prone to terrorism. It deploys drones and slaughters school children and the rest every week.
Ethiopia’s 140 million people, more than 60 percent multidimensionally poor, are incapacitated.
Civil society cannot substitute for armed-party security guarantees; and victims’ rights cannot be traded away for a superficial bargain.
For this commentary, the Nash Equilibrium model comes in handy.
Who is Nash?
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
John F. Nash Jr. Winner of Sverige’s Riksbank Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1994. He was affiliated with Princeton. He won this prize for his pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games. This analysis is pertinent to my commentary.
The Road Map proposal I posted on November 9, 2026, is only feasible if Ethiopian moves from a fighting mode to a cooperative one.
1 | The Nash equilibrium: why a bad outcome persists.
A Nash equilibrium is a situation in which no actor can improve its expected payoff by changing strategy alone while everyone else keeps theirs unchanged.
In other words, the Prosperity Party’s model of a zero-sum game engenders more inequality, human suffering, war, and instability.
Consider two broad strategic blocs: (A) incumbent authorities and allied institutions; and (B) opposition and other organized challengers. Each chooses credible cooperation (C) or defensive domination/obstruction (D). The illustrative payoffs below are ordinal, not measurements of Ethiopia; higher numbers signify more preferred outcomes for that actor.
| Authority / challenger | Challenger cooperates (C) | Challenger defects (D) |
| Authority cooperates (C) | (4, 4) shared gains | (1, 5) exposed authority |
| Authority defects (D) | (5, 1) exposed challenger | (2, 2) costly standoff |
Here D strictly dominates C for each bloc: if the other cooperates, opportunistic defection yields five rather than four; if the other defects, defensive defection yields two rather than one. Thus (D, D) is the Nash equilibrium even though (C, C) being collectively superior.
This is a Prisoner’s Dilemma representation—not a finding that every Ethiopian actor has precisely these preferences. Some interactions instead resemble a “stag hunt,” in which cooperation is also an equilibrium but fragile because each party doubts the other will cooperate. Mutual mistrust exists in this case.
2 | What makes the Ethiopian trap durable?
Institutional commitment failures.
Ethiopia’s national institutions are gutted. Governance is characterized by weakly trusted enforcement, disputed rules of competition, contested federal–regional authorities and uncertainty over security arrangements that make these promises reversible. Winners fear future retaliation; losers fear permanent exclusion.
Structural asymmetry
Control of security forces, administrative resources, public media, and fiscal transfers is unequal. Symmetric moral appeals therefore miss asymmetric responsibilities. Some opposition groups also possess coercive capacity that requires specific ceasefire and disarmament arrangements. It is matter of sheer survival.
Psychological and historical mechanisms.
Collective trauma, fear of domination, identity-based threat perceptions, humiliation, zero-sum narratives, and reciprocal attribution of bad faith narrow the set of politically imaginable compromises.
Spoilers and audience costs.
Moderates may be punished by hard-liners for compromise; leaders risk reputational loss when concessions are interpreted as surrender. Diaspora narratives, misinformation, and conflict entrepreneurs can increase the apparent payoff to defection.
Lack of credible sequence.
The chicken or the egg syndrome. “Disarm first,” “reform first,” or “trust us first” are often impossible demands when implementation is irreversible for one side and reversible for the other.
It is hard to disarm when the state that commands superior military force is out there to kill you.
3 | Change the payoffs, not just the rhetoric.
Ethiopian elites talk about transition constantly. The transition strategy should make the expected reward from verified cooperation exceed the reward from opportunistic defection. In simplified terms, cooperate when the expected gains from inclusion, protection, and reconstruction—plus the value of future cooperation—outweigh the perceived security risks and domestic political penalties of compromise.
Make promises observable (transparent)
Publish clear commitments, dates, and responsible institutions. Use independently verified ceasefire/civilian-protection reporting, accessible complaint channels, and regular public progress dashboards. Where feasible, include neutral African Union–supported verification and local monitors with protection against retaliation.
Make cooperation reciprocal but not hostage to perfect trust.
Stage limited, simultaneous and verifiable moves: cease attacks and protect access; release agreed categories of detainees after due process review; restore services and communications; expand lawful civic space; negotiate remaining security matters. Each step unlocks the next without making civilians bargaining chips.
Protect legitimate political loss.
Create minimum guarantees for peaceful opposition, media, civil society, and regional participation—including judicial remedies and enforceable safeguards against collective punishment.
Political competition must become survivable for losers, not a contest for existential control.
Reduce the gain from defection
Attach transparent, lawful consequences to renewed attacks, intimidation, and obstruction; preserve independent investigations and remedies for serious abuses. Never offer blanket impunity for grave crimes. Incentives should distinguish political reintegration from criminal accountability. ACCOUNTABILITY IS CRITICAL IN ALL CASES PAST OR CURRENT.
You cannot afford to ignore a Mai Kadra like massacre repeated across ethnic and faith groups throughout the country without accountability for war crimes, crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Change social expectations
Support cross-community deliberation, trauma-sensitive listening, joint public-service projects, and leaders’ repeated messages recognizing each group’s fears without validating attacks. Independent civic actors should monitor fairness rather than simply endorse a preselected settlement.
