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

Post-conflict state buildinglead to nation-building. It is only after the April Movement-2006 thatthere was a greater realisation of frustration and need for recognising andrespecting pluralism and diversity in Nepal.The territorial claims by different ethnic and regional groups in post-conflictperiod attest to such conditions. The authority of the state for territorialintegrity is often questioned by such organisations. Different groups areagitating for a guaranteed territorial space in the new constitution. Thesocial engineering of federal states has also been questioned for in eachproposed federal state, there is a presence of numerous ethnic groups.Thus, the formation of the local-regional elite captured nation-state mightinvite conflict and violence, if mutually agreeable proposals are not wellprepared and promulgated.In the absence of a tangible theory of post-conflict state building, Nepal'spost-conflict challenges are far from predictions. In such a situation,advancing state building endeavors merits much serious attention.The UN's involvement in Nepal's peace process, the interests of India,the US, China and others (European Union, Norway and the likes) havetranscended this peace process from simply a local to a global subject ofpost-conflict state building.The 'state in society' approach of Migdal et al. (1994) and Migdal (2001) tointernationalised, post-conflict space is worth mentioning here. It is basedon three 'levels' of space (categories of 'selves'): local (subordinates existing'under' various authorities, local, national and translocal); elite (includinglocal, national and regional elites in authority over popular social spaces);and global (including 'the international community', but also radical andmoderate transnational movements). The interaction of local, elite andglobal selves is inter-spatial in that it takes place among their spaces ofauthority (Heathershaw 2008). It is assumed that post-conflict space ischaracterised by an intersection of these spaces (or selves) which leadsto the emergence of structures of governance and domination that aredifferent from what the international community might have envisagedor whatever the pre-conflict state would have been practising. However,rather than a fixed separation of these spaces, the focus should be ontheir interaction, and on the hybrid character of post-conflict spaces,their societies and the states. Consequently, identifying selves is not aneasy task. In no way the state would be able to exercise its continueddomination over the local, elite and global spaces and hence interactionamong these spaces would be the best fit for state building.8