Is Civil Society a Balancer of Public Power in Nepal?

Democratic governance is a legitimizing ethic of modern rule. It is entrusted with the tasks of defining the standard of modern norms and mobilizing and allocating society's resources to meet citizens' rational interests, such as freedom, security, identity and essential needs. Besieged by multi-polar conflicts, the Nepalese leadership is struggling to fulfill these interests and execute the mandate of April 2006 mass movement—democracy based on popular sovereignty, durable peace, an inclusive state and progressive reforms—through a new constitution drafted by Constituent Assembly (CA). The CA election of April 10 has established Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) as a single largest party and provided it a decisive advantage in power equation. The Nepali Congress (NC) and Communist Party of Nepal Unified Marxist-Leninist (CPN-UML) were reduced into the second and third largest party in the country.  Given the larger share of political space by left parties and historically left out groups, such as women, ethnic communities, Dalits and Madhesis one can clearly foresee the direction Nepal's political transition will take.

The emergence of Madhesi People's Rights Forum (MPRF), Tarai Madhesh Loktantrik Party (TMLP) and Sadbhavana Party (SP) in the strategic geography of the nation (a supply route of most of public goods) has added a new geopolitical element into Nepali politics.  Contradiction between non-left forces, disequilibrium of power between the left and the non-left forces and a lack of consolidated transitional regime have changed the power equilibrium but in no way has it guaranteed safe adaptation as the mandate of CA is fractured since no party commands even absolute majority. The birth of small parties through proportional election system represents Nepal's diversity and asymmetry of power. Negotiation on diverse issues—such as formation of government, concept of head of state, federalism, reintegration of armed forces, management of conflict residues and redistributive policies among various political parties that characterize the nation's political life will be a major task while drafting a constitution. The collective struggles of small parties and left out groups will continue to cause governmental, constitutional and political instability in the future unless institutional mechanisms of representation of functionally active groups are well placed in the political system. The partisan bickering, stalemate and ineffectual and often contradictory compromises have weakened the ability of government to implement the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed by the ruling parties and Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) on November 21, 2006, the Interim Constitution and 23 –point accord signed on December 23, 2007 and resonate the feelings of masses expressed in the new mandate.

Early amendment of the Interim Constitution to facilitate the formation of government is essential for the political transition from partiocracy to participatory democracy. The emergence of new forces and structures has already changed the historical power relationship and widely distributed leadership in society with contesting visions and dissimilar stakes in the current political order. The resilience of traditional elites and transformation of feudalism from rural to urban areas will continue to cause governmental inaction to address the security and authority vacuum and allow the decentralization of competitive violence of over two-dozen non-state actors operating independent of the state. Without sustained engagements with them, they will complicate the process of peaceful conflict resolution. Political transition from feudalism to capitalism becomes successful in those countries where economic development is high to satisfy the politically mobilized groups, muster widespread societal support for political initiatives and inspires all the potential and left out forces for cooperative action. In Nepal, the regime change did not achieve these processes and instead bristled with agitations and the corresponding rise in the level of public insecurity. It vividly reflects the erosion of monopoly of legitimate power, the raison de' etat of modern state. The retreat of Nepalese state from society and larger supply of competitive violence have put civil peace, property rights and individual liberties at critical risk. In this context, the outcome of CA election will likely to result in an unstable government beleaguered by political deadlocks and universal aspiration of people breeding endemic crisis tendencies unless mechanisms of social justice are integrated into the institutional development of politics.   

The observance of peace accord marked the decline in the ratio of human death. But, it did not seem sufficiently comprehensive as it has unveiled a prelude for high political dynamics of ethno-territorial, communal and armed non-state actors for frequent bargaining. Unrest in country's southern periphery Tarai and the northern periphery due to free Tibet activities will continue to occupy global geopolitical attention. Nepal's new order of politics thus remains off the track of the constitution, the formal rule of law and decriminalization of dissent. The eroding relationship of law and morality with politics has made the later autonomous with respect to that of common good. It has also reduced all spheres of life to political control and dissolved law, economy and society into party politics. In the process, it could not get rid political process of the general condition of conflict and liberate modern politics from the violent expression of pre-modern instinct. As a result, crisis of public security, authority and livelihood of citizens is becoming more intense. If the primacy of partisan politics is the end, no system is capable of maintaining democratic balance and transforming law from a disciplinary tool of the regime to a mediating agency between the state and society for social justice. Only an effective and class-neutral state can stand above the interest groups of society, ensure common benefits through the public character of politics (Dahal, 2002:1) and enable citizens to share the internationalization of trade,  investment, technology and communication (Ignatieff and Thakur, 2001:34). If public institutions are made subservient to partisan or regime interest, governance becomes dysfunctional thus imposing enormous costs for the sustainability of poor citizens' web of life.

