Nepal’s party problem

After the 2008 Constituent Assembly election and the 2015 Constitution, scholars and civil society alike believed the country was on the path to lasting change. 

Despite early optimism, democracy remains fragile and falling short of the expectations of citizens. A corrupt elite dominates the political landscape while young citizens grow disillusioned to the point of taking to the streets or staging a mass exodus.

The GenZ movement toppled the government and fresh elections are on the horizon, with that there is another promise of a ‘New Nepal’. Young people previously uninterested in state affairs are now alert and demand a voice. Promising new parties are emerging. 

This political awakening should prompt reflection on where we went wrong and how to do better. One striking feature undermining Nepal’s democracy over the past three decades was the sheer number of coalition governments in such a short time. 

Nepal has had 14 prime ministers in 16 years. Each of them served an average of just a little over a year. Coalitions are not inherently bad for a democracy. In fact, coalitions can help bring in diversity of values, voices, and participation in Parliament. 

However, chronic and unpredictable coalition patterns undermine and destabilise democracy. Nepal’s fragile coalition governments degenerated into unholy alliances and horse trading between ideologically divergent and previously rival groups. 

When one coalition collapsed, the cycle repeated, leaving little room for long-term vision or consistent governance. The result? Corruption, endless infighting, stalled progress, and a nation stuck in political limbo.

This observation is not new, but the blame is misdirected. Some suggest a different electoral system entirely, but instead of scrapping the entire structure and building a new one from scratch, why not examine what went wrong within the systems we already have and fix those? 

The coalition problem is not a result of the electoral system but of the party system. While political parties are the medium through which representation and mass participation occur, a party system is the entire network of how they interact, compete, and cooperate within a country’s political landscape. 

It is not just one party that is the bad apple, the entire basket is creating conditions for the apples to rot. 

The party system is weakly institutionalised. Nepal struggles with unpredictable electoral competition, widespread public distrust in political parties, fragmented internal party structures, and shallow societal embeddedness. 

Party System Institutionalisation should create a structured, programmatic competition, but in Nepal the political environment is dominated by elite-level bargaining and opportunistic alliances. Parties form and break coalitions not out of principle, but convenience. Power, not policy, becomes the goal.

This fragility did not emerge overnight. Nepal’s history of a turbulent democracy led to the creation of a necessity- and survival-driven party system.Political parties were born in precarious circumstances, emerging in secrecy, exile, or in response to survival imperatives, rather than organic political development. 

The absolute monarchy was always a looming threat, and it worked to prevent the institutionalisation of party structures, even after 1990. As a result, coalition reshuffling became a reactionary survival strategy, reinforcing patterns of short-termism and deepening the perception of parties as opportunistic rather than principled actors. 

Over the years, this cycle has hollowed out the substantive meaning of electoral competition: while parties compete and governments change, the underlying political dynamics remain stagnant, offering few real alternatives and fostering a culture of fickle and fragile coalitions.

Building a resilient democracy would require returning to the basics to  strengthen the foundations of our party system. Political parties need to look inward and invest in their own institutional development. 

That means promoting internal democracy through leadership term limits and transparent succession processes, building clearer ideological platforms that speak to citizens’ real concerns, and forging deeper and more consistent connections with society that go beyond election season or clientelistic outreach. 

What Nepal’s parties need is not another rebranding campaign or a protest, but a fundamental reassessment of their purpose, vision, and social relevance. 

These lessons are especially important for new political parties hoping to present themselves as genuine alternatives to the status quo. Real change will not come from winning seats alone, it will come from the hard, sustained work of building strong institutions and earning public confidence. 

If we once again have hung parliaments, parties will need to build alliances grounded not in self-serving negotiations but in shared policy visions and ideological goals. Without such reforms, Nepal will remain trapped in the same cycle of coalition instability that has long undermined its promise of stable governance and a thriving democracy.

Suvexa Pradhan Tuladhar is an Early Career Policy Research Fellow at Nepal Institute for Policy Research (NIPoRe). She recently graduated from Lake Forest College, IL, USA, with a B.A. (Hons). She double-majored in International Relations and Sociology & Anthropology and minored in Urban Studies.