English - Support to Participatory Constitution Building in Nepal ...

The Remake of a Statehigher during the first five years after the end of a conflict than it is incomparable countries (The World Bank 2003). Nevertheless, the idea thatpost-conflict countries find themselves on the path from the horrors of warto the promises of peace underpins much of the literature. In contrast, it isoften argued that post-conflict spaces cannot be understood as a process(whether positive or negative) but need to be conceptualised in terms ofspace - a field of power relations where multiple 'sovereigns' negotiaterule across multiple spaces of political authority (Heathershaw 2008).Feudal structure, poverty and extreme inequality are the main featuresof underdevelopment in Nepal. These made the armed conflict germinatewith the aim of emancipating the people and develop the countryprosperously. The decade-long armed conflict had both positive andnegative effects; there were changes in the political, social and economicsystems, but at the same time numerous physical infrastructures andthousands of human lives were destroyed. After the armed conflict halted,mainly the construction, rehabilitation and advancing of peace processhave been initiated. Some scholars even claim that these are some ofthe important functions of post-conflict state building. But this notion isincomplete in the sense that accepting only them is to brush aside thediversity and pluralism that most of the societies contain.Military intervention justifies military involvement in maintaining peaceand/or single sovereign approach. It relates to the territorial integrity ofa state and assumes multiple nation-states as mutually exclusive to thesingle sovereign approach; whereas the multiplicity of sovereign approachrealises the presence of nation-states with the presence of diverse humangroups and actors aspiring for autonomous governing units with only aloose federation. The multiplicity of sovereign approach is much closer tonation-building.4. National integrity and state buildingThe state-centric assumptions of state building is problematic in that itfails to contend with how authority often exists in multiple spaces beyondand across the bounds of the state, denying a single dominant or singlesubordinate group. In post-conflict spaces, localising and globalisingtendencies are both prevalent, as the boundaries of the state may becalled into question by both ethnically-based proponents' claims andcosmopolitan rights-promoting agendas. Nepal had been practising anassimilation approach of national integration assuming that this would7