Nepal’s Protracted Transition: Explaining the Continuing Political and Economic Impasse

Over the past two decades Nepal, a landlocked Himalayan nation of over 27 million people, has undergone a series of tumultuous political transformations. In 1990, a successful pro-democracy movement forced then-King Birendra to concede to a parliamentary system and a more titular role for the monarch. Subsequently, in 1996 Nepal’s fledgling democracy was challenged by a left-wing insurgency declared by a faction of Nepali communists known as Maoists. This insurgency, almost a decade long, killed over 13,000 people, and shook the foundations of Nepal’s traditional power structures led by the King and Kathmandu’s hill-based elites. In the meantime, the liberal King Birendra lost his life in a ghastly palace massacre in June 2001. His successor, King Gyanendra, proved a nightmare for Nepal’s democratic politicians as he tried by all means to recapture royal prerogatives lost in 1990. The new King’s jealous pursuit of power, however, rallied Nepal’s democratic parties and international forces against the monarchy. Consequently, in November 2005 opposition to the King took a decisive turn as Nepal’s pro-democracy Seven Party Alliance (SPA), with strong support from Nepal’s influential neighbour India, entered into an agreement with the Maoist insurgents to launch a joint movement to wrest power back from the King and restore democracy.