Content area
Full Text
Executive Summary
The massive political mobilization, or janaandolan, of 2006 that swept away King Gyanendra's direct rule and dramatically altered the structure and character of the Nepali state and politics raises important theoretical and methodological questions for the study of civil society. Although the opposition movement was successful due to a new strategic alliance between the seven parliamentary parties and the Maoist rebels, the historic moment catapulted civil society into prominence among the forces arrayed against the royal regime. By focusing on the momentous events of the nineteen-day general strike from April 6-24, 2006, that brought down the 400-year-old Nepali royal dynasty, this study highlights the implications of civil society action within the larger political arena involving conventional actors such as political parties, trade unions, armed rebels, and foreign actors.
The detailed examination of civil society's involvement in Nepali regime change provides insights into four important topics in the study of civil society. The first is the distinction between civil society in its original philosophical and associational form in the West and its mimetic articulation in the developing world. The second examines the relationship between civil society and political society and the way the former generates its moral authority and efficacy based on claims to universal reason, knowledge, and techniques of polymorphous power. The third topic addresses the connection between the ideological and material base of civil society, which allows us to distinguish between its Western origins and the recent growth in the developing world. The final topic relates to the role of civil society in the international arena. The example of Nepal reveals ways in which civil societies in the developing world are evolving as policy instruments in interstate relations.
Although the notion of civil society is uncritically embraced in most places today, definitional difficulty arises not because civil society is an obscure phenomenon, but rather because it is so widespread in contemporary political practices and intellectual discourses. Not only are the organizational forms of civil society varied, but the functions it has been given by international donors are diverse. The World Bank, one of the major promoters of civil society in the developing world, has provided considerable funding through various mechanisms for the environment, microcredit, information technology, postconflict reconstruction, promotion of human rights,...