Spotlight South Asia

Paper Nr. 5/ 2012: Consolidating Democracy in A Retrospect and a Rebuttal of Democracy Measures

Author: Marian Gallenkamp (Heidelberg)

ISSN 2195-2787

1 SSA ist eine regelmäßig erscheinende Analyse- Reihe mit einem Fokus auf aktuelle politische Ereignisse und Situationen Südasien betreffend. Die Reihe soll Einblicke schaffen, Situationen erklären und Politikempfehlungen geben.

SSA is a frequently published analysis series with a focus on current political events and situations concerning South Asia. The series should present insights, explain situations and give policy recommendations.

APSA (Angewandte Politikwissenschaft Südasiens) ist ein auf Forschungsförderung und wissenschaftliche Beratung ausgelegter Stiftungsfonds im Bereich der Politikwissenschaft Südasiens.

APSA (Applied Political Science of South Asia) is a foundation aiming at promoting science and scientific consultancy in the realm of political science of South Asia.

Die Meinungen in dieser Ausgabe sind einzig die der Autoren und werden sich nicht von APSA zu eigen gemacht.

The views expressed in this paper are solely the views of the authors and are not in any way owned by APSA.

Impressum: APSA Im Neuehnheimer Feld 330 D-69120 Heidelberg [email protected] www.apsa.info

2 Acknowledgment: The author is grateful to the South Asia Democratic Forum (SADF), Brussels for the extended support on this report.

3 Consolidating Democracy in Bhutan – A Retrospect and a Rebuttal of Democracy Measures

Introduction

When Bhutan became one of the world’s youngest democracies back in 2008, academics and practitioners alike were amazed by the surprising ease with which transition was achieved. Democratization in Bhutan was unique in many ways, and some of the process’ particularities had a decisive impact on the shape of the new polity. The democratic nature of the new political system, however, has ever since been called into question and eyed with skepticism by many large-n datasets that claim to measure the degree of democracy, or cognitively related concepts like freedom and human rights, in a globally comparative way. Despite astonishing progress in all fields, Freedom House, the Economist’s Democracy Index and the Bertelsmann Transformation Index, all fail to attribute the predicate of ‘democracy’ when looking at Bhutan. Now, as 2012 is coming to an end, it appears to be a good time to pause for a moment and look back on the achievements and challenges that democracy consolidation faced during the first legislative period in Bhutan. Before the country and the scientific community is gearing up for the coming elections in 2013, taking a deeper look at how democracy fared in the previous years is essential in understanding Bhutan’s political trajectory and unmasking some of the major misjudgments and misunderstandings when relying on global measures of democracy.

Unique transitions produce unique polities

The unique nature of Bhutan’s transition to democracy has been subject of previous articles, but two important aspects that have had a major impact on the present polity and the conduct of politics in Bhutan seem to be worth mentioning at the outset: First, the drafting of the constitution, the legal umbrella that gave shape to the institutions and rules of the new polity, could be conducted without rush and in an atmosphere of stability. The drafting commission, which consisted of the Chief Justice of Bhutan, senior civil servants of important government agencies, members of the National Assembly, the elected members of the Royal Advisory Council, lawyers, elected members from all the 20 , and two eminent persons from the Central Monastic Body, examined