The decay of governance in Nepal, especially in the management of democratic polity, can thus be linked to inadequate institution building efforts by the political leadership and their inertia in resolving social conflicts in the domain of rights and domain of virtue. The incumbent leadership has expunged the boundary between the public and the private and the state and society and transformed state-centric conflict into society-centric ones so as to expand their political base. As a result, political socialization failed to generate public trust in the government's authority to work according to the vision of the Nepalese constitution and concert various actors of society toward systemic goals. Government instability in Nepal occurred because of the vicious cycle of action and reaction between the government and various forms of opposition where the latter is left with no option to negotiate its demands without resorting to extra-parliamentary means and managing conflict within the bounds of political order.  In a climate characterized by high political dynamics, national leaders must have a keen sense of social learning about the major transformation of politics: transformation in the meaning of the primacy of government; replacement of normative by a cognitive style of expectations of citizens and loss of the capacity of government action on the part of the leading sub-system as a whole (Cohen and Arato, 1993:305).

Polities naturally subsume politically important all institutions, publics and civil society. They "significantly shape economic performance because they define and enforce economic rules" (North, 1994:366). In Nepal, the political culture developed through politics, market, civil society and public administration has fostered opposing conceptions of the political good and contradictory means to achieve it. The application of incompatible ends and means has generated social distortions and economic inefficiencies instead of responsive outcomes. Inability of the central government to muster political will to take right decisions has faltered the performance of all governments. As a result, politics in Nepal is often blamed for promoting bad governance and impunity in the public sector, pushing the public institutions towards failure ready for privatization and denationalization without knowing its adverse consequence for national life. Even top civil servants and independent consultant criticized the process of privatization of many public sector industries for a lack of transparency, lower valuation of assets and foreign involvement (Achrya, 2008:4: Ghimire, Kinley and Shakya, 2000: Executive Summary). One can see its negative effects: massive unemployment, poverty and deteriorating human rights conditions with the quality of public service to citizens tumbling downhill. With the fusion of politics, business, civil society and media it is easy to exploit the consumer without much resistance. The subordination of state to the interest of dominant groups generated contradiction in the political order that seemed to be unsolvable within the confines of the polity as an equilibrium system.

The separation of democracy from its "state of affairs" has become possible due to the de-institutionalization of politics. As such, democratic infrastructures, such as political parties, professional organizations and civil society have become the means by which power brokers enhanced their group clout, authority and influence rather than becoming a means to resolve collective action problems. All political parties that extol the virtue of responsive rule themselves lack necessary democratic requirements, such as deliberative structures, reflection of public opinion, democratic mechanism and institutions of transparency and accountability and enlightened issue socialization to foster intra-party democracy. It is doubtful whether the CA election and constitution will make the leaders accountable for their actions and break the old political culture of determining leadership through ascriptive linkages of political influential in the parties given the primacy of cronyism over a secular orientation to policy.  Obviously, the CA will politicize the ordinary public enabling them to question the promise of auxiliary groups of the political parties acting as the support base in different sectors, including the civil society and human rights groups that are believed to be autonomous of such influences.  Freedom of citizens is important for the autonomy of government from internal constraints and external forces, including balance of power in its three branches---executive, legislative and judiciary. To rectify the existing distorted system caused by the erosion of legitimate monopoly of state power, absence of distribution of power in the political system, concentration of discretionary powers in the office of executive and lack of any space for opposition is a monumental challenge in building democracy for new leadership. It is monumental because authority is still handed to the upper stratum of power and responsibility is pressed downwards—a long-established tradition of stripping any institution of its democratic credibility. Democracy cannot become robust unless civil society groups as balancer of public power are capable of imposing the old-style leadership an effective challenge and political competition.

Good governance requires maintaining a delicate balance between the purposive rationality of individual leaders expressed in rational choice theory and functional rationality of politics expressed in systems theory (Habermas, 2001: 142). This balance also requires a balancer, the civil society groups, which can act as a political channel between citizens, public institutions, the state and international system and help in the maintenance of democratic system. A cluster of vibrant civil society groups as a balancing loop is needed to seek a change in the social condition to a desired development though collective action. Their role in public service accountability also requires a set of approaches, mechanisms and practices suitable to ensuring that their performance supports in meeting the targeted goals and principles of democracy. Obviously, it is difficult to generalize civil society groups in Nepal due to complexity of their sizes and functions.

(The author is the head of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung-Nepal)

Posted on : 2009-04-29 09:45:35

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