the king. The high court judges are all appointed by the king; beneath the high court are magistrate courts.
REGIONAL AND LOCAL
GOVERNMENT
Bhutan is divided into 20 districts, each of which is headed by an elected officer. Districts are composed of villages, each one again headed by a locally elected leader.
The Electoral System
The king’s position is hereditary. No votes are cast to elect him, but democratic reforms instituted in 1998 grant authority to remove the king by two-thirds vote of the National Assembly. Local elections for the Assembly were scheduled to be held in late 2005. Prior to 2002 each family had one vote. A new law passed that year, however, stipulated that each citizen over the age of 21 could vote by secret ballot for a representative to the National Assembly.
The Party System
Bhutan has no political parties. Parties are illegal.
Major Political Parties
Bhutan has no political parties.
Minor Political Parties
Bhutan has no political parties.
Other Political Forces
Bhutan has accomplished much in the context of seri- ous ethnic conflicts in southern Bhutan, where the migrant Nepali Bhutanese (Lhotshampa) community constitutes about 90 percent of the population. Sev- eral programs introduced by the royal government in 1988–89 to “preserve” the traditional Buddhist politi- cal and social culture (Tsuwa Sum) met with strong resistance from some of the Hindu Nepali Bhutanese, resulting in the first serious conflict in modern Bhu- tan. About 20 percent of the Lhotshampa community in southern Bhutan were either forced out of their homes or fled the country, first to India and then most of them to refugee camps in southeastern Nepal. This led to a major crisis in Bhutan-Nepal relations that by mid-2005 was still unresolved. The two governments meet periodically to discuss this issue but have not yet made much progress in reaching an agreement.
The sentiment in Bhutan has turned increasingly hard-line toward the Lhotshampa dissidents—termed
ngolops (traitors) by the Bhutanese. The ngolop “resis-
tance” movements have established bases in the Indian- Bhutan border area from which raids are launched periodically into southern Bhutan, directed primarily at Lhotshampa families that have refused to leave Bhu- tan and join the resistance movement—or “terrorists”
as the Bhutanese call them. In the 1997 Tshogdu ses- sion, some hard-line Bhutanese members introduced a resolution stipulating that all relatives of ngolops should be excluded from the government service and security forces, and the demand was even made that they should be expelled from the country. What was even more disturbing was that a number of cabinet ministers supported the resolution even though the king has stated repeatedly that no Bhutanese should be punished for acts committed by a relative. The debate on this issue may well be the most important and viru- lent in Bhutan’s modern history, with possible major consequences for the political system.
National Prospects
Bhutan’s international relations with states other than Nepal remain very good. The country has joined the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA), and the Bangladesh, Indian,
Myanmar, Singapore, and Thailand Economic Coop- eration Forum (BIMSTEC). It has also applied for membership in the World Trade Organization. Along with Bhutan’s steady economic growth, the numer- ous governmental reforms in the late 1990s and early 2000s have secured the country’s status as a developing constitutional monarchy and bode well for its future. The refugee issue involving 100,000 Bhutanese in Nepal remains unresolved, and these citizens remain in UN-run camps.
Further Reading
Quigley, J. “Bhutanese Refugees in Nepal: What Role Now for the European Union and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees?” Contemporary South Asia 13, no. 2 (June 2004): 187–200.
Royal Government of Bhutan, Planning Commission Secre- tariat. Bhutan 2020: A Vision for Peace, Prosperity, and Happiness. Thimphu: Royal Government of Bhutan, 1999.
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ince independence, Bolivia has experienced overlap- ping periods of caudillo rule, oligarchy, social revo- lution, single-party rule, military regimes of Left and Right, and, most recently, multiparty electoral democ- racy. In economic terms, Bolivia has been both a clas- sic example of economic disaster and a paradigmatic case of successful structural adjustment. These and other contrasts make this multiethnic nation of nearly 9 million people—70 percent of whom self-identify as members of one of various indigenous communi- ties—one of the more complex political environments in the region.HISTORY
After independence from Spain in 1825, political fac- tions formed largely around the personal struggles of competing strongmen, or caudillos. The first five decades of the republican period were characterized by fierce struggles among elites who often used state power to extract the nation’s wealth, concentrated in silver and tin mines. It was not until the conclusion of the War of the Pacific (1870), during which Bolivia lost its coast, that political parties began to form. Between 1884 and 1899 Bolivia experienced its first period of long-term civilian rule.
A two-party political system ostensibly pitted Liber- als against Conservatives. In actuality, political com- petition was less about ideology than about the personalistic struggles between a few powerful men. These elites were usually affiliated with tin or silver
oligarchies and controlled most of the land. In this remarkably stratified society, indigenous peoples (indí-
genas) and poor, “mixed-race” Mestizos were often
forced by landlords into highly exploitative land-tenure arrangements and personal labor service obligations. The small middle sectors of society depended on the political ruling class for the employment and wages that allowed them to maintain their social status.
Oligarchic rule, however, faced several challenges in the 20th century. Several catastrophic events—includ- ing the Great Depression and the devastating loss to Paraguay during the Chaco War (1932–35)—had profound effects on the Bolivian political system. Held responsible for much of the political and economic turmoil, ruling elites were greatly weakened. New actors entered the national stage and offered political alternatives that ranged from extreme right wing to Trotskyist. The most important of these new groups was the less extreme, but still revolutionary, multiclass Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR).