By the mid-2010s, distributive crisis – manifest in shortages of land and employment that particularly affected young adults – undermined the EPRDF’s political control. Despite engineering landslide electoral victories in 2010 and 2015, mass anti-government protests exploded in 2014 and then again from late 2015. By early 2018, the EPRDF conceded a leadership change that ultimately led to the abandonment of its project of state-led development and the collapse of the ruling coalition. This chapter provides a detailed account of these events, highlighting three main causes. First, the distributive crisis meant that many young adults had escaped the EPRDF’s control and were deeply disenchanted with unfulfilled promises of developmental progress. Second, the EPRDF’s response differed markedly from past crises due to divisions within the ruling elite. Rather than a collective threat requiring a coherent response, subordinate EPRDF factions sought to use the protests as political leverage within the ruling coalition. Third, these mass and elite political dynamics were refracted through the prism of ethnic federalism; mass unrest and elite contestation manifest along ethnic lines.