4 and analyzed dozens of constitutions from all over the world, as well as traditional sources of Bhutanese law. Besides the fundamental laws which were enacted in 1959, no previous document of such significance existed so that the constitution, to a large extent, could be drawn up from scratch. Unlike many other countries where judicial legacies in the form of prior constitutions exist and have to be taken into consideration, for practical or other reasons, in Bhutan the drafting committee had an enormous amount of freedom in designing the new constitution and tailoring it to the needs, customs and traditions of the country. Additionally, the drafting process was completely free from politico-strategic considerations and the usual bargaining of the involved political actors. As the constitution was drafted before a noteworthy politicization of the population and the elites took place, the considerations of the commission could be limited to purely technical aspects within the broader framework that the king had set for the content and shape of the constitution. Finally, the drafting of the constitution was not the result of demands from the people for reform. It did not have to consider balancing necessary structural/constitutional reform versus particular public demands. The result has been an interesting and unique mix of provisions that gave its distinct shape. Politics in Bhutan is conducted in a way that combines the structural needs of a modern, democratic state with the aspirations of a traditional Buddhist society. Qualified majorities, the involvement of both houses of parliament and the concept of ‘crown-in-parliament’ in the process of passing legislation, seek to harmonize an essentially majoritarian democracy with regard to its institutional framework, with the concept of consensual democracy in the realm of policy-making. This is an innovative expression of the deeply enshrined culture of consensus, stability and harmony. Second, the fact that democracy in Bhutan was introduced without the explicit demands of the citizenry resulted in the rather odd situation that the people had to be convinced of the merits and familiarized with the aspects of two core dimensions of democracy, namely inclusive participation and public contestation in the form of free and fair elections. Although elections were not new to Bhutan, the specific particularities of democratic elections, the idea of one man one vote, as well as the concept of political parties as intermediary institutions between politics and society had to be learned and explained. In most other countries that went through a process of democratic transition, political parties were either pre-existent or could easily be formed out of civil society groups that fought for democracy. In Bhutan however, political parties had to be formed in the absence of underlying societal cleavages that are usually thought of as being the basic conflicts along

5 which political competition is structured. Not only do these two aspects, drafting a constitution from an almost blank sheet and introducing democracy into a society without demand for political competition, continue to shape the institutional framework of the polity, they also influence the conduct of politics in numerous ways. Since there is no precedence for many regulations and practices stipulated by the constitution, the past years of democracy consolidation were probably as much about interpreting rules, adapting them to changing realities and creating precedence, as they were about constantly engaging the public in order to truly vitalize democracy.

Bhutan’s state of democracy: the pitfalls of surveys and indices

In order to assess the state of democracy in Bhutan, global surveys and indicators that try to capture democracy or certain areas deemed essential to democratic societies, are a good point to start and to contextualize Bhutan’s achievements. The most popular of these measures is the Freedom in the World index, annually composed by Freedom House. Although it does not explicitly measure democracy, it assesses key features of the concept, combining them in two dimensions composed of three and four sub-categories respectively: political rights and civil liberties. According to the scores in these two dimensions, a country can be classified as free, partly free, or not free. In its latest edition, Bhutan is categorized as partly free, along with all other countries in South Asia except for . Its political rights score is 4 and its civil liberties score is 5, both on a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 is the best and 7 the worst score. The rating has been constant since the transition to democracy in 2008. Prior to 2008, Bhutan was categorized as not free between 1993 and 2007. Ironically, Bhutan received its best ratings by Freedom House between 1973 and 1978 with a score of 4 on both dimensions, long before its transition to democracy. Without going too much into the technicalities and the methodology of the index, looking into the disaggregated data reveals that Freedom House identifies major shortcomings (i.e. the sub-category score is less than half of the maximum) in three sub-categories: Political Pluralism and Participation (7 out of 16 points), Associational and Organizational Rights (3 out of 12 points), and Rule of Law (5 out of 16 points). The specific way in which democracy came to Bhutan can probably be identified as the reason for the shortcomings in the first sub-category. As pluralism and participation are heavily dependent on a politicized society with a strong demand for democracy and

