Peasant Support for Insurgency Versus Democracy in Nepal*

Between Democracy and Revolution: Peasant Support for Insurgency versus Democracy in Nepal*

MADHAV JOSHI & T. DAVID MASON Department of Political Science, University of North Texas

The Maoist insurgency in Nepal presents an anomaly for students of civil war and democratic transitions. How was the Maoist wing of the Nepal Communist Party able to mobilize peasants to support their insurgency when they could not mobilize enough peasants to vote for them in elections? The authors address these questions by exploring the ways in which the persistence of traditional clientelist networks in the countryside enabled rural elites to mobilize peasants to vote for parties other than the Maoist party, even though peasants would have benefited from that party’s advocacy for land reform. When that same party used insurgent violence against rural elites, peasants were willing and able to support the insurgency and abstain from voting in the 1999 election in locales where the insurgency succeeded in dis- rupting clientelist ties. The authors test these arguments with district-level data on election turnout and the distribution of households among several land-tenure categories. Findings support the argument that turnout was greater where land-tenure patterns gave landed elite greater influence over peasant political behavior. Where higher levels of insurgent violence disrupted patterns of clientelist dependency, turnout declined. What electoral democracy could not deliver to peasants – land reform and relief from clientelist dependency – the Maoist insurgency promised to bring through political violence.

Introduction joined the CPN-M in calling for a boycott of the 2006 municipal elections, confronting In 1996, the Maoist wing of the Nepal the king with an opposition coalition Communist Party (CPN-M) launched a rev- between armed rebels and now-disenfran- olutionary insurgency against Nepal’s demo- chised parliamentary parties. Following a cratically elected government. The inability series of mass demonstrations, King of the government to subdue the rebellion Gyanendra reluctantly restored the parlia- led King Gyanendra to dismiss the government, in April 2006, and agreed to elections ment in October 2002. Eventually, he sus- for a constituent assembly that would write pended democracy altogether and assumed a new constitution. In November 2006, the autocratic power himself. In 2006, the Maoist rebels and the restored government parties that had been deposed by the king signed a peace agreement that for now has ended the civil war and brought the CPN-M * The authors wish to thank anonymous reviewers for their back into the democratic fold. helpful comments. The data used in this article can be The fact that a peasant-based insurgency found at http://www.prio.no/jpr/datasets. Authors’ email addresses: Madhav Joshi: [email protected]; T. David emerged in Nepal in the aftermath of that Mason: [email protected]. nation’s transition to democracy poses several

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puzzles for students of rural insurgencies and 1994 elections, abandoned electoral politics democratic transitions: how can a party altogether, and joined the CPN-M to initiate succeed at mobilizing peasants to support the armed insurgency. By 2003, the Government dangerous enterprise of armed insurgency of Nepal estimated that the rebels had 5,500 when it could not persuade them to vote for active combatants, another 8,000 militia, its candidates in elections? Approximately 4,500 full-time cadres, 33,000 hardcore fol- 82% of Nepal’s work force is employed in the lowers, and 200,000 sympathizers (Sharma, agricultural sector, the vast majority of them 2004). Arguably, the Maoist party was more as smallholders, tenants or landless laborers. successful at mobilizing peasants to support The poorest 40% of agricultural households its insurgency than to support its candidates control only 9% of cultivatable land, while for parliament. the wealthiest 6% of landowners control In the analysis that follows, we consider the more than 33% of farm land (UNDP, 1998). special circumstances of democratization in a Parties that advocated agrarian reform in their nation where such a large proportion of the campaign platforms (such as CPN-M) should population is still engaged in subsistence agri- have fared well at the polls among the large culture. We draw on theories of patron–client landless and land-poor segment of the rural politics to explain how peasant cultivators can population. be persuaded to vote for parties other than Yet, the results from the two elections that those that advocate agrarian reform when preceded the insurgency were disappointing such reform would benefit them directly. We for those parties. The mainstream communist use district-level data to test hypotheses on party, the Communist Party of Nepal - United the relationship between the distribution of Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), did win 69 of peasants among land-tenure categories and the 205 seats in the inaugural 1991 elections. election turnout. In 1994, CPN-UML won a plurality of 88 seats, entitling it to form a government that Democratization and Revolution lasted nine months. However, CPN-UML had only a vague land reform agenda in its If, as Goodwin & Skocpol (1989: 495) election manifesto, and it never even argue, ‘the ballot box … has proven to be the attempted to build a parliamentary coalition coffin of revolutionary movements’, then behind any significant agrarian reform legisla- Nepal’s insurgency poses a puzzle for con- tion. Those parties that did advocate redistri- temporary research on democratic transi- bution of land ownership performed poorly in tions, especially considering that the very the elections. The United People’s Front (UPF, parties that had led previous (failed) insur- a coalition among CPN-Masal, CPN-Mashal gencies entered the democratic political arena and the CPN-Maoist) contested 70 seats in as peaceful competitors for office in the new the 1991 election but won only 9. Prior to the democratic order. The domestic democratic 1994 election, the UPF broke into two fac- peace proposition holds that democracies are tions, one led by Baburam Bhattarai and the less likely than non-democracies to experi- other by Niranjan Govind Vaidya. Vaidya’s ence civil war, because democratic institu- faction contested 49 seats but won none. The tions defuse revolutionary violence by election commission refused to certify channeling dissent into electoral competition Bhattarai’s faction as a legal party, forcing its and nonviolent protest (Henderson & Singer, candidates to contest elections as individuals. 2000; Hegre et al., 2001). Opposition move- Subsequently, Bhattarai’s faction rejected the ments need not resort to organized violence

Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at UNIV NORTH TEXAS LIBRARY on February 9, 2009 Madhav Joshi & T. David Mason INSURGENCY VS. DEMOCRACY IN NEPAL 767 because they can form legal political parties democratization in the first place, because a and run candidates for office. Office holders democratically elected government would have an electoral incentive to address popular likely tax their wealth (land) or even redis- grievances with remedial reforms and to tribute it in order to provide benefits to their refrain from repression because of the electoral constituents (peasants). Unlike industrial, consequences that could ensue. Citizens are financial, or commercial elites, landed elites not forced to choose between withdrawing cannot move their assets to another country from politics in order to escape state repres- to avoid taxation. Therefore, they are likely sion and shifting to violent tactics of their own to resist pro-democracy popular movements. in order to combat it. The consolidation of democracy is, to While there are reasons to expect democ- some extent, dependent upon newly elected racies to be less susceptible to civil war, there leaders’ ability to resolve the economic prob- is also evidence that democratization can be lems that plague the rural and urban poor. destabilizing. Hegre et al. (2001) found that Democracy empowers the poor, at least in both democracies and autocracies are less sus- the sense that it endows them with the right ceptible to civil war than semi-democracies to vote. Because the poor are far more or weak authoritarian regimes. The latter numerous than their more prosperous fellow lack both the institutional capacity to defuse citizens (especially landed elites), their votes opposition with democratic processes and the can be decisive in elections. Reform-minded coercive capacity to repress opposition preemp- candidates might see the large number tively. They found that nations undergoing a of landless and land-poor peasants as an change in the level of democracy – whether electoral opportunity: by advocating land more democratic or more authoritarian – were reform, candidates can gain far more votes especially susceptible to civil war. When civil among peasants than they risk losing among war does occur, the inability of a democratic the much smaller population of landowners. regime to defeat the insurgency can embolden On the other hand, the clientelist ties than authoritarian recidivists to stage a coup in the bind peasant cultivators to landed elites name of preserving national security. This is make it difficult for populist candidates to precisely what happened in Nepal, with the persuade risk-averse peasants to vote for dismissal of the elected government in 2002 them, because landed patrons can coerce and the assumption of autocratic power by the peasants into voting against reformist parties king in February 2005. by threatening them with a loss of land and New democracies are at risk of failing and other subsistence guarantees (Mason, 1986). reverting to non-democratic forms of gover- Arguably, this dilemma limited the ability nance. Among the conditions that increase of UDF parties to build a significant electoral the probability of a new democracy failing base among peasants in 1991 and 1994. are low levels of income per capita and high Their election manifestos advocated ‘jasko jot rates of inflation (Przeworski et al., 1996). usko poot’ (land to the tillers), which would Acemoglu & Robinson (2006) and Boix have fundamentally altered the structural (2003) suggest that democracy is less likely relationship between peasants and landed to emerge and, if it does, less likely to survive elites. However, peasants did not vote for where land is the primary source of wealth those parties in large numbers. We turn now and land ownership is concentrated in the to a discussion of how the persistence of hands of relatively small landed elites closely clientelist politics in the countryside affects allied with the state. Landed elites will resist the electoral fortunes of reformist parties.

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Democracy and Clientelist Politics alternatives to agriculture, demand for land is highly inelastic: increases in its effective Why would a landless or land-poor peasant price will not diminish peasant demand for not vote for parties that advocate land reform? land (Scott & Kerkvliet, 1977: 442). In In nations where large portions of the popu- exchange for use of a plot of land and other lation are employed in the agricultural sector – subsistence guarantees, peasant cultivators and their productive activity is concentrated are expected to provide their patron with in subsistence cultivation rather than com- some mix of rent, crop shares, free labor, and mercial production – peasants remain embed- other services. They are also expected to ded in networks of patron–client dependency support the patron politically by deferring to that constrain the autonomy of their political his instructions on matters such as whom to behavior. Inequality in patterns of land owner- vote for in elections (Scott, 1976). Patrons ship combines with the economic marginality dispense justice locally and provide their of peasant producers to compel them to seek clients with protection, not only from the patronage of landed elites. Landed patrons bandits and other predators, but also from provide them with access to land and other the state and other outside agents who might services that amount to a subsistence floor. In assert a claim to a share of the peasant’s time, return, peasants are bound to that patron labor, or crops. As such, local patrons serve as through a diffuse set of non-economic and a buffer between peasants and the state. economic obligations (Scott, 1976). Likewise, in democracies, they act as a buffer From the peasant’s point of view, the legit- between peasants and candidates for elective imacy of the clientelist relationship is a func- office (and their party organizations). Peasant tion of the balance of goods and services interactions with candidates for elective office exchanged between patron and client (the are mediated by the patron, and the patron ‘terms of trade’) and the distribution of the uses his ability to deliver the support of his risks of agriculture inherent in the terms of clients as a bargaining chip in his dealings trade (Scott & Kerkvliet, 1977). The terms with external authorities, including the state of the exchange are highly asymmetric: each and (in electoral democracies) parties client is far more dependent upon the bene- running candidates for office. Thus, a land- fits provided by the patron than the patron lord’s control over access to land translates not is on the goods and services any one client only into economic wealth but political provides him. The loss of their patron’s power as well. beneficence could be disastrous for a peasant Under these circumstances, withholding household, because it would cast them into one’s vote from political parties that advocate the pool of landless laborers, devoid of any agrarian reform – reforms that would break subsistence security and exposed to the the power of the landed elite over the lives uncertainties of markets for land, labor, and and loyalty of peasant cultivators – can food. By contrast, the defection of one client become a rational course of action for a mar- from a landed patron’s domain has little, if ginalized peasant. By voting for reformists any, effect on that patron’s well-being parties, the peasant risks incurring the wrath because the defector can be replaced from the of the landlord and jeopardizing his family’s same pool of landless laborers. access to land and other subsistence guaran- The source of the patron’s power is control tees. Moreover, peasants have no assurance over land. Where large proportions of the that pro-reform parties will win or, if they do, population are sustained through subsistence successfully enact land reform that will agriculture and there are few occupational provide peasant households with a more

Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at UNIV NORTH TEXAS LIBRARY on February 9, 2009 Madhav Joshi & T. David Mason INSURGENCY VS. DEMOCRACY IN NEPAL 769 abundant and secure standard of living. Land-tenure Patterns in Nepal Formal assurances of ballot secrecy are not Until the rule of the Rana family ended in likely to convince peasants that they can vote 1951, Nepal’s land-tenure system was one of against the directive of their patron with impunity, especially in new democracies with the most feudal in all of South Asia. British no tradition of free and fair elections and colonialism had dismantled feudal land-tenure where local administration of elections is in patterns in most of India. After independence, the hands of those same landed elites. indigenous political leaders were able to We argue that the extent to which land- prevent the return to pre-colonial landlords can influence the votes of peasants is a tenure arrangements. Since Nepal was not function of the terms of trade and distribu- colonized, feudal arrangements persisted tion of the risks of agriculture that determine until the downfall of the Rana regime in the strength of clientelist dependency 1951. Prior to that, land was owned either by binding peasant to landlord. These ties vary the state (raikar or state landlordism, which according to whether peasants are smallhold- include most of Nepal’s farmland) or by ers, sharecroppers, tenants, or landless labor- ethnic communities (kipat or communally ers. Smallholders are not directly dependent owned land). The state lands were allotted to upon landed patrons for access to land. government officials (jagir or land given as a However, their marginal economic status salary), religious institutions (guthi or land usually compels them to seek assistance from given as state support for religious institu- landed patrons for credit, seed, tools and tions) or relatives of royal families, Ranas, equipment, political brokerage, and seasonal Brahmins, and Thakuris, as well as military wage-labor on the patron’s lands. Often all officers and government administrators with that stands between the smallholder and close ties to the ruling elite (birta or land landlessness is one bad crop that compels given in recognition of a family’s contribu- him to sell his land or seek loans from the tion to the state). Still, these land-tenure local patron. Tenancy arrangements can be forms did not establish a permanent landed based on fixed rents in cash or in kind, or on aristocracy, because none of these tenure crop shares. The terms of the tenancy vary forms involved permanent ownership rights. depending on the size of the landless popu- Raikar land reverted to the state when the lation: the larger that segment of the rural recipient’s service to the state ended. With population, the higher the effective rental any change in the alignment of elite factions price of land in crop shares or cash rent. in the capital, birta land could be reassigned Landless laborers exist outside of the network to supporters of a newly ascendant faction. of patron–client exchanges. Their income is Nonetheless, those who controlled birta determined by the supply and demand for land in a village at any given point in time agricultural labor. were the political authority in that village. In districts where land ownership is con- They controlled peasant access to land in the centrated in the hands of a relatively small sense that they determined who was allowed landed elite and a large share of the peasantry to rent birta land, how much each household work the land in some form of tenancy, we was allotted, and what the rental terms would not expect large votes for parties that would be. As agents of the government in favor land reform, because peasants will feel Kathmandu, they had discretionary power to obligated to vote as their landlord instructs levy taxes on the raikar land in their village them or risk losing access to land and other and to appropriate portions of that revenue subsistence guarantees (Mason, 1986). for public works projects, to administer

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justice, regulate rural markets, and collect Royal Land Reform Commission in 1952, fines and other levies for the state. Thus, the Land Act of 1957, the Birta Abolition Act birta landlords benefited twofold: they col- of 1959, and the Land Reorganization Act of lected taxes on raikar land while their own 1962 (Regmi, 1976). None of these measures birta land was exempt from state tax, and had much remedial effect on the inequality they received income from the birta land in landholdings (see Table I). Indeed, the they rented out to peasants (Regmi, 1976). only significant change was that the Land With the downfall of the Rana regime in Reorganization Act of 1962 abolished com- 1951, the interim constitution of the munal ownership of kipat land, thereby Kingdom of Nepal included a provision that converting ethnic communities into collec- guaranteed property rights. This made the tions of marginal smallholders. This exposed then-current holders of birta and jagir land them individually to the risks of agriculture, into permanent landowners (Regmi, 1976). leaving them one bad crop removed from The hierarchical relationship between landed being forced to sell their subsistence plot to pay elites and peasants became institutionalized off debts to local landlords, who remained the by the act, making permanent the unequal major source of credit for peasant cultivators. distribution of land ownership and creating a permanent landed elite of government Land Tenure, Elections, and officials, military officers, Brahmins, and Insurgency members of the Rana and royal families. State autonomy from the landed elite was The theoretical framework presented earlier thereafter constrained: while the institution- allows us to derive some hypotheses con- alization of a highly unequal distribution of cerning how land-tenure patterns in Nepal land ownership made agrarian reform a should affect peasant participation in elec- persistent issue in Nepalese politics, the tions. We will test these hypotheses with dis- state’s dependence on the network of now- trict-level data on the distribution of permanent landed elites to collect taxes and households among various land-tenure cate- maintain order in the countryside meant that gories and election turnout in the three the state would be reluctant to initiate any national elections (1991, 1994, and 1999). redistribution of land ownership that might The 1999 election presents a special case in threaten the economic interests and local that it was the one election that occurred authority of those landed elites. while the insurgency was ongoing. As such, Peasant unrest over these developments election results from that year represent an compelled the government to enact the indicator of the ability of the state, through Tenancy Rights Acquisition Act in 1951. The its local agents (landed patrons), to mobilize Act was intended to provide tenants with title a show of support for the state as opposed to to the land on which they paid tax. However, the rebels. Where land-tenure patterns create because landlords (not the tenants) routinely stronger ties of dependency between land- reported the taxes they collected from their lord and tenant, turnout should be higher, tenants in their own name, the Tenancy and the insurgents should have more diffi- Rights Act had the opposite effect of its culty mobilizing peasants against the state; intent: it gave landlords claim to permanent where those ties are weaker, turnout should legal title to the raikar land they had managed be lower, and the insurgents should be more in trust for the state (Regmi, 1976). In sub- successful. sequent years, the government made other The rebels rejected electoral democracy modest attempts at land reform through the and sought to overthrow the incumbent

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Table I. Distribution of Household (HH) and Area Owned by Size of Land Holding (in %)

1961 1971 1981 1991 2001

Size of holding HH Area HH Area HH Area HH Area HH Area

Holdings with 1.43 0.00 0.80 0.00 0.37 0.00 1.17 0.00 0.85 0.00 no land Less than 73.89 24.03 76.77 27.2 66.32 17.33 68.63 30.50 74.15 38.88 1.0 ha 1–4 ha 19.56 35.68 18.39 39.29 28.05 46.13 27.68 50.80 23.70 50.45 More than 5.13 41.42 4.03 33.74 5.35 36.54 2.51 18.70 1.30 10.67 4 ha Total 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00

Source: Central Bureau of Statistics, Agriculture Census of Nepal (1961, 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001). regime. Therefore, their goal with respect to Sharecropping elections was to depress turnout as much as Sharecropping households get the use of a possible. Pathak (2005: 180) argues that peas- plot of land and other services that provide ants supported the insurgents in the hope of subsistence security. In return, they are receiving ‘adequate foods, housing, clothing, obliged to share at least 50% of the harvest basic education, primary healthcare’ and with the landlord and to provide the landlord other tangible benefits. Alternatively, some with a certain amount of free labor. Given have argued that peasant support for the the strength of dependency ties between insurgency was largely coerced, with insur- sharecropper and landlord, we expect share- gents threatening peasants with retribution croppers to vote the way their landlord for non-support. Whether induced by carrots instructs them. Since landlords in Nepal act or sticks, support for the insurgents should be as agents of the state at the local level, they stronger where land-tenure patterns involve have an interest in turning out a large vote to weaker ties of dependency between landlord indicate to state authorities that they are in and peasant. The level of political violence in control of their clients and that support for a district (as indicated by deaths from politi- the insurgency is weak in their domain. cal violence) is an indicator of rebel strength: H2: The greater the share of families farming the larger the number of casualties in a dis- under sharecropping arrangements, the trict, the larger the rebel presence. Thus, higher the turnout in elections. H1: The higher the level of political violence in a district, the lower the voter turnout Rent for Service for the 1999 election. Under this arrangement, a peasant house- The land-tenure system in Nepal includes hold gets use of a plot of land by assuming a several different types of land-tenure arrange- debt to the landlord, with the amount of the ments: sharecropping, rent for fixed cash debt and the interest rate negotiated between payment, rent for fixed product, rent for landlord and tenant. While in debt to the mortgage, and rent for service. These arrange- landlord, the peasant has to present himself ments involve varying degrees of peasant sub- or a member of his family when the landlord ordination to landed elites. As such, election demands it to work on the landlord’s land or results should vary with the distribution of to perform household labor. In some cases, peasants among these categories. the peasant household offers a member of the

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family to work for the landlord until the plant the type of crop the landlord dictates, family stops cultivating that land or pays off but they can devote a portion of their land to the original debt plus interest. Since the plot subsistence crops for their own consump- of land is essential to the family’s subsistence tion. Under a fixed-cash rent arrangement, a but is rarely large enough to produce a con- peasant household pays a certain amount of sistent surplus, the peasant household often cash to a landlord for the right to cultivate a cannot pay off the debt, and the family plot of land. Peasants are free to allocate land member assigned to work for the landlord between cash crops and subsistence crops as might continue to do so, without wages, they see fit, so long as they can earn enough until he or she dies. This practice of bonded cash to pay the rent at the end of the harvest. labor (kamayia) was widespread in western These two types of rental systems usually Nepal. We would expect peasants living involve absentee landlords who live in the under these arrangements to be compelled by city and leave the peasant household to their landlord to vote as the landlord assume full responsibility for production instructs. with a minimum of supervision by the landlord. Fixed-product or fixed-cash tenants H3: The higher the proportion of families have incentives to maximize output, because farming under rent-for-service tenancy, they keep all output beyond what is required the higher the voter turnout will be. for rent payment. For this reason, they are On May Day of 2000, the issue of bonded likely to participate in elections even without labor became more intense, when 19 bonded being compelled by landlords. Furthermore, laborers of a former government minister when the insurgents enter a village to break lodged complaints demanding freedom and the ties of dependency between peasant and minimum wage for their work. Support from landlord, these peasants have less incentive to human rights NGOs and INGOs forced the support the insurgency and more incentive government to declare emancipation of all to preserve the status quo than other classes bonded laborers in July 2000, freeing about of tenants. 15,000 households (83,000 people) from H4: The greater the number of households this form of debt servitude. After gaining engaged in fixed-product or fixed-cash their freedom, they demanded subsistence rental arrangements, the higher the voter security from the government, and the gov- turnout. ernment responded by offering to distribute about 0.6 hectare of land to each household. When the government delayed implement- Smallholders ing this plan, some of the bonded laborers Smallholders own their own land and, there- were forced to return to their former land- fore, are less subordinated to the political will lords. Some of the younger ones joined the of landed patrons. However, they usually do Maoist insurgency (World Organization not own enough land to engage in commer- Against Torture, 2005). cial production beyond their household’s subsistence requirements. Often, they find it Fixed-Product/Fixed-Rent Tenancy necessary to turn to landed patrons for pro- Under fixed-product tenancy, the landlord duction credit or emergency loans. For this receives a fixed amount of the harvest at the reason, they are sometimes only one bad crop end of the year, and the peasant household removed from being forced to sell their land does not receive any services from the land- to pay off their debts. Nonetheless, as long as lord. The peasant household is compelled to they own their own land, we would expect

Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at UNIV NORTH TEXAS LIBRARY on February 9, 2009 Madhav Joshi & T. David Mason INSURGENCY VS. DEMOCRACY IN NEPAL 773 them to be less supportive of the insurgency peasants do not have access to institutional and less subject to political manipulation credit. Instead, they are compelled to borrow by landed elites than are sharecroppers or from landlords at terms dictated by those tenants. landlords. Often, peasants are not able to pay back principal and interest, leaving them H5: The larger the share of smallholders in a in a condition of debt servitude to the land- district, the higher the voter turnout. lord. In these circumstances, peasants can be compelled to offer unconditional support Landlessness to their patrons, such as voting in elections Finally, the size of the landless population and voting for the parties preferred by the should be inversely related to turnout. landlord. Landless peasants exist outside of the network of patron–client ties. Their interac- H7: The less access to institutional credit tions with the landed elite are more nearly in a district, the higher the turnout in impersonal and contractual, involving the elections. exchange of cash wages for temporary labor We have outlined several hypotheses on services. Landlords are not obligated to the relationships between patterns of land provide them with any other services to tenure, the level of political violence, and par- enhance their subsistence security. As such, ticipation in elections. The underlying logic landless peasants are less subject to manipu- is that the strength of the landed elites’ lation by landed elites. They have little incen- control over peasants at the local level varies tive to vote, and landlords have little leverage with land-tenure patterns. Where the pre- to compel them to vote. Once the insurgency dominant land-tenure arrangements subordi- erupted, landless peasants had more to gain nate peasants to landlords, those landlords from supporting the rebels than casting a can mobilize large turnouts at the polls as an vote that represented a statement of prefer- indicator of popular support for the incum- ence for the incumbent regime over the bent regime. Where the rebel presence is rebels. Where landlords were expelled from stronger and ties of subordination to land- villages by the insurgency, landless peasants lords are weaker, turnout should be lower. We had the opportunity to gain access to land turn now to the research design that spells out ‘liberated’ from the landlords. how these hypotheses will be tested. H6: The larger the size of the landless population, the lower the voter turnout. Data and Research Design Institutionalized Credit To test the hypotheses, we analyze district- Access to institutionalized credit (as opposed level data (N ϭ 75) on the relationship to credit offered by landed patrons) is imper- between land tenure and voter turnout in the ative for peasant autonomy, because such three rounds of parliamentary elections held loans are typically offered at lower interest since the restoration of democracy in 1990. rates than loans offered by landlords, and the We estimate an OLS regression model for loan can be paid back after the harvest. each election, with turnout as the dependent However, access to institutionalized credit variable. The independent variables include requires a guarantee from the local landed the proportion of households in each of elites as well as collateral to compensate the several land-tenure categories, as well as lender if the farmer defaults on the loan. several control variables. Only the 1999 elec- Because of loan security requirements, many tion took place while the insurgency was

