The Absence of Consolidation in Democratic Nepal Essay

The Absence of Consolidation in Democratic Nepal - Essay Example The political parties are marginalized and bemoan the unconstitutional nature of the existing government.1 The Maoist abandoned the democratic process in 1996 and declared a "people's war" intending to establish a Maoist people's republic in the place of the constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy. The insurgency was low in intensity and rural until the Royal Army was used to contain the insurgency following the declaration of a state of emergency in November 2001. The insurgents now control about 70% of the country. At the pretext of quashing the insurgents, the king declared a state of emergency in early 2005, the parliament was closed down and he assumed all executive and legislative powers. On April 24, 2006, the king reinstated the House of Representatives In early May 2006, the House of Representatives declared Nepal a secular country.2 Despite several governmental efforts, superficial at the best, there was no institutionalization of democracy in Nepal. The very causes that feed the insurgency are also the barriers to consolidation of democracy, some of which are: rural poverty, uneven development between urban and rural areas, endemic corruption, persistent socio-economic inequalities and the frustration at the delivery of public goods and services from the government.3 The obstruction of public development by insurgents create a vicious cycle of poverty and social discrimination compounded by the existing issues of poverty, ethnicity, language, Dalits, gender rights, girl trafficking, ecocide with centralization, misgovernance, more official corruption, Bhutanese refugees, autocratic tendencies of democratically elected leaders, weak accountability to democratic pressures, effects of economic liberalization, etc. These failed to establish links between freedom and modernity with a rationalization of social, econ omic and political pluralism and failed to construct civil attachments of the bulk of citizens to nationhood, the political society and the key institutions of governance.4 Once a polity has been democratized, the problem of consolidation arises, which is not a mere improvement in the overall quality of democracy. Instead, this quality is a product of appropriate analyses of electoral politics and market mechanisms. '"(d)emocratic consolidation requires much more than elections and markets." Rather, a consolidated democracy is a political situation in which democracy has become "the only game in town"'5 For Schmitter, the consolidation of democracy is "the process of transforming the accidental arrangements, prudential norms and contingent solutions which have emerged during the transition from autocracy into relations of cooperation and competition that are reliably known, regularly practiced and voluntarily accepted by those person or collectivities, i.e., politicians and citizens, who participate in democratic governance."6 According to Linz and Stepan: "A democratic regime is consolidated when no significant party within the polity attempts to create a non-democratic regime, when the majority of the people, even under sever economic crises or deep dissatisfaction, believe that democratic procedures and institutions are the most appropriate way of governing the country, and when governmental and non-governmental forces