Struggling for Stability: International Support for Peace and Democracy in Post-Civil War Nepal

Abstract

How can countries emerging from a conflict be supported on their path towards peace and democracy? Although this question has been the focus of recent attention, it remains unclear exactly what factors are critical to the success of external engagement in fragile states. To this end, this study aims to learn from the relatively successful case of Nepal. In Nepal, the signing of a comprehensive peace agreement in 2006 ended a decade-long civil war and provided the basis for a more inclusive democracy. Since then, the international community has tried to support Nepal’s peace and democratisation process in various ways. In order to learn from their experiences, this paper addresses two main questions: 1. Have the diverse donors and their strategies helped to consolidate peace and democracy in Nepal? 2. What are the factors behind successful support and what factors explain failures? The analysis takes the political process in Nepal as its starting point and traces donor engagement through four critical junctures. Critical junctures are defined as decisive political events that have a powerful impact on the overall peace and democratisation process. The main argument behind this approach is that donors can claim to have impacted the overall process (which is nonetheless predominantly domestically driven) only if they have contributed to such decisive events. The analysis of each juncture consists of a number of steps: tracing the impact on the overall process, identifying the decisions, actors and institutions that characterise the juncture, attributing donor support to these and, finally, explaining either why donors were able to impact the juncture in certain way or why they failed to do so. The four junctures analysed for the Nepalese case are: 1) the 2008 elections to the Constituent Assembly; 2) the dissolution of the Maoist Army; 3) the failure to institutionalise peace and democracy at the local level; 4) the failure of the Constituent Assembly to promulgate a constitution. The 2008 elections to the Constituent Assembly (i.e. Nepal’s constitutional assembly) were a vital step in Nepal’s post-conflict process. The elections proceeded relatively peacefully and the result was broadly accepted. Generally, the elections provide a strong case for attributing a positive impact to international support. Donors contributed massive funds and donations in kind for the electoral infrastructure, supported the electoral commission, undertook high-level facilitation and were closely involved in monitoring the elections. This positive impact was possible because first, almost all donors rallied behind the common goal of supporting the elections, second, they shared a strategic prioritisation on stability and third the electoral commission (or Election Commission, as it is called in Nepal) was a strong focal point in coordinating international support. Another milestone in Nepal’s peace process was reached with the dissolution of the Maoist army (the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA) in 2012: the risk inherent to the existence of two armies no longer exists in Nepal. Donors assisted with the dissolution of the PLA in various ways. The United Nations Mission to Nepal verified the combatants, monitored the military camps (cantonments) holding the Maoist combatants and their weapons, and resolved disputes. Donors also provided crucial cantonment support and engaged in high-level facilitation. In doing so, donors helped both to stabilise the peace during and after the cantonment stage and to implement the political deal struck on 1 November 2011. Long-term engagement and good coordination explain the donors’ positive impact. To date, Nepal’s peace and democratisation process has focused mainly on politics at central government level and has lacked strong local institutions. In general, our research suggests that the impact of donor engagement in the crucial area of local politics has not attained its full potential. Although donors supported two government programmes addressing local politics, these proved deficient in many ways. Crucially, donors failed to encourage local elections, which would have addressed a serious bottleneck at the local level. There are two reasons for the weak impact of donor engagement: first, a lack of concerted effort and second, too strong a focus on stability, which hampered democratisation. The Constituent Assembly (CA) failed to perform its main task and was dissolved in 2012 without having promulgated a constitution. While donors contributed to the CA’s achievements, they also reinforced some of the reasons why the CA ultimately failed. For example, donors contributed to the secretive nature of bargaining by establishing various dialogue mechanisms outside CA structures. Donor engagement also bolstered divisions, for example by approaching the issue of federalism in different ways. Poorly coordinated donor activities and the lack of a common primary goal created conflicts and duplications, not only reinforcing adverse effects, but also inflicting reputational damage on donor activities. The Nepalese case sheds light on a number of general issues related to international support in post-conflict situations. This paper concentrates on three propositions (or hypotheses) commonly postulated in academic literature by those seeking to ascertain why support is either more or less successful: According to the first hypothesis, strong donor support for democracy can help destabilise a country’s peace process. Interestingly, our findings do not support this notion. On the contrary, we found that donors paid insufficient attention to the detrimental long-term consequences of a peace process that failed to institutionalise democracy beyond the initial provisions of the 2006 peace agreement. Second, a vast amount of literature on foreign aid supports the idea that a high level of donor coordination is required for development cooperation to be effective. While our findings suggest there are fewer grounds for enthusiasm about the overall level of coordination in Nepal than we initially expected, they do support the notion that better coordination yielded more positive results. Finally, our third hypothesis states that the success of donor engagement in Nepal also depends on how effectively donors take account of India, Nepal’s southern neighbour, as a major regional player. Here, our findings support the hypothesis, albeit with two qualifications. First, hard evidence of India’s crucial role in the peace and democratisation process is in short supply. Second, Nepal’s other big neighbour, China, is playing an increasingly important role. A factor that proved particularly challenging for donors in Nepal is the issue of ownership, more specifically the question of whether donors should adhere to domestic interests or uphold their own positions. This highlights disagreement between domestic and international actors on the course of action to be followed, but also points to the problem of defining ownership too narrowly, thereby adhering only to elite interests. Overall, our analysis paints a mixed picture. The strongest positive impact was in relation to the CA elections, and donors were also able to make a significant positive contribution in disbanding the PLA. At the local level and in the constitution-making process, donor engagement remained below its potential, at times even reinforcing weaknesses. The analysis identified a number of critical success factors for international engagement: good coordination through domestic institutions, focusing donor activities on a common primary goal, taking account of the long-term effects on democratic institutions and gaining the support of key regional actors.