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Table II. Descriptive Statistics

Variables Obs. Mean St. dev. Min. Max.

Turnout 1991 (%) 75 64.429 8.194 36.728 85.800 Turnout 1994 (%) 75 61.359 8.455 42.132 83.853 Turnout 1999 (%) 75 63.938 10.919 0.000 80.839 Landless households (1,000s) 75 11.854 22.962 0.171 181.763 % Smallholder households 75 18.184 12.976 0.162 63.641 % Sharecropping households 75 6.602 5.418 0.000 24.527 % Renting for service households 75 0.319 0.607 0.000 3.741 % Rent for fixed cash households 75 0.833 0.972 0.000 5.430 % Rent for fixed product households 75 1.704 3.406 0.000 23.843 % Households without access to 75 77.801 15.951 31.32 100.000 institutional credit Caste and ethnic fractionalization 75 0.795 0.101 0.543 0.942 Level of political violence 75 0.172 0.161 0.000 0.951 HDI 1996 (index 0 to 1) 75 0.321 0.073 0.147 0.603 Population 2001 (logged) 75 12.359 0.871 9.168 13.894 Candidates contesting elections 1991 75 17.933 13.993 2.000 69.000 Candidates contesting elections 1994 75 19.227 15.302 3.000 94.000 Candidates contesting elections 1999 75 29.84 26.544 1.000 159.000

ongoing. Therefore, turnout in 1999 has Independent Variables special political significance, because both The independent variables of interest are the government and the rebels treated that measures of the proportion of households election as a referendum on the insurgency: cultivating land under each of the land- the government wanted a large turnout to tenure arrangements specified in the indicate opposition to the insurgency, while hypotheses. Sharecropping households is oper- the rebels sought to depress turnout to ationalized as the percentage of households support their claim that the government cultivating land under both single and lacked legitimacy. Given that, a second mixed-tenure sharecropping. According to model for the 1999 election adds a variable the Central Bureau of Statistics of the for the level of political violence in a district, Government of Nepal (CBS-Nepal), about measured as the number of deaths from 19% of cultivatable land is farmed by share- political violence. Descriptive statistics for all croppers. There are 256,452 sharecropping variables are in Table II. households (7.60% of agriculture households). In 32 of 75 districts, the percentage Dependent Variable of sharecropping households is above the The dependent variable is election turnout, national average of 6.60%. According to the measured as the percentage of registered Agriculture Census (2001), about 0.34% of voters who voted in each national parlia- agriculture households farm under rent-for- mentary election. Turnout data are from service arrangements. In 18 districts, the per- publications of the Election Commission of centage of households in this tenancy Nepal (1991, 1994, 1999).1 arrangement exceeds the national average of 0.32%. About 2% of households cultivate 1 In the 1999 election, in one constituency, Managn, the can- land under fixed-product tenancy, and in 18 didate was unopposed, and therefore there was no election. districts the proportion is higher than the

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Table III. Hectare of Lands Cultivated in Different Tenancy Arrangements

Variables Obs. Mean St. dev. Min. Max.

Share cropping 75 2,120.377 3,889.921 0.000 19,850.900 Renting for service 75 34.384 69.000 0.000 364.700 Renting for fixed cash 75 470.224 1,259.764 0.000 9,253.100 Renting for fixed product 75 152.519 240.417 0.000 1,277.800

Source: Agriculture Census, 2001. national average of 1.70%. About 0.84% of variable are from the UN Human households cultivate land under fixed-cash Development Report (UNDP, 2004). tenancy, and in 29 districts the proportion is Because our hypotheses are based on the above the national average of 0.84%. A total degree of peasant dependency on landlords, of 208,313 hectares of land are cultivated we transform the land-tenure variables for under all of these tenancy arrangements (see each district to the difference between that Table III). The same Agricultural Census district’s value and the national average for (2001) indicates that 21.34% of households that variable, a technique used by Murshed & are smallholders who own land below one Gates (2005). For a given category, districts parcel. (A parcel is a contiguous piece of land with the proportion of households above the owned or rented.) The average size of a parcel national average will have negative scores, and of land is 0.24 hectares. In 32 districts, the those below the national average will have proportion of smallholder households exceeds positive scores. For the access to institutional the national average of 18.18%. Because the credit variable, we use the percentage of 2001 Population Census does not provide the households deprived of such access. number of landless peasant households, we We also expect that higher levels of polit- estimated their numbers by using the differ- ical violence will reduce turnout for the 1999 ence between the total households reported in election. The level of political violence is the Population Census of 2001 and the total measured as deaths from political violence, agriculture households from the Agriculture regardless of whether the insurgents or the Census of 2001.2 CBS-Nepal used a combi- state was the perpetrator. Data on casualties nation of complete enumeration and sam- from political violence are available until pling to estimate the number of landless November 2005 from Informal Sector households, and these data were used in the Service Center (INSEC). INSEC is a human UN’s Human Development Report for Nepal rights NGO based in Kathmandu with rep- (2004). We also hypothesized that peasant resentatives in each district to monitor and access to institutional credit is inversely related report human rights violations by both the to peasant subordination to landlords. The government and the rebels. average percentage of households with access to institutional credit is 22.20% and 37 Control Variables districts fall below this average. Data for this The modernization thesis suggests that support for democracy (and, therefore, turnout) should increase with the general 2 In correspondence with the Deputy Director of CBS- level of economic development (Lipset, Nepal regarding the validity of our estimate of peasant 1959; Huntington, 1991). Conversely, the households, he informed us that ‘agriculture holdings’ and ‘households’ used in the agriculture census and the popu- probability of civil war in a nation is inversely lation census of 2001, respectively, are practically the same. related to the level of economic development

