Written by Aliye Fettah
May 5, 2026
Introduction
In Nepal, it has become part of the political repertoire for citizens to challenge recurring elite dominance, legislative capture, and corruption, thereby transforming bottom-up protest itself into a constant instrument of democratic recovery, political imagination, and participation. Popular protest and resistance function as critiques of bureaucratic hierarchies and as creative forces that reshape political life in Nepal. Ultimately, however, exceptional citizen mobilization fell short of its apparent goals, and Nepal’s democracy remains fragile due to recurring cycles of maximalist politics — whereby protest movements expand their demands beyond achievable institutional reform — and the incomplete institutionalization of citizens’ demands.
The political history of Nepal is marked by continuous regime shifts driven by social mobilization against concentrated power. After a long history of monarchy, Nepal transformed into a parliamentary democracy in 1959, only to revert to a royal autocracy under King Mahendra’s partyless Panchayat system between 1962 and 1990. Massive protests in 1990 led to the restoration of multiparty democracy under a constitutional monarchy. However, persistent instability, economic struggles, and exclusion triggered the Maoist insurgency (1996–2006).
The 2006 People’s Movement weakened the monarchy and led to its abolition in 2008. Nepal transitioned into a federal democratic republic under the 2015 constitution (Encyclopedia Britannica). Since then, the democratic regime has been fragile due to constant government changes, executive aggression, a politicized judiciary, and corruption (Encyclopedia Britannica). The 2025 Gen-Z protest was triggered by social media bans, nepotism, corruption, and unemployment following the resignation of Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli (Aryal, 2025).
This study examines the evolution of Nepal’s protest mechanism, demonstrating that social movements and protests are not anomalies but rather tools of democratic correction.
Theoretical Foundations: Protest as a Democratic Corrector
Studies on Nepal’s democratic movements highlight how protest has been both a driver and a test of democratization. Pinckney’s From Dissent to Democracy (2020) demonstrates that nonviolent movements succeed in transforming towards democracy when sustained mobilization is balanced by low maximalism; in contrast, high maximalism leads to unstable, semi-democratic outcomes. Snellinger (2018) illustrates how youth activists converted revolutionary legitimacy into bureaucratic authority through policymaking, turning protest into governance. Gautam (2024) argues that unmet expectations and elite capture repeatedly triggered new waves of protest. Ghimire (2022) situates Nepal’s civic mobilization within a wider global wave of democratic protest, in which youth-led movements deploy shared repertoires of resistance to challenge corruption, exclusion, and elite dominance. These studies reveal that Nepal’s democracy remains fragile due to recurring cycles of maximalist politics and incomplete institutionalization of citizens’ demands.
Nepal’s protests occur outside formal institutional channels, distinguishing them as resistance rather than ordinary political participation. Ordinary participation operates within institutions through elections, parties, and legislatures. Resistance, by contrast, emerges when those institutions fail or are captured by elites, compelling citizens to act collectively beyond sanctioned channels. The long series of protests in Nepal became an instrument of democratic renewal, and the positive effects of nonviolent resistance on democracy increase citizens’ empowerment as political resistance rather than routine participation (Ghimire, 2022).
In Nepal, this resistance has also functioned as a creative force not merely reactive, but generative of new political forms, coalitions, and deliberative spaces that reshape democratic life. This creativity is most evident in the 1990 People’s Movement, where an unlikely coalition between ideologically opposed democratic and leftist groups invented a new form of collective pressure that forced the monarchy to lift the ban on political parties, and in the 2025 Gen-Z protests, where over 145,000 citizens participated in a digital national convention on Discord that elected former Chief Justice Sushila Karki as interim Prime Minister, inventing a new form of popular democratic legitimacy entirely outside state institutions (Aryal, 2025).
Mechanism of Resistance
Royal Centralization and the Emergence of Civic Dissent (1960–1990)
The 1990 People’s Movement emerged from accumulated grievances against the Panchayat system’s systematic suppression of political pluralism. The system restricted freedom of expression, banned political parties, and concentrated authority in the monarchy, leaving citizens with no legitimate institutional channel for dissent. The 1980 referendum narrowly confirmed the continuation of the Panchayat system, failed to release mounting democratic pressure, and instead drove political parties underground. Economic deterioration compounded political frustration: India’s trade blockade following Nepal’s arms purchase from China severely disrupted the economy, causing inflation to surge, a decline in living standards, and shortages of basic goods (Timalsina, 2023).
The coalition between the ideologically opposed Nepali Congress and the United Left Front kept demands focused and achievable rather than expansive, exemplifying what Pinckney (2020) identifies as the optimal conditions for democratic transition: low maximalism combined with high mobilization. As a result, King Birendra lifted the ban on political parties, and an interim government under the NC drafted a new constitution, establishing a multiparty constitutional democracy. However, the democratic gains proved fragile. The interim government collapsed within 9 months, and successive governments proved similarly short-lived. Rather than consolidating democratic institutions, political elites engaged in factional competition that produced chronic instability, economic mismanagement, and public disillusionment — reflecting what Gautam (2024) describes as unmet expectations that triggered new waves of mobilization and directly set the conditions for the 1996 Maoist insurgency and the 2006 Second People’s Movement.
