Pakistan, Burma, Sri Lanka: Lessons For Nepal

The Pakistan scenario is that the king somehow manages to make peace with the world, and so he is free to pay lip service to democracy within the country. He has already tried his best to present the Nepali Maoists as if they were the local Al Qaeda, a blatantly outstretched comparison. On the other hand, the Americans dealing with Nepal are likely to rely on their readings of communism in Russia in the 1930s, in China in the 1960s, or even Cambodia and Peru. And so they might fall for the king's logic, that the choice is between him and the Nepali Al Qaeda. That might give the king the three years he has asked for. Then he might perpetuate a pseudo-democracy. He might allow elections but always keep his shadow over the country. He might continue to treat an elected Prime Minister as someone who works for him, like an employee.

The Burma scenario is the ruling junta ignores the world, finds allies in a few states, and keeps on keeping on. Cutting aid does not work, sanctions do not work, and leaders are kept under arrest forever, it seems.

The Sri Lanka scenario is of a country falling apart even when it is a democracy, and highly literate, but when it refuses to deal with ethnic grievances peacefully. The ruling cultural elite - Sinhala in Sri Lanka, Nepali Speaking High Caste Males in Nepal - just do not make that social leap to a more egalitarian vision.


Reference material: I searched for the terms "democracy in pakistan," "burma democracy," and "sri lanka civil war" at Google Scholar and collected all those journal articles that were available online in full for free. From among those I am providing here some that I think are relevant to the situation in Nepal. I hope this can deepen the debate and discussion.

