Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, was known to have a suspicious bend on a government's place in society. He once famously said, "Government is not a solution to our problem; government is our problem."

In his televised address on the eve of the presidential election in November 1980, Reagan said, "I believe we can embark on a new age of reform in this country and an era of national renewal. An era that will reorder the relationship between citizens and government; that will make the government again responsive to people; that will revitalise the values of family, work, and neighbourhood; and that will restore our private and independent social institutions. These institutions have always served as both buffer and bridge between individuals and the state and these institutions, not government, are the real source of our economic and social progress as a people."

The speech was made to portray the vision that the United States had to dream about its national renewal, standards of decency and excellence, as well as peace, freedom, and self-worth.

The themes of the speech are equally applicable to poor countries such as Ethiopia, where lack of resilient institutions had remained to be the chief evil behind the curtain of poverty, lack of good governance, economic underdevelopment, along with a short supply in government transparency.

The problem gets more severe in countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty, drought, political instability and factional wars have continually been destroying institutions. As depicted in Reagan's speech, institutions are the founding rocks of inclusive socioeconomic development; it would be appropriate to give due concern for their establishment, development, independence, integrity, and legitimacy. 

Yet, the reverse is being seen in Ethiopia despite the many reforms that the incumbent has been implementing. The basic social institutions, as sociologists say, including politics, education, family, and religion are witnessing their lowest ever in integrity.

As the elections draw nearer and campaigns gain speed, it is now opportune to deliberate on the spoilage of the nation's institutions, though it seems that none of the political parties have taken the issue seriously.

If at all, they are taking it as a follow up to their prior "political" agenda, whatsoever they claim that to be.

Political institutions, as one of the basic social institutions, comprise of structures that are direct actors in the governance of the people. Aside from the visible structure of government, in its modern sense, however, these institutions include indigenous organisations of resource allocation, conflict resolution, voicing dissent, community mobilisation and intergenerational power transfer.

Ever since the time of the military government, these institutions have been threatened by the ever growing size of formal government structures. Some of them have even lost their operational space due to the pervasiveness of the Ethiopian state. Had the formal institutional structures been able to embrace the role of these community organisations, the problem would have been managed.

Yet, the growth of the state did not fill the void at all. Hence, the choice left to communities, especially rural communities, is to either join the formal political structures or live with the vices of "collective insecurity."

Despite the change from a socialist to a democratic Ethiopia, the insufficient attention given to community organisations has continued. The partisan politics of the nation, introduced after 1991, is also tied up with hatred, patrimony, the blamegame and senseless categorisation. This has caused people to shy away from it. In a nation of over 70 million, having a couple of million members would not matter for a registered political party to uplift a certain political cause.

What about the other tens of millions of Ethiopians? Are they not concerned about politics? They are equally concerned. But they may prefer to do it in their own way. They also prefer their own institutional arrangement to do so than the formal partisan structures. What the formal structure has failed to do is to recognise that its role is to incubate "their own way of doing things." Sadly, though, this structure is smashing even the few remaining ones.

Education has also observed a significant decline in quality since 1991. The responsible institutions have failed to produce individuals with able thought processes, even though they pass tests. Innovation has given way to cheating and plagiarism. Schools have become places of producing gangs of functionally illiterate and unemployable youth.

Adapted curriculums are producing westernised graduates poor in contextualising their theoretical knowledge to their practical situations. The focus of sectoral institutions on quantitative achievements has pushed away qualitative values. Hence, the shelves of these institutions are filled with reports on statistics, numbers of students, schools, and teachers.

The operational flexibility of the educational institutions is so poor that a little change in working procedures is seen to cause chaos in their overall operations. The injection of politics in their veins has also threatened their academic space and professional integrity. Hence, education, as one of the fundamental social institutions, has failed to contribute to the overall socioeconomic progress as was expected.

This, in turn, has left Ethiopians  vulnerable to the decisions of the opportune elite.

Religion, another founding social institution, has also become marginalised and delegitimised. The religious institutions have failed to transform themselves inline with the socioeconomic and politico-cultural progress of the populace. They have rather limited themselves to the sphere of "divine services."

Similar to the political institutions, they are also filled with hatred, conflict, internal rifts, customary prohibitions, hierarchical relationships, gender biases and complex bureaucracy. As a result, they rarely teach their congregation about work ethics, love, and self-worth. The ever growing Ethiopian state has also marginalised religious institutions from the sphere of politics and economics.

Nevertheless, partisan politics has also gotten into religious institutions in a unique and untraceable way. This might be one of the reasons for the growing internal rift within the different religious institutions and their continued marginalisation from the important spheres of life.

Despite being one of the bases of the society and nation, family has also attained little attention in policymaking after 1991. The time being allocated for deliberating on family issues has also declined. What is more worrisome is the ever-growing frustration of the youth towards family.

Low income, unemployment, inflation, increasing prices of assets, high income inequality, and bad family experiences are all pushing the youth away from the family unit. In era of HIV and AIDS, it would have been proper for the government to provide economic incentives for the youth to establish families. Laws, regulations, and awareness programmes should have been instituted to smooth out the relationship between parents and children.

Political and religious leaders should also carry the flag of "harmonious families" everywhere they go. What is seen is the reverse. Family destruction has outweighed family construction, tarnishing the image of the "family" in the minds of the coming generation.

Quoting Thomas Paine, Ronald Reagan highlighted in his remarks to the annual convention of the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983 that, "We have it within our power to begin the world over again."

It is within reach to restructure and transform the social institutions should they be given priority in every deliberation. It is possible to change the situation that people are living in.

The political parties taking part in the upcoming national election also have to take the issues upfront. Failing to do so may force the nation to continue to run for nothing, holding nothing.

Should not the nation spare its scarce resources on something worthy, though?