6 political parties are the organizational expressions of social, political, and economic cleavages, a lack thereof naturally alters and influences the degree of pluralism and participation, but also affects other issues such as the perception of the extend of organizational and associational rights. However, the fact that none of the seven subcategories that constitute the political rights and civil liberties dimensions changed, not even for a single point, in the span of four years quickly reveals a crucial lack of precision in the measurement tool. Given all the political developments in Bhutan, this generally calls into question the credibility of the Freedom in the World survey. Another well-known measure of democracy has more recently been devised by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The EIU’s Democracy Index has been compiled for 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2011. In this survey, countries are awarded scores between 0 and 10 in five different dimensions: Electoral Process and Pluralism, Functioning of Government, Political Participation, Political Culture, and Civil Liberties. Depending on the combined average score a country is categorized as full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid regime, and autocracy. Bhutan’s rank in this survey has constantly improved from 147 in 2006 to 109 in 2008 to 102 in 2010, but it allegedly lost two places in 2011 (104 th). However, throughout the whole time it is rated as a ‘hybrid regime’. Only the first two dimensions received more than half of the maximum score in 2011 (Electoral Process and Pluralism 6.25, and Functioning of Government 5.36). EIU identifies Political Participation and Civil Liberties as especially problematic awarding Bhutan only 3.33 and 3.53 points in these dimensions. Within the region, Bhutan ranks better than Pakistan and , and worse than Bangladesh, all of which are labeled as hybrid regimes. Only India has managed to be labeled as flawed democracy on rank 40. Considering the actual questions that are used to assess the state of democracy in both the above surveys, makes one wonder how well informed they might have been answered. Even more so when realizing that almost none of the ratings for subcategories and dimensions have changed at all since Bhutan’s transition to democracy. Or even worse, as is the case with the political participation dimension of the EIU Democracy Index, the score declined considerably in 2011 despite the remarkable success of Local Government Elections in that year. There are more indices than these two, but it is important to realize that these measures of democracy all suffer from major methodological flaws, are usually biased towards the western concept of liberal democracy as it evolved with all its particularities over centuries, and pretend accuracy in their assessment that is simply not there in reality. The bases for

7 their ratings are simply questionnaires, the answers to which get dressed in fancy numbers. Considering many of the questions that are asked to evaluate individual countries, it is at least doubtful whether the results are correct and the answers well- informed (especially the EIU’s democracy index depends heavily on data from the world value survey, which provides no information about Bhutan). Especially in the case of Bhutan, reading the country report published by Freedom House reveals a lack of understanding and fairness towards the country. Even more than two decades after the conflict with parts of the ethnic Nepalese population, the authors of this and other reports appear to be incapable of delinking the people in the camps from the people and politics in Bhutan, leading them to false judgments and a chronic under-appreciation of the remarkable achievements Bhutan has made during the past years. As these surveys appear to be equally biased against countries outside the western world that did not experience the same political evolution and developments as Europe and North America, the indices might however be useful to tentatively contextualize a country’s position within its region, but certainly not to evaluate its individual political systems accurately.

Democracy in Bhutan: a success story

The progress that Bhutan has made in consolidating its young democracy is remarkable. Although these processes take a long time, the past four years have seen improvements and positive developments in virtually all fields: The judicial branch of the system has been completed after the Supreme Court was established following initial delays. In 2011, it passed its first verdict in a high profile constitutional case, where the royal government had appealed an earlier judgment by the constitutional bench of the High Court. The judicial ‘battle’ between the government and the opposition party over the authority of the imposition of taxes was decided in favour of the opposition party. The verdict did not only demonstrate the independence of the judiciary, but also strengthened checks and balances by empowering the opposition in parliament. Additionally, judicial review is fostered by the provisions under article 22.9 of the constitution, which enables the court to act on its own motion and withdraw a case pending at the High Court and decide upon it itself. All tiers of the judicial system are working more and more efficient, with the number of decided cases considerably on the rise since the past three years. The rather mediocre

