Doctoral Dissertation Research: Federal State-Making and Democratic Processes in Nepal

The number of democracies in the world continues to increase. Many of them are organized as federal republics, like the U.S., with a division of powers between a federal government and the governments of the individual constituent units, often called states. However, new democracies have found that instituting these arrangements -- defining the powers and delineating the units -- can lead to violent contestation even though federalism is promoted as a broad-based solution to managing ethnic-territorial civil conflicts, expediting national economic development, and enhancing democracy. This raises questions about the human dimensions of instituting federalism. How do citizens experience federal change? How do citizens of different ethnicities and other affiliations come to feel included or excluded at the local level? How do their feelings of local attachment affect their attachment to the nation and the quality of the democracy that results? These are important questions for understanding what makes democracy work or not work in the world today. To investigate these questions, Yale University anthropology graduate student, Amy Johnson, under the supervision of Dr. Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan, will undertake research in Nepal. Nepal is currently transitioning to federal governance following the conclusion of a ten-year civil conflict (1996-2006), making it an ideal location for the research. By studying how a system of federal provinces is demarcated and institutionalized as it is taking place, the research addresses fundamental questions about the relationship between structures of governance, political participation, and sentiments of national belonging.

To understand how diverse regional and socio-economic groups engage with the process of producing a federal system, Johnson will collect data at three organizational levels: a multi-ethnic local community in a region that has seen recent violence in response to the implementation of federalism; a district that bridges the local and the national administrative relationships; and the capital, where lawmakers and state-restructuring experts are designing Nepal's federal provinces and accompanying administrative and legal policies. In each locale, she will employ a mix of social science methods, including: ethnographic participant observation, life history interviews with multiple stakeholders, and archival research. Findings from this research will offer insight into how federal arrangements are achieved within unique cultural contexts, expanding understanding of federalism beyond its theorization as a technical-financial system and toward greater knowledge of its human dimensions, wherever federalism is found.