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(Fearon & Laitin, 2003; Collier & Hoeffler, 1999 election: one with the level of political 2004). For these reasons, we employed the violence variable and one without that vari- Human Development Index (HDI) as a able. F-tests (p Ͻ0.005) reveal that all four control for the level of economic well-being. models are statistically significant: at least HDI measures income level, literacy rate, one variable explains a significant proportion school enrollment, and life expectancy and is of the variance in turnout for each election. available from the UN Development Report The models explain between 34% (1994) (UNDP, 1998). The national average of and 52% (1999) of the variance in turnout. HDI is 0.32, and 37 districts are below this Partial correlation results further support our average. Murshed & Gates (2005) also use regression results.4 Tests reveal no problems HDI as a predictor of the level of violent of heteroscedasticity, except for the 1991 and political conflict in Nepal. 1999 elections. For those two models, we The insurgency in Nepal has also been used robust standard errors.5 Tests reveal no characterized as having an ethnic and caste problems of multicollinearity.6 component: the state bureaucracy, the national Our first hypothesis was that political vio- parliament, and the military are dominated by lence should lower turnout for the 1999 upper castes, while ethnic minorities and election (H1). The second model for the indigenous groups are largely excluded from 1999 election reveals a statistically significant representation in mainstream political institu- negative relationship between level of politi- tions (UNDP, 1998; Nepali & Subba, 2005; cal violence and voter turnout for that elec- Lawati, 2005). Therefore, we control for tion. A one unit increase in the level of caste and ethnic fractionalization.3 The data political violence in a district (measured in for caste and ethnic fractionalization come terms of insurgency-related deaths in thou- from the Population Census (2001). Since sands) decreases turnout by 17.48%, ceteris electoral turnout is also influenced by the paribus.7 Had insurgency-related deaths number of candidates contesting the election, reached 1,000 in a district, we would expect we also control for the number of candidates turnout to decrease by 17.48% in that dis- on the ballot with data from the Election trict. In districts such as Rukum and Rolpa, Commission of Nepal. Finally, we control for with the highest number of people killed population (logged) in each district. during the insurgency, the electoral turnout for the 1999 parliamentary election was dra- Empirical Findings and Analysis matically below the national average. The

We estimated separate OLS regression 4 All variables that were significant in the regression models models for each of the three national elec- are statistically significant in the partial correlation tests we performed for each model. tions, with turnout as the dependent variable 5 We used the Breusch-Pagan/Cook-Weisberg heteroskedas- (Table IV). We estimated two models for the ticity test for the null hypothesis of constant variance for all models. We find heteroskedasticity problems for the 1991 and 1999 election models. For the 1994 election, we fail to 3 As indicated by the population census of 2001, there are reject the null of constant variance. 65 caste and ethnic groups in Nepal. The ethnic and caste 6 One method to test for multicollinearity is to test whether fractionalization index is calculated with the formula, 2 the Variable Inflation Factor (VIF) for each variable exceeds M ⎛ n ⎞ 2 1− ∑⎜ i ⎟ 10. If Rj exceeds 0.90, the variable is highly collinear. For = ⎝ N ⎠ i 1 where N is the total population and ni is the more discussion on multicollinearity and alternative tests number of people belonging to the ith group. M is the total (such as tolerance [1/VIF] where the greater the distance number of ethnic and caste groups. The formula captures from zero, the more the variable is independent from the probability that two randomly selected people belong another explanatory variable), see Gujarati (2003). to different groups. The index takes values between 0 (for 7 All p-values are at least 0.05 unless otherwise stated. The a perfectly homogeneous district) and 1 (for a perfectly het- effect of political violence on turnout is significant at 0.10 erogeneous district). levels (two-tailed test).

Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at UNIV NORTH TEXAS LIBRARY on February 9, 2009 Madhav Joshi & T. David Mason INSURGENCY VS. DEMOCRACY IN NEPAL 777 2.911 2.405 1.895 2.130 0.034 0.056 0.299*** 0.095 11.509*** 4.0800 17.480*20.778 9.894 20.713 Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ 4.774* 2.514 2.298 2.129 0.064 0.065 4.670 19.302 0.297*** 0.102 11.020*** 3.891 Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ 7.870**** 2.034 2.5361.113 2.457 1.492 0.239** 0.103 Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ 1991 Election 1994 Election (1) 1999 Election (2) 1999 Election 5.500*** 1.894 1.868 2.047 0.010 0.055 13.740 16.976 – – 36.99 34.08 47.40 51.95 Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ 0.000 (two-tailed tests). Ͻ p 0.01; **** Ͻ p 0.05; *** Ͻ p 0.10; ** Ͻ 2 p Candidates contesting electionsCaste and ethnic fractionalization (index 0 to 1)Constant 21.369*R 12.515 17.398 0.205*** 0.103 12.822 0.592*** 16.333 0.206 17.036 103.128**** 0.369*** 9.062 20.327 128.654**** 0.105 13.792 24.299 0.345*** 103.944**** 0.106 27.437 88.071**** 26.072 % Fixed cash rent households gap cash rent % Fixed 0.161 1.315 % Fixed product rent households gap rent product % Fixed with no access to credit% Households 0.909*** 0.112** 0.270 0.055 1.278*** 0.061 0.371 0.057 1.770*** 0.508 1.648*** 0.537 Deaths from political violence from Deaths – – – – – – HDI 1996 (index 0 to 1) gap 2001 (logged) Population % Smallholder households gap% Smallholder households gap% Sharecropping for service% Rent households gap 0.145** 0.410** 0.068 0.182 0.050 0.079 0.079 0.219 0.070 0.120 0.076 0.188 0.092 0.306 0.077 0.241 Table IV.Table Patterns of Land-Tenure as a Function Turnout Election VariablesLandless households (in 1,000s) gap Coeff. sizeSample error St. used. are errors 1994, standard used. For are errors standard 1991 and 1999, robust For * Coeff. error St. Coeff. error St. 75 Coeff. error St. 75 75 75