8 ratings that Bhutan receive by some indices when it comes to the rule of law are incomprehensible given not only the presence of an effective and professional judiciary, but also the fact the laws of the land are applied equally, just, and fair. The predominant interpretation of the term ‘rule of law’ is a formal one and not a substantive one, which would implicitly judge the degree of rule of law by the contents of the law. Furthermore, parliament has been able to pass a number of crucial laws that are not only in accordance with the constitution, but also in line with international conventions and rules of best practice. Although Bhutan is still listed as a Least Developed Country (LDC) by the UN, the Royal Government that took office after the first election has continuously been able to provide and expand services despite the very limited resources at its disposal. Rural electrification, infrastructure development, access to sanitation and safe drinking water are still on the rise, making Bhutan one of the most successful countries with regard to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Healthcare is still free and being expanded to the rural communities, as is education. The numbers come more and more close to universal enrolment for boys and girls in primary education and the secondary and tertiary education sector is expanding, attracting more and more people. Education of the young as the empowerment of future generations of citizens in a democratic state is one of the main focuses of government policy. Considering how vital education is for the functioning of democracy and for creating a sound foundation of an informed and productive political debate, Bhutan is on the right way to consolidate its democracy and to empower its citizens as stakeholders in the system. Again, it should raise some eyebrows when one takes a look at the indices’ indicators allegedly measuring ‘Government Effectiveness’ or ‘Functioning of Government’. Of course, the people expect much from their first democratically elected government and when expectations are high, disappointments can be too. But this problem is faced by all political systems in which governments are democratically elected and thus accountable to their constituents. The mere fact that the introduction of democracy can hardly change the socioeconomic situation of the people over night, or over a period of a few years, should not be misinterpreted as a shortcoming of government effectiveness. One important aspect that contributes to effective or good governance is certainly the level of corruption, be it in the private sector (then it is more a law and order problem) or in the public sector (then it is most definitely a problem of accountability, governance and transparency). Bhutan can probably be described as the lone star in South Asia when it

9 comes to corruption. According to international watchdog Transparency International, Bhutan ranked 33rd in the 2012 Corruption Perception Index. Looking at Bhutan’s neighbourhood reveals how well it performs: the next ranked country after Bhutan is Sri Lanka on the 79th place, followed by India on the 94th, Nepal and Pakistan on the 139th, and finally Bangladesh on the 144th place out of 174. This is not to say that corruption isn’t a problem in Bhutan. It is, as it is anywhere else as the Gyalpozhing Land Case demonstrates, where a number of high-ranking officials are implicated, including the Speaker of the National Assembly. But despite the scandalous nature of the case, it is precisely the wrestling between the Anti-Corruption Commission and the Office of the Attorney General over competences and the authority to prosecute that constitutes yet another example of ‘learning’ in a young democracy. The case has received extensive media coverage and regardless of how it is going to be solved, this publicity is probably as much important to raise awareness as is the way in which it is going to be solved. A functioning and vital democracy requires that the people have access to information in order to build a public opinion on issues. This is not only important for the citizens, who are enabled to receive and collect news and information on matters of their concern, but also for the government, which needs public debates on policies and decisions in order to stay accountable and responsive to its subjects. After the passing of the Bhutan Information Communications and Media Act in 2006, the media landscape improved continuously. New independent newspapers are being published providing for alternative sources of information besides the old established Kuensel newspaper. Foreign television channels can be received without many restrictions and censorship of the internet is minimal to non- existent. Like Bhutan’s performance with regard to corruption, its performance in the realm of press freedom is astonishing. According to Reporters Without Borders, Bhutan ranks 70th in their latest version of the Press Freedom Index. Nepal comes next on the 106th position, followed by Bangladesh on the 129th place, India on the 131st, Pakistan on the 151st, and Sri Lanka on the 163rd place. This is even more remarkable considering the fact that Bhutan was positioned amongst the world’s worst countries at the beginning of the millennium. Since its transition to democracy it improved its rank from 116. Criticising Bhutan for not having enough independent media and press sources is of no great use considering its size and population. New media outlets will emerge over time, but they will do so in line with the demand for their ‘products’ and not just because for the sake of press freedom. During the past years, the debates and discussions in different Bhutanese newspapers have been lively and critical, not only of the government, but also of the media