Democracy In Pakistan

• Pluralism and Democracy in Pakistan
• Casualties of Militarization in the Contemporary World: Democracy and Development
• State-Formation and the Military in Pakistan
• Determinants of Democracy
• How Democracy A¤ ects Growth
• Democracy and Poverty
• Pakistan at Fifty-Five: From Jinnah to Musharraf
• Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan: The Case of the Recent Military Intervention (October 12, 1999 …
• DEMOCRACY AND REGRESSION: CHALLENGES FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM
• The Political Economy of Growth Without Development: A Case Study of Pakistan
• Democracy and Military Expenditure: A Cross Country Evidence
• The Political Economy of Decentralization in Pakistan
• Institutional Design in Plural Societies: Mitigating Ethnic Conflict and Fostering Stable Democracy
• Democracy, Democratization, and Institutional Theory
• Democracy in Africa: Moving Beyond a Difficult Legacy
• Human Development and the “Explosion” of Democracy: Variations of Regime Change across 60 …
• Expected Model & Process of Inclusive Democracy in Nepal
• Democracy, Federalism, and the Size of States
• Globalization and the Strengthening of Democracy in the Developing World
• Democracy on Ice: The Multiple Paradoxes of Guatemala’s Peace Process
• Social Justice and Democracy: Investigating the Link
• Can Direct Democracy Break Down Centralization?(or A New Democratic Federalism for Africa?)
• Global (?) ization, Social Segmentation, and Democracy in Mexico
• Paradise Again: A Solution for Kashmir
• Pakistani Conceptions of ‘Citizenship’and their Implications for Democratic Citizenship
• Elite and Masses, Linkage and Disconnect During the Period of System Transformation–Case of India
• Three Dimensional Islam: A Multi-scale Approach to Hindu/Muslim Violence in India
• United Nations Security Council Expansion: The Efficacy of Small States Under Bipolarity and Uni- …
• Winds of Peace in South Asia: Are They Real?
• Integration through Internal Reorganization: Containing Ethnic Conflict in India
• The Road TO Peace
• Digital divide, digital denial and minorities
• Consociational Parties and Political Accommodation in Ethnoplural Societies
• Federalism: A Viable Form of Government for New Democracies and Developing Countries?
• Public Sector Reform Revisited in the Context of Globalization
• International Interventionism 1970-1989: A Count Data Approach
• The Domestic Political Impact of Foreign Aid: Recalibrating the Research Agenda
• The Many Meanings of the Rule of Law
• Paradoxes of Mind and Society
• Is Growth Good Enough for the Poor?
• Democratization: Theory and Practice
• Authoritarian Regimes and International Conflict
• Attitudes towards the United States amongst the Indian Electorate
• INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW AND DOMESTIC POLITICAL LIBERALIZATION: A CROSS-NATIONAL STUDY
• A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS
• Role of NGOs in the Development of Non Formal Education in Nepal
• RACE, GENDER AND SEXUALITY: THE OPPRESSION OF MULTICULTURALISM
• India’s internal security compulsions
• The Israeli Ethnocracy and the Bantustanization of Palestine
• International Organizations and Democratization: Testing the Effect of GATT/WTO Membership
• Global democratization
• Multilateral Trade Liberalization, Political Disintegration, and the Choice of Free Trade Agreements …
• Decentralization in Bangladesh: Local Government and NGOs
• The" SWAP": One Financial Strategy for Educational Development in Nepal
• Agrarian Reforms and Agricultural Productivity
• RETHINKING THE ROLE OF THE STATE WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO NEW ECONOMIC POLICIES IN SOUTH ASIA
• Moving Out of Poverty: Growth and Freedom from the Bottom-Up
• NGOs AND ELECTORAL PARTICIPATION IN RURAL BANGLADESH
• The Enlightenment concept of citizenship, rights and governance in Modern and Postmodern States
• Federalism, Decentralization and Conflict Management in Multicultural Societies
• Comparing New Theory with Prior Beliefs: Market Civilization and the Democratic Peace
• World Development Report 2004
• An Agenda for Gender-fair Education
• Urbanization, Urban Concentration and Economic Growth in Developing Countries
• Why has been Afghanistan attacked by various different nations?
• Land Reforms AS AN Instrument OF Improvement IN Agriculture
• CORRUPTION IN TURKEY: AN OVERVIEW
• Human Capital and Growth in Cross-Country Regressions
• Globalisation and Popular Resistance
• Selection by Custom and Election by Statute–Interfaces in Local Governance In Karnataka
• Muslim Political and Religious Grievances: Inside the Exploitative Al-Qaeda Mind
• The Decision by the US Congress on China’s Trade Status: A Multicriteria Analysis
• Searching for Common Ground in South Asia
• Economic Freedom, Political Freedom, and Economic Well-Being: A Causality Analysis
• Institutional Variation, Structural Differences and Consolidating Democracies
• Economic Integration and Democratic Consolidation
• Balance, Accountability, and Responsiveness: Lessons about Decentralization
• Justice-Seeking and Loot-Seeking in Civil War
• Country Size and Public Good Provision
• International Dimensions of Civil War
• Tribal Traditions AND Crises OF Governance IN North East India, With Special Reference TO Meghalaya
• Why the failure of Democratization? Explaining'Middle East Exceptionalism.'
• Does Pressure from the Outside Destabilize Leaders on the Inside?
• International conflict, domestic political coalitions, and economic interdependence
• How do you build a state?
• Reconcilable Differences: Turning Points in Ethnopolitical Conflict
• Partition as a Solution to Ethnic War: An Empirical Critique of the Theoretical Literature
• ON THE MATHEMATICAL FOUNDATIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
• ECONOMIC WAR AND DEMOCRATIC PEACE
• Corruption in Economic Development: Beneficial Grease, Minor Annoyance, or Major Obstacle?
• A Guide to the Constitutional Structures and Electoral Systems of East, South and Southeast Asia.
• Military Expenditure: Threats, Aid and Arms Races
• Sino-US Relations The Future
• Unlucky or Bad? Economic Policy and Economic Growth
• Social Capital Within the Urban Small-Firm-Sector in Developing Countries: A Form of Modern …
• Religious Nationalism and Transnationalism in a Global World

Burma Democracy

• HUMAN RIGHTS IN BURMA: FIFTEEN YEARS POST MILITARY COUP
• Ethnic Tribes in Burma and the Struggle Against Human Rights Violations
• WHY DO POOR COUNTRIES CHOOSE LOW HUMAN RIGHTS? Some Lessons from Burma
• Patterns of Diffusion in the Third Wave of Democracy
• Some Social Requisites of a Democratic Civil Peace: Democracy, Development, and Armed Conflict
• The Constitution OF THE Kingdom OF Thailand, 1997: AB LUEPRINT FOR Participatory Democracy

