Yet, agreement between the NC and UML alone does not guarantee the long-term success of the government and Nepali democracy. It’s going to be a crucial year—2014 (2071 BS, in the Nepali calendar, which starts in a month).

Parties have promised that they will bring out the constitution within a year. Nepali people will probably accept it even if that’s going to take two years, as long as they see tangible progress on the ground: on constitution writing but, as importantly, on economic development. How to ensure that this happens?

Why democracy endures

A recent edition of The Economist (March 1-7) has a six-page essay on democracy, which takes a broad global framework. The essay—titled “What’s gone wrong with democracy”—tackles the problems of democracies in both emerging ones, like ours, and evolved ones, like the US and UK.

Some of its arguments are worth pondering-at a time when the NC and UML have come out victorious in the second

election held during the unfinished political transition that started in 2005-06; and a time when Nepal gets a second shot at constitution writing.

The moot question here is: Will our new constitution be broadly acceptable, become a bedrock of political cohesion and set the tone for democracy and, in extension, our economic development?

First, it will be prudent to state at the very outset: with all its ills, democracy is the most enduring form of government, as human history attests. Because it gives room (ideally) to openly articulate a broad range of opinions, including unpopular ones, it is inherently self-correcting.

Already, those analysts who were declaring in the aftermath of the NC-UML triumph that Nepal is now on a safe path to recovery and constitution writing are now penning commentaries on Prime Minister Sushil Koirala’s new challenges of running a coalition with a partner, which, understandably, is demanding a fair say in governance. Hopefully, the junior coalition partner will be as zealous about its role in constitution writing.

Global scope

On a global scale, the rise of China has been a leading factor in democracy losing its luster. The 20th century was clearly an American century, with the US establishing itself as the predominant power in many respects, not just economically and militarily. Its value system and the range of things it represents (from Hollywood to Harvard) have been a guiding light for the rest of the world. The fact that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s daughter is a student at Harvard says a lot about America. From Boston to Berkeley, American college/university classrooms have a fair number of students not just from China but from India, Japan and South Korea.

This is a triumph of American democracy. Its academic institutions have excelled in ensuring the free flow of ideas and encouraging relentless challenges to conventional wisdoms.  

Still, some facts are unquestionable.

The Economist offers a few reasons that have sowed seeds of doubt in the global democracy project.

As mentioned above, China is clearly a major factor. When America was growing fastest, it doubled living standards roughly every 30 years; China has been doing so every decade this past 30 years.

Second, Russia (read Putin) is a democracy in peril. It shows how Putin has elected himself twice as president and prime minister and still turned himself into an authoritarian ruler. Clearly, without the attendant checks and balances in place, election outcomes alone do not ensure a democracy.  

Third, if elections were able to usher in democracy, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Muhammad Morsi, would not have to be unceremoniously dumped. Elected in office after a globally televised and awe-inspiring popular uprising, Morsi read the election outcome as a winner-takes-all mandate, granting himself unbridled authority, putting Muslim Brotherhood cadres in important state positions and creating an upper house with a permanent Islamic majority. In our own context, after Nepal’s Maoists became a surprise winner in the 2008 elections, new Prime Minister Dahal gave a sack to Army chief Rookmangud Katawal for what Dahal perceived as General Katawal’s political intransigence.      

From Libya to Syria to Egypt, the Arab spring that started over three years ago has given way to nations that are now deeply divided over their roadmap. Iraq and Afghanistan, two places which have been sites for democracy projects and attracted a great deal of attention over the past decade, are now among the most violent places in the world. A third global darling, South Africa, has shown how rule by majority means little when it comes to delivering successful governance. The great Nelson Mandela did avert ethnic mayhem and a possible civil war but his party, the ANC, is a corrupt institution, which has failed to deliver the goods to the majority blacks.   

Avoiding majoritarianism

Here are some strong messages, both for Western and emerging democracies.

The Western countries gave their citizens the right to vote long after they had evolved their political systems. The UK and France had a long tradition of liberalism and independent judiciary before they embarked on universal franchise; women were given the vote in America only in 1920. This line of argument is well developed in Fareed Zakaria’s seminal work The Future of Freedom.

The two-party system in America has given way to gridlock and ugly turf war, shadowy politics where lobbyists and the wealthy often rule the roost while both Democratic and Republican leaders to please their partisan supporters. This gives way to extremism because party leaders have to appeal only to the faithful to remain in power.

The Economist argues that the most successful new democracies have been successful largely because they avoided the lure of majoritarianism—”the notion that winning an election entitles the majority to do whatever it pleases.”

The essay argues that India (since 1947) and Brazil (in mid-1980s) have survived as democracies because they were quick to put limits on the power of the government while providing guarantees for individual rights. Deepening democracy at the local level brings in accountability and local leaders are far more likely to remain plugged in to local issues and constituencies. Hence, this offers a strong argument for an early local election, which Nepal hasn’t held since 1997.   

On final analysis, as Nepal is yet again set on the road of constitution writing, we will do well to keep in mind the succinct message from “What’s gone wrong with democracy”: Constitutions that endure have been found to encourage long-term stability; they have also been found to reduce the likelihood that disgruntled minorities will take against the regime.