Shifting Tides in South Asia: Reform and Resistance in Nepal

Over the last decade, Nepal has been through a surprising series of major political upheavals: ending an armed rebellion, seeing democracy disrupted and restored, going from a monarchy to a republic, and twice electing a 601-member Constituent Assembly to serve as both a regular legislature and a constitution-drafting body. Bound up with these changes have been a number of democratic reforms. If these can be extended and institutionalized, they may help democracy to deepen in this culturally diverse, landlocked Himalayan country of 27 million people. Yet despite the resolution of the decade-old Maoist insurgency, widespread and deep-seated patterns of exclusion based on ethnic, caste, religious, and regional identities remain a key challenge to democratic deepening.