10 itself. The ability to self-reflection is important to guarantee a high standard of the news and information provided. Equally, the politicians and other officials are learning to deal with the public scrutiny they find themselves confronted with in an open, democratic system and society. Especially The Bhutanese, a newspaper launched in 2012, has over a short period of time developed into a truly critical source of information, closely watching not only the government, but also society at large, touching upon highly sensitive issues. Organizations like the Bhutan Centre for Media and Democracy have done a terrific job in raising awareness and educating people in ‘media literacy’. Lastly, press freedom and freedom of expression are not only guaranteed by the constitution, but also practiced in real life. One should remember that the absence of criticism does not automatically mean that it is suppressed. In fact one might want to contemplate whether it could actually mean that the people are satisfied with the work of their representatives. What sense is there, when the Freedom House country report on Bhutan argues that there is no criticism of His Majesty the King, when he has not done anything that would have been worth criticising? Not only does the constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan provide for the monarch to abdicate upon reaching the age of 65, it even allows for the disposition of the monarch by a vote of no- confidence, a truly remarkable provision. Outside Bhutan, and especially in the opinion of those ‘country experts’ that are responsible for assigning numbers to questions that then constitute the various scores of democracy indices, it is the institution of monarchy in Bhutan that is the point of contention. Until its latest edition, the Bertelsmann Transformation Index featured two small words in its description of Bhutan that are exemplary not only for this conflict, but probably also for the dimension of misperception. Albeit recognizing Bhutan’s transition to democracy and the fact that the country fares quite well in most dimensions of the political transition, it described Bhutan as a ‘royal dictablanca’, an assessment that could not be farer from the truth. In the latest edition, the term was dropped, but Bhutan is still rated as an autocracy. The political transition part of the BTI (or Democracy Status) is composed of five criteria (stateness, political participation, rule of law, stability of democratic institutions, and political and social integration) measured by 18 questions on a 1 to 10 scale. In order to determine whether a country is a democracy or not, six of these 18 questions have been chosen. For each of them, a minimum rating has been specified and a country has to meet the minimum criterion in all six questions to be rated as a democracy. Bhutan excels in five of these questions (free and fair elections: 7 points (6 required); association and assembly rights: 5 points (3 required); freedom of expression: 6 points (3 required); separation of

11 powers: 5 points (3 required); civil rights: 6 points (3 required)), but fails to meet one criterion: effective power to govern (2 points (3 required). The whole country report on Bhutan is one of the very few balanced ones and most judgements appear to be quite accurate (probably with the exception of the ‘stability of democratic institutions’ part). Even in the decisive section on the effective power to govern, it lists all possible veto-players that could hamper the government’s effective power to govern and asserts that none of them has the influence to do so. It is only in the very last paragraph of this section that the report deals a lethal blow to Bhutan’s status as a democracy when stating that “the king remains the ultimate authority and possesses an absolute veto (which he does not use openly, however). Bhutan is a constitutional, not a parliamentary monarchy. While the 2008 elections represented a significant step toward democratization, Bhutan is still not a democracy”. The reader is bound to wonder, where such an assessment stems from and what the sources are. To date, the king has not shown a single time that the monarchy’s commitment to democracy is flinching. He has kept a low profile in politics, usually acting only when being called upon and stressing that political conflicts have to be settled constitutionally and not by turning to the monarchy for a final solution. Granted, the king enjoys the utmost respect and reverence of the people, he is the nation’s unifying figure. He would probably even command the authority to act as an absolute veto-power vis-à-vis the government and parliament. But why would he do so? His father, the fourth , did use exactly this authority, not to overturn the government and to despotically rule the country, but to ‘force’ his subjects into embracing democracy, a step the monarchy would probably take a second time should it be the government that turns on democracy. While it might be hard to comprehend, especially given the example of Nepal, for the time being, the monarchy in Bhutan is yet another safeguard of democracy in the country.

The local government elections 2011 as an example of interpreting, adapting, and negotiating the ‘rules of the game’

There is probably no better example showing the practice, the challenges, and the learning process of democracy in Bhutan, than the three years of deliberations, problems, and solutions which led to the long awaited local government elections in 2011. With two rounds of elections on 21st January and 27th June 2011, democratization has reached the level of district, block, and municipal administration. During the past three years, local government elections had been postponed several times