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highest death total in any one district was relationship for the 1994 election may be 951, which occurred in a Rukum district. related to factional divisions emerging within While more than 63% of voters in that dis- the ruling Nepali Congress (NC) party, trict participated in the 1991 election, the which had a strong support base in rural and turnout declined to about 44% for the 1999 western Nepal. election. Where the insurgency was stronger, We expected a positive relationship people were less likely to vote, whether out between the turnout and the share of small- of fear of rebel retribution or because rebel holders in a district (H5). The findings for violence weakened local patrons’ control over the proportion of smallholders are similar to peasants. Indeed, part of the rebel strategy the findings for sharecroppers. There is a sig- was to drive landlords from a district, redis- nificant positive relationship only for the tribute their land, and install ‘people’s gov- 1991 elections, and the magnitude of that ernments’ to rule in place of the state. Thus, relationship is also small: a one percentage where the insurgency was stronger, peasants point increase in the share of smallholders is could abstain from voting with less fear of associated with an increase in voter turnout incurring the wrath of their landlord. of only 0.15%. Turnout was above the The findings on land-tenure patterns and national average in all but 5 of the 32 dis- turnout provide some support for our theo- tricts where the share of smallholder house- retical arguments. We expect that higher holds was above the national average. The proportions of families farming under share- weakening of the relationship in later rounds cropping arrangements would be associated is related to the factional splits within the with higher turnout (H2), because share- NC and the fact that the 1994 election was croppers are bound to landlords through ties not a regularly scheduled election and, there- of debt and obligation to a greater degree fore, did not create enough motivation for than other categories of peasants. The coeffi- landlords to mobilize peasants. cient for this variable is positive and signifi- We also expected that higher proportions cant only for the 1991 election. Even for that of families farming under rent-for-service election, the magnitude of the effect is not tenancy would be associated with higher very large: a one percentage point increase in voter turnout (H3), because this category of the proportion of sharecropper households peasants is most strongly subordinated to increases turnout by 0.41%. Nonetheless, in their landlords. Instead, we find a significant the initial round of elections, there is support negative relationship for the 1999 elections for the proposition that landed elites were (after the insurgency had begun) and no rela- able to mobilize turnout among those who tionship for 1994 and 1991 elections. In were most dependent on them for subsis- terms of the magnitude of the relationships, a tence security. In districts such as Sunsari, one percentage point increase in households Terhathum, Banke, and Dang, where the farming under rent-for-service reduces voter proportion of sharecropping households is turnout by 11.51% for the 1999 election. The two standard deviations above the national large and statistically significant coefficient for average, turnout was the highest for all three the 1999 election can be attributed to the parliamentary elections. By the 1999 election, impact of the insurgency. Compared to other the arrival of the insurgency may have weak- tenancy arrangements, rent-for-service house- ened the ability of landlords to mobilize holds are much more subject to manipulation turnout even among sharecroppers, and this by landlords. For the same reasons, we would might account for the weaker relationship for expect support for the insurgency to be espe- that election cycle. The absence of a significant cially strong among those in this land-tenure

Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at UNIV NORTH TEXAS LIBRARY on February 9, 2009 Madhav Joshi & T. David Mason INSURGENCY VS. DEMOCRACY IN NEPAL 779 category, because in many ways they have the associated with a decrease of 0.30% in election most to gain from the insurgency driving out turnout for 1999, ceteris paribus. The signifi- landlords and destroying records of peasant cantly large decline in turnout for the 1999 debt. Therefore, the strong negative effect for election did not take place in districts where 1999 may indicate the insurgency’s weakening there was a larger percentage of landless peas- of landlord control over this class of peasants. ants. Rather, turnout declined in districts The proportion of households renting where the share of landless peasants was land for fixed cash payment is not signifi- below the national average. Perhaps the cantly related to turnout in any of the three rebels might have appealed to landless peas- elections (two-tailed test) whereas rent for ants to join the insurgency or boycott the fixed product is positive and statistically sig- election where they are fewer in number, but nificant for all three elections (H4). The their appeal was less successful where there fixed-product tenancy arrangement is the were large numbers of landless peasants. The most lucrative for peasant cultivators and districts with low electoral turnout were in involves the weakest degree of landlord the western part of Nepal, where smaller pro- supervision of peasant behavior among all portions of households are landless and the the tenancy arrangements. Landlords here insurgency was relatively intense. are typically absentee landlords, and peasants We hypothesized that the fewer house- can keep all production above the fixed holds that have less access to institutional amount promised to the landlord as rent. credit, the higher the turnout should be Since payment is in kind, not in cash, (H7). We find a positive and significant rela- peasant welfare is less subject to fluctuations tionship between the lack of access to insti- in the market price of their crops: the land- tutional credit and turnout in the 1991 lord gets the same fixed amount of crop election, but the relationship is not signifi- regardless of its price. By contrast, those who cant for either of the other two elections. For rent for fixed cash payment also get to keep the 1991 election, an increase of one per- all surplus above what is required to pay the centage point in the share of households with rent, but the amount they get to keep can no access to institutional credit leads to a decline if the market price for the crop 0.11% increase in voter turnout. There are declines. As such, they are more dependent on 37 districts where lack of access to institu- the landlord’s beneficence than are those who tional credit is above the national average. rent for fixed product. There are 18 districts Households in districts such as Humla have where the share of fixed-product rent house- no access to institutional credit, leaving them holds is above the national average and, except completely dependent on local landlords for for Kathmandu and Panchathar districts, the their credit needs. In these districts, turnout turnout for the 1999 election in those districts in 1991 was above the national average, and was higher than the national average. for 1999 it was the highest of all. Dadeldhura We argued that the size of the landless pop- district has the highest proportion of house- ulation should be negatively related to holds with access to institutional credit, and turnouts (H6). We find that increases in the turnout was about 49% for the 1991 and size of the landless population are indeed asso- 1994 elections and about 59% for the 1999 ciated with lower voter turnout for all three election, all below the national average. elections, but the relationship is statistically The number of candidates running for significant only for the 1994 and 1999 elec- election is positively related to turnout for all tions. In terms of the magnitude of the effect, three elections. In the 1991 election, an an increase of 1,000 landless households is increase of one candidate in a district increased