Sri Lanka Civil War

• The Peace Process and Democracy in Sri Lanka
• Explaining Growth Performance in Sri Lanka Fifty Years in Retrospect
• Greed and Grievance in Civil War
• On Economic Causes of Civil War
• The Economic Cost of the War in Sri Lanka
• Justice-Seeking and Loot-Seeking in Civil War
• Liberalisation and political decay: Sri Lanka’s journey from welfare state to a brutalised society
• Global Market, Local Mayhem? Foreign Investment, Trade Openness, State Capacity, and Civil War, 1989 …
• Ethnicised Entitlements in Land Tenure of Protracted Conflicts: The Case of Sri Lanka
• The Fiscal Dimensions of Conflict and Reconstruction
• Horizontal Inequalities: A Neglected Dimension of Development
• From Conflict to Reconstruction: Reviving the Social Contract
• ECONOMIC CAUSES OF CIVIL CONFLICT AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY
• Paradise is a Bazaar? Greed, Creed, Grievance and Governance
• Poverty, Ethnicity and Conflict in Sri Lanka
• Using Case Studiesto Expand the Theory of Civil War
• The Political Economy of Secession
• Ethnic Polarization, Potential Conflict and Civil War
• Some Realism About Peacemaking
• Lessons for the Large-Scale Application of Process Approaches from Sri Lanka
• Sri Lanka The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children: A Rapid Assessment
• State-of-the-Art Report on Systems Analysis Methods forResolution of Conflicts in Water Resources …
• … Characteristics of Children Who Speak of a Previous Life: A Further Field Study in Sri Lanka
• Ethncity, Insurgency, and Civil War Revisited
• International Dimensions of Civil War
• Securing Peace
• The Peace Process and Democracy in Sri Lanka
• Endeavours for Peace and Human Dignity focuses on two human rights issues, civil war and
• Economic Roots of Political Conflict: The Case of Sri Lanka
• WHAT FUELS CIVIL WAR?
• Insights from the Extremes? An Essay on Institutional Logic in Civil Wars
• Territorial Decentralization and Civil War Settlements
• Women and Democratisation
• Explaining Growth Performance in Sri Lanka Fifty Years in Retrospect
• Forging an End to Civil War: Distributional Aspects of Robust Settlements
• Sri Lanka Recapturing Missed Opportunities
• PART I: Cry Havoc: Why Civil War Matters
• Ethnic and Gender Wage Disparities in Sri Lanka
• Expanding Economic Models of Civil War Using Case Studies
• INEQUALITY, VULNERABILITY TO VIOLENT CONFLICT AND AID INCENTIVES FOR PEACE
• REGIONAL INDIGENOUS INSURGENCY
• Is Inequality really a Major Cause of Violent Crime? Evidence From a Cross-National Panel of Robbery …
• How Do Natural Resources Influence Civil War? Evidence from 13 Cases
• Youth, Conflict and Social Transformation in Sri Lanka
• Leadership and Impunity: The Politics Behind the Traumatization of Children During Armed Conflicts
• The Influence of Aid in Situations of Violent Conflict
• The Single Transferable Vote: Proportional Representation or Hare-Brained Idea?
• Ethnic discrimination and the migration of skilled labor¤
• Economic Development, Inequality, War and State Violence
• Trends in Asylum Migration to Industrialized Countries: 1990-2001
• States, Reforms and Institutional Change: On the Dynamics of Failure
• ELECTIONS, DEMOCRATIZATION AND HUMAN RIGHTS
• Human Rights and Armed Groups: Toward a New Policy Architecture
• Chechenya, Caught between Globalization from Above and Globalization from Below
• Towards a Democratic Civil Peace?
• Can the UN Still Mediate?
• Separation or Unity? A Model for Solving Ethnic Conflicts.
• Working Paper Number 81 Horizontal Inequalities: A Neglected Dimension of Development
• IV. DEMOCRACY AND IDENTITY BASED CONFLICTS: PROBLEM OR SOLUTION?
• The Postwar Effects of Civil Conflict
• The Postwar Public Health Effects of Civil Conflict
• Structures OF Violence
• TARGETING DIASPORAS: THE CANADIAN COUNTER-TERRORISM EXPERIENCE
