This paper examines Nepal’s political party system in the context of political science theories of democratic consolidation. Within Nepal it is taken as ‘common knowledge’ that political parties have penetrated many spheres of Nepal’s society and economy. For example, parties place their ‘people’ at all levels of the education system, local development committees, the bureaucracy, NGOs, and diplomacy. At the same time parties form symbiotic relationships with business houses and, in the opinion of many, function as economic players in their own right, rather than performing the traditional function of political parties – to represent particular class or identity groups in society.

This paper will explore the causes and consequences of this ‘particization’ for Nepal in the context of comparative political science. The ‘malformation’ of political party systems is understudied in the discipline of political science, which, as a discipline, tends to focus on formal, measurable criteria for successful democratic consolidation. Nepal scores highly in the most prestigious measure of democratic success – the V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) approach. But such scores ignore the qualitative experience of living in a ‘particized’ state. Frustration from ‘particization’ may erupt in personalistic, populist, nihilistic and extreme politics in the future; indeed it may already be doing so.

The paper outlines the evidence for ‘particization’ in Nepal,and then puts Nepal in comparative perspective with other countries in the global South that democratized around the same time as Nepal (the 1980’s through the mid-1990s). Cases include Mexico, several Sub Saharan African countries and Thailand. The paper analyzes factors that might explain ‘particization’ based on this comparative approach. Factors include the organizational capacity of parties at the time of democratization, the political economy of elite power, external pressures to democratize rapidly and the decay of existing mechanisms for mediation with the ‘masses’. The argument is particularly conscious of the specificity of the caste system in Nepal as a continuing source of social and political power, arguing that ‘particization’ is also an example of caste power, in that the failure of parties to develop programmatic, cross-cutting alliances and coalitions has allowed caste to remain a key determining factor for access to resources.

The paper ends by addressing possible institutional changes that might address the problem of ‘particization’, including decentralization, changing to a presidential system, changes to voting systems, the behavior of donors, new ideological forces, and several other factors.

The paper is based on extensive field work in Nepal in 2024, under the auspices of the Fulbright Association, including grassroots oral history interviews and interviews with elite actors in the political system, in addition to many secondary sources.