Social and political actors must put a timeline concerning the steps they intend to take and implement them diligently.
4 | Apply the model to the existing four-phase roadmap (to follow)
Phase I — 0–6 months: protect civilians and stabilize.
Secure localized cessation arrangements, humanitarian corridors, essential services, and independent civilian-protection monitoring. Establish an incident-reporting and rapid dispute-resolution mechanism. Strategic effect: lower the immediate fear-based payoff from preemptive violence.
Phase II — 6–18 months: negotiate and verify guarantees.
Publish the National Dialogue recommendations alongside an itemized government response; create inclusive, independently facilitated negotiations on security, political participation, interim local administration, detainees, land/property disputes, and reintegration. Allow meaningful dissent and supplementary processes for those absent from the prior dialogue. Strategic effect: make cooperation credible and political exclusion less likely.
Phase III — 1–3 years: reconstruct services and institutions.
Restore schools, clinics, water, agriculture, and roads through independently reviewed criteria; strengthen courts, financial controls, and local administrations; create survivor-centered truth, remedy, and accountability pathways. Strategic effect: deliver visible dividends to cooperation and restore neutral state capacity.
Phase IV — 3–10 years: consolidate accountable peace.
Institutionalize lawful, competitive politics, fair fiscal federalism, oversight, dispute resolution, rights protection, and broad-based jobs, with annual independent audits and course corrections. Strategic effect: make future cooperation self-enforcing through repeated interaction and predictable institutions.
These phases overlap; progress is conditional on evidence, not the calendar. Do not wait for a complete constitutional settlement before protecting civilians, and do not confuse a ceasefire with a durable political settlement.
Convene a bounded “non-domination and mutual-security compact” among federal and regional authorities, relevant armed and non-armed political actors, independent civil-society representatives, women’s groups, displaced persons, and survivor organizations. Facilitation should be accepted by the parties, with African Union support in cases where it is useful. The initial mandate should be narrow: protection, access, verification, political inclusion, and an agreed timetable—not immediate consensus on every constitutional question.
A compact or charter becomes credible only when each side can answer four questions: What exactly must I do? Who verifies the other side? What protects me if the other side breaches? What lawful, proportional remedy follows noncompliance? Publish those answers in understandable language and in relevant local languages.
- Suggested monitoring scorecard
| Indicator | Evidence to publish |
| Civilian protection | Verified incidents, access, and response times by area |
| Political space | Arbitrary detention complaints resolved; permitted peaceful activity |
| Dialogue inclusion | Stakeholder participation, dissenting views and written responses |
| Delivery of guarantees | Milestones met/late with independent confirmation |
| Public trust | Repeat anonymous surveys disaggregated by region and community |
6 | Limits and critical safeguards
Game theory clarifies incentives but cannot reduce Ethiopian history, federalism, identities, and grievances to a two-player contest. Actors are heterogeneous; preferences shift; violence is not morally symmetrical; and external parties can alter incentives. The model must therefore be assessed against field evidence, revised after each phase, and accompanied by constitutional, historical, human-rights and political-economy analysis.
A settlement that rewards violence while silencing peaceful civic participation may merely create another unstable equilibrium.
Conclusion
Ethiopia does not lack appeals for unity. It lacks sufficiently trusted institutions and arrangements through which political rivals can cooperate without fearing annihilation or permanent subordination.
The road out is a verified sequence of civilian protection, mutually enforceable guarantees, visible reconstruction benefits, and rules that let every community and party compete peacefully without seeking hegemony.
it behooves us to ask ourselves “Who is the real enemy” of the Ethiopian people? Are we part of the problem or part of the solution?
I do not know the answer. But at least we can cooperate with one another in search of answers, the truth.
The decisive question is not “Who will compromise first?” but “What guarantees make it rational for each to cooperate now?”
It is the commonality Ethiopians share and deserve as human beings and citizens that dictates cooperation rather than constant friction and confrontation.
- Context and selected sources
- Ethiopian National Dialogue Commission, “ENDC Hands Over Recommendations,” 3 Oct 2026 (400 recommendations addressing eighty-one issues): https://ethiondc.org.et/en/endc-hands-over-recommendations/
- UN Secretary-General, statement on renewed fighting in Tigray, Afar and Amhara, 10 Oct 2026: https://ethiopia.un.org/en/324191-un-secretary-generals-statement-ethiopia
- African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, statement on renewed tensions, 8 Oct 2026: https://achpr.au.int/en/news/press-releases/2026-10-08/statement-renewed-tensions-northern-ethiopia
- Liyew, “Ethiopia’s national dialogue derailed: a critical review of legitimacy, inclusion, and process,” Journal of Contemporary African Studies, published 26 Dec 2025: https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2025.2595933.
- Nash, J. F. (1950), “Equilibrium Points in N-Person Games,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 36(1), 48–49.
- Aklog Birara, Previous companion roadmap, “Ethiopia at the Crossroads,” 31 Oct 2026; four overlapping implementation phases.
Magnitude of Ethiopia’s Human Crisis in Numbers — 2026
https://chatgpt.com/library
Editor’s Note: Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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