Democratic Openings and Governance Failures (1990–2006)
Despite the democratic gains of the 1990s, Nepal continued to struggle with corruption, factionalism, and economic stagnation. These systemic failures culminated in King Gyanendra’s dissolution of Parliament in 2005 and his imposition of direct royal rule, eliminating the remaining institutional channels for political participation (Encyclopedia Britannica). A decade-long Maoist insurgency that claimed thousands of lives further destabilized the country, exposing the fundamental inability of existing institutions to address demands for inclusion and accountability (Tamang, 2017).
The 2006 movement was not a singular civic uprising but a convergence of distinct and historically grounded discourses of exclusion. The Madhesi communities of the southern Tarai plains demanded regional autonomy, recognition as legitimate Nepali citizens, and fair political representation, challenging their long-standing marginalization within the state (Tamang, 2017; Das & Mohapatra, 2023). The Janajati communities, comprising approximately 40 percent of the population, challenged the assimilationist policies that had historically forced them to conform to hill-caste Hindu culture, demanding instead identity-based federalism and collective rights over land and natural resources (Tamang, 2017; Bhattarai, 2020). The Dalit movement demanded the eradication of caste-based untouchability and proportional representation in all state institutions (Tamang, 2017; Bishwakarma, 2017). Together, these movements exemplify what Ghimire (2022) identifies as civic mobilizations deploying shared repertoires of resistance to challenge corruption, exclusion, and elite dominance.
As a result of the 2006 Second People’s Movement, the monarchy was formally abolished in 2008, the Maoists entered Parliament, and a Constituent Assembly was elected to draft a new constitution (Encyclopedia Britannica). Unlike the 1990 People’s Movement, which was characterized by low maximalism and high mobilization that enabled a successful democratic transition, the 2006 movement combined high maximalism with high mobilization, a combination Pinckney (2020) identifies as producing unstable, semi-democratic outcomes.
Despite the movement’s success, Brahmin-Chhetri elite dominance persisted within the new political structures, limiting genuine power-sharing and perpetuating the exclusion that had originally fueled mobilization (Tamang, 2017). The Madhesi, Janajati, and Dalit communities found themselves underrepresented and alienated within the very institutions their resistance had helped create — reflecting what Snellinger (2018) identifies as the failure to convert protest legitimacy into inclusive governance. This gap between protest achievement and institutional consolidation directly set the conditions for the grievances that would resurface in the 2015 constitutional crisis.
Constitutional Change and Cycles of Grievance (2015–2020)
The 2015 constitution, drafted under pressure from a devastating earthquake and the ensuing humanitarian crisis, represented a significant milestone in Nepal’s democratic transition but also triggered a new wave of civic resistance. The largest parties fast-tracked the constitution through a sixteen-point agreement, prioritizing speed over inclusive deliberation — a process that Madhesi, Tharu, Janajati, Dalit, religious minorities, and women’s groups argued diluted commitments to meaningful federalism and democratic consultation (International Crisis Group, 2016).
The Madhesi and Tharu communities, who together comprised close to a third of Nepal’s population but held only approximately ten percent of assembly seats, opposed the constitution because it entrenched structural discrimination rather than remedying it (International Crisis Group, 2016). Their grievances centered on four specific constitutional provisions: the delineation of electoral constituencies that failed to reflect actual population densities; the reduction of proportional representation and dilution of affirmative action commitments; the drawing of federal state boundaries that fragmented Madhesi and Tharu population centers; and citizenship clauses that restricted women’s ability to pass full citizenship to their children (International Crisis Group, 2016).
In January 2016, the major parties passed two amendments that appeared to address representation and constituency boundaries. However, these had been adopted unilaterally rather than through genuine political negotiation, thereby losing the legitimacy that would have resulted from a consultative process (International Crisis Group, 2016).
This process exemplifies what the theoretical literature identifies as ‘incomplete institutionalization’: formal constitutional and legislative change that lacks the participatory legitimacy necessary to translate protest demands into durable democratic structures.
The protests that followed resulted in 57 deaths, a 135-day economic blockade, and sustained civic disruption across the Tarai plains (International Crisis Group, 2016). The 2022 elections further reflected growing public disillusionment: CPN-UML lost 43 seats compared to 2017, declining from 121 to 78 seats, while the newly formed Rastriya Swatantra Party won 20 seats in its first general election, and independent candidates reached a record 1,200 — signaling a significant erosion of trust in established political actors (Vivekananda International Foundation, 2023).