12 and the road leading to polling day was a bumpy one with some surprising bends. While the delay of elections received much criticism by the public and the media and was seen as endangering the consolidation of democracy, the debates and controversies that evolved around the run-up to the elections point towards the interesting processes of learning and maturing in a democracy that is still comparatively young. When institutions and their inherent procedures and rules are newly created, it takes time to learn and to understand them. Rules, prescribed by the constitution and other laws, have to be internalized and interpreted in practice. The authority and competence of institutions that are part of the decision-making process have to be defined, as has the relationship between them. In the case of Bhutan’s local government elections, issues concerning the constitutionality of sections within laws, the compatibility between different acts of law, and the authority and competence of the constitutional bodies involved (i.e. the government, parliament, and the election commission), as well as controversies regarding the legislative process evolved. The first controversy over local government elections came up in late 2008, when the Election Commission of Bhutan authorized the Ministry of Home and Cultural Affairs and the Ministry of Works and Human Settlement to conduct elections, where the tenure of local governments had expired. This action was deemed unconstitutional as it is the ECB’s sole responsibility to conduct elections of any kind and the legal basis for such interim measure elections would have been an act that had already been repealed in 2007 and the new Local Government Act had not yet been drafted. Hence, a royal decree ordered the ECB to refrain from holding elections. Towards the end of the third session of parliament in July 2009, it became apparent that the proposed Local Government Act had some major points of contention. Among them were incompatibilities between the draft bill and the Land Act of 2007 pertaining to the competences of local governments and the Land Commission, disagreements about the early dissolution of local governments initiated through referendum (see section 63 (g) of the National Referendum Act, 2008), and, most important, the controversies about the restructuring of . That last point was of special significance, as the constitution states that each Dzongkhag should have at least one and a respective Thromde Tshogde. The argument however was that it would not be practical to have elected city councils in each of the 20 districts, as the population and economic output of many regions was too low. Eventually the bill failed to secure the required two-thirds majority of the joint sitting of parliament, upon which parliament resolved to request His Majesty the King to

13 command a special session of parliament. While the representatives of both houses were able to compromise on all issues and pass the bill unanimously in September 2009, another controversy regarding the process that led to the special session of parliament and legislative procedures in general developed. However, the extraordinary joint sitting of parliament was not able to agree on “criteria for declaring bills as urgent, addressing disputed bills in future, voting on bills in a joint sitting and drafting of bills”. Meanwhile, the ECB’s concerns, prior to the joint sitting and after the bill was passed, about some sections of the act that allegedly contradicted the constitution and about ‘flaws’ (e.g. parliamentary consent for the classification of type ‘A’ and ‘B’ Thromdes) that could further delay local elections went unheard. It took another year for parliament to agree on the classification of the four class ‘A’ and sixteen class ‘B’ Thromdes, as stipulated by the compromise of the special joint sitting in 2009, but once again deadlock persisted when it came to the classification of Yenlag Thromdes. The compromise had solved the constitutional problem of Thromdes in all 20 Dzongkhags by providing for elected Thromde Tshogdes only in those municipalities that met certain demographic and socioeconomic criteria. The remaining class ‘B’ and Yenlag Thromdes were to remain under district or county administration with the obligation to progressively upgrade them to the next higher class. While the royal government expected the already long delayed elections to take place soon, the ECB again raised concerns over the constitutionality of such elections without previously demarcating and establishing the boundaries of Yenlag Thromdes. After pressure from the government, which stated that it was not the ECB’s responsibility to interpret the constitution, the latter eventually gave in and agreed to conduct local government elections as a special one-time measure in two rounds. Elections for Thrompons and Tshogpas in the four class ‘A’ Thromdes of , Samdrup Jongkhar, Phuentsholing, and Gelephu were announced for 21st January 2011. In order to provide more people with the chance to vote and to stand as candidates in the upcoming elections, the ECB decided to waive the one year mitsi requirement for eligibility, according to which voters and candidates had to be registered in the respective constituency for at least one year. While the first round of elections on 21 st January went smoothly, the nomination process for candidates in the second, and much larger, round of elections produced a prolonged controversy. The waiver of the one-year mitsi requirement was challenged on grounds of its unconstitutionality (cf. Constitution article 23 section 2(c), Election Act section 100(b), LG Act Section 21(b)), and the required one-year period for deregistration from political parties caused confusion, as proper procedures were not met