• The Dynamics of the Colombian Civil Conflict: A New Data Set
• GOVERNMENT-CIVIL SOCIETY ENGAGEMENT”
• Explaining Murderous Ethnic Cleansing
• Averting Immigration Emergencies
• Social Fractionalization, Political Instability, and the Size of Government
• International Peacebuilding: A Theoretical and Quantitative Analysis
• Determinants of Health and Education Outcomes.
• Aid, Policy and Growth in Post-Conflict Societies
• Immigration and Asylum or Foreign Policy: The EU’s Approach to Migrants and Their Countries of …
• Hypotheses on Religion and War
• The Future of Armed Conflict
• Statecraft in The Shadow of Civil Conflict
• Markets and Peace
• Civil Wars Kill and Maim People—Long after the Shooting Stops
• The political geography of conflict: Civil wars in the hegemonic shadow.
• Building Civil Societies: A Guide for Social and Political Activism.
• The Value Added OF Underground Activities:
• Federalism, Decentralization and Conflict Management in Multicultural Societies
• A Neural Network Approach to Modeling Inter-and Intra-State Conflict.
• Land and Violence in Post-Conflict Situations
• Deliberative Democracy and Referendums
• Developing peacemaking institutions: an economist’s approach
• Ethnic Diversity, Political Systems and Conflict
• Some Social Requisites of a Democratic Civil Peace: Democracy, Development, and Armed Conflict
• Building Institutions for Peacemaking and Peacekeeping: Some Lessons from Systems Control Theory and …
• Deconstructing Terror: Insurgency, Repression and Peace
• An Alternative to Government, or a Parallel Government:
• The Social Construction of Internal War: Towards a Framework of Understanding
• Engendering Peacebuilding.
• Ethnicity and Politics in the US: The Predicament of the African-American Minority
• Implications of ethnic diversity
• Political Conditions for Agrarian Reform and Poverty Alleviation
• Transforming Ethnic Conflicts
• ‘Violent and Nonviolent Trajectories in Contentious Politics.
• Ensuring Land Access IN Post-CONFLICT Situations
• Beyond the Political Impossibility Theorem of Agrarian Reform
• … Goes to War: Methodological Individualism, Rational Choice and the Political Economy of War
• Psychological trauma and social healing in Croatia
• A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict
• Once more into the breach: economic growth and global integration
• Fractionalization
• Does Violent Conflict Make Chronic Poverty More Likely? The Mindanao Experience
• The Decline of PKK and the Viability of a One-state Solution in Turkey
• Why ethnic politics and ‘pork’tend to go together.
• A Revised List of Wars Between and Within Independent States, 1816-2002
• Securing Constitutional Government: The Perpetual Challenge
• Weak States, Rough Terrain, and Large-Scale Ethnic Violence since 1945
• Preventing Civil Strife: An Important Role for Economic Policy
• The Remnants of War: Thugs as Residual Combatants.
• The Political Economy of Comparative Human Misery and Well-being
• Casualties of Militarization in the Contemporary World: Democracy and Development
• The Emerging Media Ecology in Asia
• Post violence as a sociological issue
• Education in Emergencies
• Globalization and Conflict: Welfare, Distribution, and Political Unrest.
• Human capital, schooling and health
• Sometimes You Just Have to Leave: Domestic Threats and Refugee Movements, 1964-1989
• Sinhala-ness and Sinhala nationalism
• CHILDREN AS ZONES OF PEACE: WORKING WITH YOUNG CHILDREN AFFECTED BY ARMED VIOLENCE
• Measuring the Societal Impact of War
• THE IMPACT OF ETHNIC DIVERSITY ON ECONOMIC GROWTH: THE CASE OF AFRICAN COUNTRIES
• By How Much Does Conflict Reduce Financial Development
• Death in Wars and Conflicts between 1945 and 2000.
• Altruism or Self-Interests: What Prompts Humanitarian Military Intervention?
• Memories of a Fragmented Nation: Rewriting the Histories of India’s Partition