This pattern of partial reform generating renewed grievance directly contributed to Prime Minister Oli’s unconstitutional dissolution of Parliament in 2020 and the broader disillusionment that culminated in the 2025 Gen-Z protests.
Digital Democratic Uprising: The 2025 Gen-Z Movement
By 2025, accumulated frustration over systemic corruption, chronic unemployment, the preferential appointment of politically connected individuals, and a decade of political stagnation culminated in Nepal’s largest civic uprising since the abolition of the monarchy. The immediate institutional triggers were Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli’s resignation amid corruption scandals and the government’s decision to ban 26 social media platforms — a measure widely interpreted as an attempt to suppress public scrutiny and limit civic organization (Aryal, 2025).
Rather than silencing dissent, the ban catalyzed nationwide protests and drove mobilization onto alternative digital platforms, most notably Discord. Successive administrations had failed to address endemic corruption, deliver meaningful economic opportunities for young Nepalis, or respond to demands for accountability that had animated protest movements since 2006.
These failures produced a generation of politically conscious citizens who, finding formal institutional channels unresponsive, turned to digital spaces as instruments of democratic resistance (Aryal, 2025).
The most analytically significant innovation of the 2025 protests was the use of Discord as a deliberative platform. Moderated by the NGO Hami Nepal via the server “Youth Against Corruption,” over 10,000 citizens engaged in open debate, with candidates directly questioned, and the proceedings livestreamed on YouTube for public transparency (Al Jazeera, 2025). An open poll drew 7,713 votes, with Chief Justice Sushila Karki receiving approximately 50 percent, and the military subsequently worked with Discord representatives to formalize the outcome (The Kathmandu Post, 2025; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2025).
These elections represented an unprecedented exercise in citizen-led deliberation, constituting precisely what Ghimire (2022) identifies as a new repertoire of resistance. The Discord elections were not merely a technological novelty but a political act — a direct assertion that democratic legitimacy could be constructed by citizens themselves when formal institutions abdicated that responsibility. However, the movement also highlighted a recurring tension in Nepal’s protest history: its demands escalated into maximalist claims that bypassed parliamentary mechanisms entirely, raising constitutional concerns among established political actors (Aryal, 2025).
Evolution of the Movements
A constant feature of Nepal’s resistance mechanism is the emergence of maximalist demands following the success of protests. In the 1990 People’s Movement, the initial goal was to end authoritarian rule, but demands evolved into a call for multiparty democracy. In 2006, the movement began with calls for the restoration of Parliament but escalated to the full abolition of the monarchy and transition to a republic. The 2015 Madhesi and Tharu protests began with representational grievances but escalated into broader challenges to constitutional legitimacy. The 2025 Gen-Z protest initially emerged as a response to corruption but quickly adopted maximalist demands that bypassed parliamentary mechanisms. While these actions constrained elite dominance, they also demonstrated how maximalist escalation can erode constitutional legitimacy.
The informal resistance in the Nepali case creates a paradox where it corrects democratic backsliding in the short term but erodes constitutional legitimacy when it becomes maximalist and bypasses formal institutions. The 1990 People’s Movement demonstrates the corrective function of resistance — it successfully restored multiparty democracy. Nevertheless, the subsequent failure of political elites to deliver inclusive governance transformed a democratic victory into renewed grievance. The 2006 Second People’s Movement illustrates the erosive dimension: high maximalism combined with elite capture prevented the movement’s democratic achievements from translating into durable institutional reform.
This cycle persists because each wave of resistance produces short-term political concessions without addressing the structural conditions: corruption, elite capture, and the exclusion of marginalized communities that originally prompted mobilization. As Gautam (2024) argues, unmet expectations consistently generate new waves of resistance, producing a pattern in which informal civic action simultaneously safeguards and destabilizes democratic governance.
Conclusion
Nepal’s journey from monarchy to democracy has been shaped by recurring social movements, resistance, and moments of democratic resurgence, demonstrating that protest has functioned as the country’s core mechanism of democratic correction. With each wave — from the 1990 and 2006 People’s Movements to the 2015 Madhesi protests and the 2025 Gen-Z uprising — citizens became more politically conscious, pushing back against elite dominance, corruption, and exclusion. The resistance shifted from the streets to digital platforms, introducing a new form of civic pressure and demonstrating that Nepal’s democratic resistance has fundamentally evolved. Throughout its history, Nepal’s democracy has oscillated between short-term recovery and recurring fragility. Whether the 2025 movement will produce durable democratic consolidation or generate a new cycle of maximalist expectations remains to be seen. What is clear is that citizens have demonstrated a capacity to construct new forms of political legitimacy when formal institutions fail to represent them — and that this capacity, however imperfect, remains Nepal’s most consistent democratic safeguard.
Author’s Note on AI Use
The author used ChatGPT for language editing and structural feedback during the drafting process. All the arguments, interpretations, and conclusions are the author’s own. The author assumes full responsibility for the content of the manuscript.