Dr. Prakash Bhattarai, Director of the Centre for Social Change in Nepal and a former PRIF guest researcher by invitation of the EDP Network, released his first publication as part of his research on Nepal’s relationship with its neighbor India: “Negotiating Between Unequal Neighbours: India’s Role in Nepal’s Recent Constitution-Making Process” (PRIF Working Paper). Prakash had started working on the article during his time as an EDP guest in Frankfurt in 2017 and discussed his research intensively with network members.

In this paper, Prakash examines India’s attempted influence on Nepal’s domestic negotiation process on a new constitution, uncovering four Indian negotiation strategies: high-ranking political dialogue, economic blockade, international alliance-building, and targeted support for the inner-Nepalese opposition. In his analysis, Prakash also deals with the resistance against India’s influence and ultimately considers the engagement a partial success. As research has been so far mainly focused on democracy promotion by “Western” states, India’s role as a democracy promoting “non-Western” actor is particularly interesting.

For more information and to download the open access PRIF Working Paper please click here.