Democracy: The Third Wave

The second wave was when the Soviet Union collapsed. One hopes the third wave will be the final. And China is the biggest prize in the wings, but also the most complicated.

I just looked up the Wikipedia List of Countries by System of Government. The countries to be targeted are as follows. The news links will take you to the Google News page for that country.

Absolute Monarchies: Bhutan (news), Bahrain (news), Brunei Darussalam (news), Kuwait (news), Oman (news), Nepal (news), Qatar (news), Saudi Arabia (news), Swaziland (news), Tonga (news), United Arab Emirates (news), Vatican City (news).

Authoritarian Governments: Algeria (news), Burkina Faso (news), Cameroon (news), Chad (news), Republic of Congo (news), Djibouti (news), Egypt (news), Equatorial Guinea (news), Eritrea (news), Ethiopia (news), Gabon (news), The Gambia (news), Guinea (news), Libya (news), Mauritania (news), Rwanda (news), Togo (news), Tunisia (news), Uganda (news), Zimbabwe (news). Azerbaijan (news), Iran (news), Kazakhstan (news), Kyrgyzstan (news), Maldives (news), Pakistan (news), Syria (news), Tajikistan (news), Turkmenistan (news), Uzbekistan (news), Yemen (news). Belarus (news).

Military Governments: Central African Republic (news), Myanmar (news), Sudan (news).

Communist States: Cuba (news), People's Republic of China (news), Democratic People's Republic of Korea (news), Laos (news), Vietnam (news).

Transitional Governments: Afghanistan (news), Burundi (news), Democratic Republic of the Congo (news), Haiti (news), Iraq (news), Liberia (news), Somalia (news), Côte d'Ivoire (news).

In China's case, one has to look in terms of hundreds of years. When Americans look back at their history, they are looking at 500 years. The Chinese? They are looking at 5000 years. The history of communism in China has to be seen as a great nation's backlash against then western imperialism. The continued defensiveness on the part of the Chinese has to be seen not only as a result of that history, but also as a reaction to the continued racism in the west. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) in several ways is the NAACP of the Chinese people, only much more effective. Before you expect a person to move beyond a pain, you have to at least acknowledge the pain. The same applies to countries.

And the CCP has to be given credit for its amazing stewardship of the Chinese economy. It is an organization of patriots who are pragmatic to a fault and who genuinely want the best for their country. The Chinese economic miracle has bountiful lessons for the Global South in general.

But then India has been able to exhibit some pretty remarkable strides with software and the service sector like China has with the industrial sector, and so the trick is not in communism, but in the market mechanism. When you unleash it, magic happens.

I take it for granted that China will ultimately end up being a multi-party democracy. But it will be a tectonic shift that will cause change also within existing democracies. America as a democracy itself has numerous deficiencies. Civilizations stand to learn from each other.

The question is not if but when and how soon. More importantly, how can the pace towards democracy be expedited in China?

I agree with the proponents of engagement. China's coming under the WTO umbrella was a major positive step.

The Chinese leadership can lay claims to patriotism, and to not being corrupt in money terms. But they are corrupt in power terms. What they have is a monopoly of power that needs to be broken.

I can imagine China someday becoming a global superpower, perhaps surpassing every other. But it can do so only if it embraces democracy and becomes party to the idea of a Reorganized UN. On the other hand, the whole superpower talk itself might go out of fashion in a few decades. The talk might instead be of social infrastructure. The focus might be on the individual, the individual everywhere. As someone once said, we need a great political system, so we don't need a genius to run it, and so I can focus on things I want to do as an invidividual, without having to worry the system might break down, even if I don't bother to go vote.

Superpower talk is ego talk, not particularly helpful. But if it be, the only way to beat America, which is the number one country in the world today, is to beat its democracy, for some other country to become even more democratic. What is more likely to happen instead is, America itself will keep perfecting its democracy, and it is well on its way to becoming a majority non-white country. Down the line it might be possible to see a Chinese American in the White House, but it is a really long way before a white person becomes President of China, and therein lies America's open secret of success. America is an idea, it is not a white country, although its lingering social ills might lead some or many to believe so.

China might do a really good job of catching up, and in the process it might even surpass the US GDP, but if it really wants to outdo America, it will have to become a country that actually invents new industries, and the only way to do that is by unleashing the individual, which is democracy. State power does not invent, it stifles.

I am a Buddhist. That makes me directly related to the plight of the Tibetans. I do not see Tibet as a separate country. But I do see a China that is a multi-party democracy, that respects human rights, religious freedom, and within that framework the Tibetans thrive, and all Tibetans get to call Tibet home again. That is an uncompromising goal to me.

And so I was deeply offended when the junta in Kathmandu shut down the Dalai Lama's office in Kathmandu.

What I am getting at is, I can see the geopolitical reasons behind the stances of the major powers regards countries like Pakistan and China. But Nepal affords a major opportunity to the Indo-US-EU alliance. In the case of Nepal, the three powers can actually afford to become idealistic, and they should seize the opportunity.

And a subsequently democratic Nepal should become to Tibetans what India is today. Safe havens like Dharmashala should be established.

You have to keep needling the Chinese, you have to keep supporting the Chinese democrats, mostly abroad.

Nepal is an opportunity India, US and Europe can not afford to miss.