14 in many cases, which in turn resulted in the disqualification of candidates. As controversies reached an impasse, affected candidates and the parliamentarians of both houses again called upon the King to resolve the issue. By kasho, His Majesty ordered the ECB to resolve the pending issues first before proceeding with the schedule for the elections. Consequently, the mitsi waiver was revoked and the eligibility of previously disqualified candidates was scrutinized again, this time clearing most of the affected contestants. The ECB was compelled to postpone the second round of elections one last time, declaring 27th June as the new polling day. Considering the delays, the debates, and the controversies that surrounded Bhutan’s first democratic local government elections, it becomes obvious that it has not been an easy way to democratically elect local governments. But one should not simply jump to false conclusions. Regardless of how problematic the run up to the elections might have been, the fact that there were debates and controversies clearly shows the growing consciousness and awareness among the public, the media, and the political elites for issues pertaining democratic procedures. Learning how to cope with and to solve conflicts of the above described nature is a fundamental part of the democratic consolidation process. Interpreting laws and applying them in practice is equally important, as it requires understanding them, to question their compatibility and to detect flaws, problems and loopholes. Democratically electing local governments in Bhutan might have been a long and bumpy way, but this appears to be much better than simply bending the laws and forcing elections just for the sake of holding them.

Conclusion

First and foremost, democracy is not about mimicking institutions, procedures and practices of the old and long established democracies. It is not about achieving top scores in more or less questionable indices and surveys that are ridden with methodological problems and biases. Equally, democracy is not only about holding elections every once in a while, though it is an important part and the most genuine form of participation, featuring and representing as many parties and particular interests as possible. Lastly, democracy is also not about simply granting every citizen the most far-reaching rights possible. With rights comes responsibility, elections require an informed choice by voters, parties require a foundation in society, and institutions and procedures need to be understood, accepted and in line with the traditions, customs, and values of the people they govern.

15 It is true, democracy in Bhutan is unique in its form and in the way it came about. Bhutan does not simply resemble (or aspires to) the typical Westminster model of British democracy, nor any other democracy of the West. It probably never will. But this is not meant to be a carte blanche to sit back and try not to improve the quality, extent, and deepening of democracy in Bhutan. The surveys and indicators presented at the beginning have major shortcomings, suffer from false judgments, and hugely exaggerate negative findings and underappreciate Bhutan’s achievements. But they should not be dismissed entirely. They might point towards domains and aspects of democracy that could still use improvements in Bhutan. A democracy is never perfect, nor is it ever ‘finished’. It is a continuous struggle, a process of adapting rules, procedures, and institutions to a changing environment and to the needs and aspirations of the people it governs.

16 References

Bertelsmann Transformation Index (2012), ‘Country Report Bhutan’, http://www.bti- project.org/laendergutachten/aso/btn/2012/. Bertelsmann Transformation Index (2012), ‘Methodology’, http://www.bti- project.org/index/methodology/. Bhutan , ‘Supreme Court Judgments’, http://www.judiciary.gov.bt/html/case/jud2011sc.php. Economist Intelligence Unit (2012), ‘The Economist Democracy Index’, https://www.eiu.com/public/topical_report.aspx?campaignid=DemocracyIndex2011. Election Commission of Bhutan, http://www.election-bhutan.org.bt/. Freedom House (2012), ‘Freedom in the World 2012’, http://www.freedomhouse.org/report- types/freedom-world. Freedom House (2012), ‘Country Report Bhutan’, http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom- world/2012/bhutan. Freedom House (2012), ‘Aggregate and Subcategory Scores’, http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-aggregate-and-subcategory-scores. Gallenkamp, Marian (2012), ‘When Agency Triumphs over Structure: Conceptualizing Bhutan’s Unique Transition to Democracy’, Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics, No. 68. Transparency International (2012), ‘Corruption Perception Index’, http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2012/results/. Reporters Without Borders (2012), ‘Press Freedom Index’, http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index- 2011-2012,1043.html. UNDP (2011), ‘UNDP Bhutan Annual Report 2012’, http://www.undp.org.bt/assets/files/publication/UNDP%20Bhutan%20Report.2010.pdf.

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