Examining the Adoption of Governance Reforms in Nepal: Success Or Failure in the Post-Liberalisation Era (1990-2015)?

Examining the adoption of governance reforms in Nepal: Success or failure in the post-liberalisation era (1990-2015)? Ram Prasad Ghimire A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University Declaration I declare that this thesis is the product of my own research. It does not contain any material which has been accepted for any other degree or diploma, or any copy or paraphrase of another person’s material except where due acknowledgement is given. Ram Prasad Ghimire 26th July 2017 i Acknowledgement I wish to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of numerous individuals and institutions during my PhD candidature. I extend my deep sense of respect and gratitude to them though I cannot name all here. First, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Professor John Wanna, the Chair of my supervisory panel, for the intellectual guidance, expert advice and continuous encouragement throughout the PhD process. I thank him for all generous supports and mentoring during my hard times. I also take this opportunity to extend my sincere gratitude to Professor Keith Dowding who chaired my research panel in the first year and later provided scholarly guidance and inspiration for academic advancement as a supervisor. I am also grateful to my external advisor Dr. Dinesh Pant for his insightful comments and constructive feedbacks. I would also like to thank Dr. Andrew Banfield, Head of School, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, faculty and staff of the School of Politics and International relations for academic insights and management support throughout my research candidature. I am also thankful to all ANZSOG faculty and staff at the ANU for providing an excellent academic environment and management support at Crawford. I also take this opportunity to extend my sincere gratitude to the Australian Government for awarding Australian Development Scholarship to pursue PhD research in this wonderful multi-cultural society. I am also grateful to the Government of Nepal for the consent, encouragement and an extended leave to pursue higher studies in a competitive international academic environment without which I would not have been able to conduct this research. I am also thankful to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia and the very helpful Australia Awards Team at the ANU for all the support they readily provided to me throughout my research period. I acknowledge the assistance and contributions from my key informants, interviewees, focus group discussants, participants of the questionnaire surveys and local administrative assistants who provided a solid foundation to my research. I cannot name them all here but I will reach them in person when I am back to Nepal. I am also indebted to all scholars whose work provided valuable insights to my research. I also thank Dr. Govind Tamang, Anita Acharya and ANU Alumna Dipak BK for their help in transcribing and translating the in-depth interviews and data entry of the questionnaire surveys. ii My colleagues in the ANZSOG foyer: Tanja Porter, John Hawkins, Isi Unikowski, Stephen Darlington, Mansur Chisni, Maria Taflaga, Tom King and Val Barrett to name a few, who echoed the foyer with academic debates and provided cheerful supports during the long arduous process of PhD research. I also extend my sincere thanks to Sam Vincent for assistance in copy- editing. Coming to my Nepali colleagues, special thanks to Puspa Sharma, Thaneshwar Bhusal and Pawan Parajuli for their constructive comments, valuable feedbacks and technical support that helped enrich my thesis. Thanks are also due to Savitri Gurung, Mandip Rai, Dr. Ramesh Sunam, Dr.Kamalesh Adhikari, Dr. Keshab Gautam and Dr. Binod Chapagain for sharing their knowledge, idea and experience during my early phase of research. I am also thankful to Alok and Bibhisha Adhikari for their inputs and support to my research and, making my stay in Australia pleasant and memorable. Last but not the least, in acknowledging the exemplary contributions of my family I am almost deplete of words, believing that no word has been coined to exactly represent their self-less, enthusiastic and unflinching support throughout my life. My mother and father, who always inspired, encouraged and guided me in my personal development, growth and enrichment, continually re-kindled the life-force in me until tragically they passed away while I was working on my research in Australia far away from them. I express my deep sense of respect, gratitude and veneration to them; they will remain my source of inspiration for ever. I am also grateful to my brothers, sisters and the entire extended family members for their love, encouragement and support. I am also thankful to my mother in law, Sharada Aryal, who came here to encourage me and support my research. I believe, no formal statements can do justice to my wife Puspa’s unconditional love, spontaneous support to my research while pursuing her online courses and efficiently managing the home affairs. Our young sons Shreyans and Ayush who accompanied us for the four years in Australia demonstrated an amazing degree of wisdom and tolerance for their age, especially as much of my time was devoted to the thesis and away from them. I salute their patience and understanding. I thank them, though I know it is grossly inadequate. iii Abstract Governance reforms face serious implementation challenges across the entire globe, but are particularly difficult for developing countries. Yet this problem is a relatively less well studied area of implementation research both at the global level and, in developing countries such as Nepal. This research project examines the key factors that contributed to, or inhibited, the implementation of governance reforms in post-liberalised Nepal (1990 - 2015) in three key areas: the downsizing of the civil service (often labelled as ‘rightsizing’), the privatisation of public enterprises, and various anti-corruption reforms applying across the public service. To this end, an analytical framework was designed based on an extensive review and analysis of the existing literature on political economy, state-society relations, political regimes, theory of policy transfer, framework for policy success or failure and the making and implementation of policy reforms. The framework allowed for an in-depth analysis of the interests, incentives, motives, power and the behaviour of the key policy actors and stakeholders. Questionnaire surveys and focus group discussions on the case studies, and 100 in-depth elite interviews focusing political and bureaucratic elites with first-hand knowledge and experience of the policy reforms, provide an evidential basis for the findings. The main findings of this thesis demonstrate that Nepal’s governance reforms were largely not effective in the areas investigated. The three cases reveal common problems in the conceptual understanding and the translation of reform objectives into action by the main implementers. The absence of high level genuine commitment to reform on the part of political and bureaucratic leaders, the lack of evidence-based policy-making and hasty commencement without considering reform readiness were among the key factors inhibiting governance reforms in the post-liberalisation era, thus preventing them from achieving their reform objectives. Some inhibiting factors applied more specifically to individual cases. The key issue for the rightsizing reforms was due to policy distortion by the senior civil servants; privatisation suffered from partial implementation; whereas the anti-corruption reforms lacked societal pressure and effective accountability enforcement mechanisms to get those policies effectively implemented. Hence, the rightsizing reform agenda became primarily a case of implementation failure, whereas the other two cases constituted a iv failure to implement. These findings demonstrate the need for in-depth analysis of individual cases to fully grasp the intricate politics of governance reforms in aid- recipient developing countries like Nepal. This thesis contributes to the existing body of knowledge on the politics of the agenda- setting process and implementation of governance reforms as a dynamic political process through the analysis of a comprehensive political economy framework. It also contributes to the policy transfer literature by expanding the existing policy transfer framework. Similarly, albeit in a small scale, it also contributes to the policy success or failure literature by positing a dynamic perspective to the evaluation of success or failure of governance reforms that combines the criteria-based assessment with ‘thick interpretations’ of reform outcomes. The research findings have important implications to other similar developing countries to improve the implementation of governance reforms. v Table of Contents Declaration.............................................................................................................................................. i Acknowledgement ................................................................................................................................. ii Abstract ................................................................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................. vi List of figures .......................................................................................................................................

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