"Nepal was forced to democratize by external pressure". Extra-regional powers also play a significant role, I agree. But they are not the sole causes for declining authoritarianism or breaking away of communism in many third world countries today. It will take me a long time to detail why countries go into transition, but I will shortly try to bring back some issues IF mentioned earlier. Sorry wasn't able to read all of the postings, will read Anil Ji's and others later and surely put my two cents worth knowledge forward for scrutiny :P I could only read the first few postings, hence the response. And thank you IF in the other post for providing me with info, with all regards I'm only here to put forward my arguments, no mud-slinging. IF, when you say Nepal did not need democracy, or was not ready for democracy, you're sticking to the old literature before the Cold War which concluded that countries in the third world were not ready for democracy, or that only countries with conditions A, B and C can have a collapse of authoritarian regimes and move towards democratic transition. This notion was falsified during the massive democratization process in the 90s. The 90s, specially Dankwart Rustow's Model for transitional democracies set a trend for 'no preconditions' required for democracy; even a state with the stark authoritarianism or least development could move towards democratic transition. But, thanks to pioneers in the field like Dahl, Putnam, Linz, Rustow, Stepan, Guillermo O' Donnel, they've outlined the conditions, mind you, not pre-conditions, for democratic 'consolidation'. A 'transition' is different from consolidated democracy, or what we call 'well functioning democracy'. Any country can be a democracy, but when is a country democracy? For political democracy to remain as an alternate mode of domination, the most important component to have is civil society. A civil society (in the form of institutions) that exists independent of the state and can take action to defend its own interests. And most third world countries in transition today, including Nepal, lack this. Why? If you already know of institutionalism, you might also know that historical context plays a pivotal role in shaping the process of democratization in transitional states (read Putnam's quantitative research on historical institutionalism in Italy). Therefore, more repressive the authoritative regime, with no civil society and least developed institutions, the difficult is the transition. And when you talk about the correlation between democracy and development, very little have been finalized: whether democracy brings economic prosperity is questionable, and whether already economically prospering countries are more prone to democratic consolidation is also questionable. And to claim that Nepal is not ready for democracy, or cannot consolidate democracy because it is economically underdeveloped is not a very strong argument. Because we have examples of Greece, Turkey, that are economically less developed than some Latin American countries, yet democracy has sustained better in the former. It is very surprising that Nepali educated mass confuse themselves with notions that king's takeover will better the economic condition of the country. First of all, we are mingling two systems here. For the sake of clarity, let us separate political system and economic system. When we say we want democracy, we have very less to do with economic system, what we want is a fair political system. Second, there is no guarantee that monarchy will bring a rapid change in economy in the next 3 yrs when it didn't bring any social, ethnic, economic change in those 250 years. Only after the advent of democracy did people freely start questioning about their social and economic rights. Even Mahendra?s Panchayat system could do little to bring socio-economic mobility between class and castes that we freely enjoy today. What I believe further, is that, although there is a little probability that democracy brings economic development, I believe that democracy is an impetus for socio-economic change (like opening up the markets, etc.). And we have seen much of that in these 14 years. Well, 14 yrs is quite a long time to be in transition, why is there no sign of consolidation then? Among some other causes, lack of a civil society is one. Why does Nepal not have a civil society by now? Historical institutionalism again. Personally, I believe this lack of a civil society also led to lack of strong and committed leadership, which partially bogged down the process of transition and led the state towards feckless pluralism. And oh yes, Nepal is no more a constitutional monarchy, if that is what your basis of argument is. It is somewhere in between absolute monarchy and electoral democracy (?). Lastly, you're saying Pakistan is more liberal today? Well, depends then on your definition of 'liberal'. I don't see much change between Bhutto's Pakistan and Musharaff's Pakistan. In fact the latter is more of a military dictatorship than the former. And IF, if nothing else, I'm very surprised by your sincere hope that the king will better the situation of the country. Being a poli sci student, I thought you'd understand better. I'm neither an ardent supporter of the king nor of political parties, but as a student, I've read and observed that monarchies, in most part of the world have history of repressive regimes. No surviving monarchies today or authoritarian regimes in the past have provided any impetus for freedom; forget about our Rights, as citizens, being protected by rule of law. In fact, instruments of freedom have been manipulated by all repressive regimes for their own political gains. And our Own history bears witness.