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turnout by 0.21%, by 0.59% for the 1994 was greater, turnout was lower in the 1999 election, and by 0.37% for the 1999 election. election. This could be a function of insur- The log of population is inversely related to gents intimidating peasants into staying at electoral turnout for all elections, suggesting home. Or it could be a matter of insurgents that landlords face a coordination problem: weakening landlord control over peasants, the more peasants there are in a district, the including their ability to compel peasants to more difficult it is to detect and sanction vote for parties favored by the landlord. We abstention. But when the variable for the level also found some support for the claim that of political violence is included in the 1999 turnout varies with land-tenure patterns. election model, the log of population is not Turnout was higher where land-tenure significant. We did not find a significant rela- patterns involved stronger ties of clientelist tionship between HDI and electoral turnout dependency between peasant and landlord, for the 1991 and 1999 elections. The HDI indicating that landlords were more able to variable caused an endogeneity problem for compel peasants to vote as a sign of support the 1994 model and therefore dropped out of for the new democracy. Some of these effects the model. Though the level of economic changed with the inception of insurgency, well-being per se affects peasant participation indicating that the insurgency weakened the for the 1994 election, clientelist dependency ties that bound peasant to landlord and may be a stronger influence on participation diminished landlords’ ability to mobilize than the general level of well-being for the peasant voters. Since the Maoists boycotted 1991 and 1994 elections. The caste and ethnic the 1999 election, the weakening of the rela- fractionalization index is positive and signifi- tionship between land tenure and turnout cant for the 1991 and 1994 elections but not for this election can be seen as an indicator significant for the 1999 election. This indi- of the extent of peasant support for the insur- cates that the more the district is fractionalized gency or the insurgents’ ability to weaken by caste and ethnicity, the higher the electoral landlords’ control over peasant behavior. The participation for the 1991 election. A unit Maoists have sought radical land reform in change in the fractionalization index increased Nepal, and where they are stronger, we the electoral turnout by 2.14% for the 1991 would expect peasants to be more inclined to election.8 At a glance, ethnicity and caste support the insurgents by joining the boycott affect landlords’ ability to coerce participation with less fear of retribution at the hands of in elections. Given the findings that caste and their landlord. ethnicity are not related to turnout for the Why would a Maoist insurgency arise and 1999 election, it may be that the insurgency thrive after a nation made the transition to was more appealing to marginalized castes and democracy? How can Maoist insurgents ethnic groups, and where the insurgency was mobilize peasants for armed insurgency when strongest, the rebels were more able to depress they could not mobilize them to vote for turnout among these groups. them in democratic elections? After the 1990 transition, new political parties emerging from the middle class gave peasants hope for Discussion and Conclusion land reform and emancipation from the debts We find strong support for the proposition and other obligations to local landlords that that the insurgency affected peasant partici- historically had reduced them to conditions pation in elections. Where insurgent activity of debt servitude. However, elected parlia- ments failed to deliver on the promise of 8 These effects are significant only at the 0.10 level. agrarian reform. In order to gain electoral

Downloaded from http://jpr.sagepub.com at UNIV NORTH TEXAS LIBRARY on February 9, 2009 Madhav Joshi & T. David Mason INSURGENCY VS. DEMOCRACY IN NEPAL 781 support, centrist parties invited local land- peace agreement as they await elections for a lords to run for seats in the national parlia- constituent assembly that will write a new ment. To persuade them to join their party, constitution. Given what is at stake with the party leaders had to soften their stand on land constituent assembly, international support reform, because they knew the landed elite in the form of robust election monitoring – could mobilize large blocs of votes among to ensure free and fair elections and to prevent those peasants who depended upon them for the use of violence by the Maoists and intim- subsistence security. As a consequence, idation by landed elites – may be critical to Khadka (1993: 52) reports that rural elites the success of the one process that could bring controlled about 90% of the seats in the first the Maoists back into the democratic fold and parliament, a condition which effectively pre- end the decade of insurgency. cluded land reform. After 1995, peasants and ethnic minorities began supporting the References Maoist insurgency. What electoral democracy could not deliver to peasants – land reform Acemoglu, Daron & James A. Robinson, 2006. and relief from clientelist dependency – the Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Maoist insurgency promised to bring through Press. political violence. We find empirical support Agriculture Census, 2001. Central Bureau of for this argument in the tests we performed. Statistics: HMG-Nepal (http://www.cbs.gov. The empirical findings of this study have np/Agriculture/Agriculture%20Census2001/ some policy relevance, especially in the District%20Summary/content.htm). present context of Nepal’s struggle to restore Boix, Carles, 2003. Democracy and Redistribution. political democracy after a relapse into New York: Cambridge University Press. authoritarianism. The findings suggest that Collier, Paul & Anke Hoeffler, 2004. ‘Greed and building a sustainable democracy in Nepal is Grievance in Civil War’, Oxford Economic contingent upon the state achieving some Papers 56(4): 563–595. degree of autonomy from rural elites and Election Commission, 1991. The General Election in Nepal, 1991. HMG-Nepal. establishing a more direct relationship with Election Commission, 1994. The General Election peasant voters, one that is not mediated by 1994 Facts and Figures. HMG-Nepal. landed elites. As Skocpol (1979) argued, the Election Commission, 1999. Election Commission lack of state autonomy from the class of House of Representative Election 1999. HMG- landed elites makes such states vulnerable to Nepal. revolutionary insurrection. As long as peas- Fearon, James D. & David D. Laitin, 2003. ants remain subject to the bonds of clientelist ‘Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War’, American dependency, it is unlikely that a parliament Political Science Review 97(1): 75–90. will be elected that is sufficiently autonomous Goodwin, Jeff & Theda Skocpol, 1989. from rural elites to consider agrarian reforms ‘Explaining Revolutions in the Contemporary that might provide peasants with the oppor- World’, Politics and Society 17(4): 489–509. tunity for improved economic well-being. As Gujarati, Damador, 2003. Basic Econometrics, 4th edn. New York: McGraw-Hill. long as that is the case, Maoist rebels will find Hegre, Håvard; Tanja Ellingsen, Nils Petter fertile ground for their appeal for revolu- Gleditsch & Scott Gates, 2001. ‘Towards a tionary insurgency as an alternative to a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political democracy that is little more than electoral Change and Civil War, 1816–1992’, American democracy. Our findings indicate that where Political Science Review 95(1): 34–48. the insurgency is strong, turnout declines. Henderson, Errol A. & J. David Singer, 2000. For now, the Maoist rebels are abiding by a ‘Civil War in the Post-Colonial World,

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