State Building in Nepal : Creating a Functional State

Contents: Foreword. Preface. Acronyms and abbreviations. 1. Introduction. 2. The history of state building in Nepal. 3. Towards a new state: federal, inclusive, democratic republic. 4. Crisis in reinventing the functional state. 5. Conclusion and discussion. References. Annexes.

From the preface: " This book is a synthesis of the author\'s 21 years of research on different issues of contemporary Nepali politics (political parties, elections, governance, the constitution, monarchy, ethnicity, civil society and democracy), supplemented by a rapid field assessment to bring the research up-to-date. The author\'s knowledge and information on social change, economic development and contemporary politics in Nepal is applied to the issue of state building. The author has adopted the Department for International Developments\' (DFID\'s) concept of \'responsive state building\', i.e., (a) political settlement, (b) survival function (the state\'s capacity to provide security, extract funds and taxation, and to promote the rule of law), and (c) expected function (the government\'s ability to deliver services in collaboration with civil society and the private sector). The author also reviews other available literature on concepts of, and approaches to, state building and recent publications on Nepali society, the economy and Nepali politics, including media reports."