Following the Gen Z-led fall of Nepal’s government in September 2024, the race to elections on 5 March 2026 is causing turbulence for legacy political parties. While some adjustments—like change in senior leadership and holding of long overdue national conventions are necessary, the focus on internal bargaining over positions and party machinery is a source of considerable distraction from the real challenges that Nepal faces.

For outside observers, Nepal’s political moment can seem familiar: unstable coalitions, stalled governance, and periodic street mobilization. But beneath these recurring patterns lies a more fundamental tension. Two decades after the Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) and 10 years after the 2015 Constitution, a new generation is questioning whether the institutions born of the post‑conflict settlement can deliver on their promises.

The 2026 elections will serve as a stress test for Nepal’s post‑conflict political settlement—revealing whether the country can reconcile a rising generation’s expectations with institutions built for an earlier era.

A generational rupture is widening between youth and politics

Two decades after the CPA, a new generation has entered public life with little lived connection to the political settlement that ended the conflict in 2006 and set Nepal’s democratic transition into motion.

For many Gen Z actors, the promises of that settlement as expressed in the 2015 constitution—federal inclusion, accountable governance, and opportunities for social mobility—feel only partially fulfilled, and institutions built in its wake do not yet command their confidence. This gap between an inherited settlement and current political expectations is sharpening frustrations with the slow pace of constitutional implementation and the persistence of centralized, elite‑driven decision-making.

A stagnant economy and the lack of decent livelihood options are causing youth to mobilize with growing energy: a key challenge is ensuring that their demands contribute to renewing, rather than discarding, the foundational commitments of Nepal’s democratic transformation. The task now is to reconnect generations through an updated, participatory understanding of the settlement so that it can guide present reforms and shape a more credible and just political order.

Recent youth mobilization has exposed the relative incapability of civil society and most state institutions, political parties to comprehend, connect with, and accompany Gen Z and other marginalized groups. The evolution of Nepali civil society as a political community is incomplete in this regard and remains essential for civil coordination and social organization, particularly in the service of democratic leadership, deliberation and participation in the public realm.

With the shift to federalism, civic spaces have shifted and multiplied to provincial and local levels: current and emergent leaders from those levels of Nepali society require accompaniment for a durable, inter-generational form of civic engagement. 

Public policy is captured, narrow, and disconnected from real economic needs

Public policy, such as there is, has thus far been delimited by Kathmandu-centered machinations of a kleptocratic network of business and politics. Critically, the policy architecture of public finance narrowly serves the political and business elite, relying heavily on taxation of imports while skirting the incentivization of domestic economic production and blissfully resting upon remittance flows.

Over the past several years, the masking of macroeconomic vulnerability, the lack of policy support to value-adding domestic producers, and the inattentiveness to a youthful, educated workforce have contributed to the current distrust in government’s ability to manage the economy. A contextually relevant re-imagining of public finance has to be advised by multi-partisan economic actors who are vested in domestic productivity (not just trade), remittance-driven entrepreneurship, and workforce utilization.

Relatedly, the federal ecosystem remains underdeveloped for intergovernmental fiscal transfers, equitable resource allocation to sub-national governments, and conditional versus unconditional grants. This has implications for the constitutionally mandated autonomous governance of sub-national polities. The intersection of public finance with economic growth at the sub-national levels is a critical metric of performance for fiscal federalism. After 10 years of experience, provincial and local government representatives must contribute to the improvement of economic governance.

The Constitution’s transformational promise remains only partially realized

The 2015 Constitution promised to usher in a more equal and inclusive Nepal in which political power is devolved from elite-captured Kathmandu institutions; development is balanced across all regions of the country; religious and ethnic diversity are accommodated; and historically marginalized groups participate in governance.

Since then, progress and performance have been mixed. While many laws have been enacted to progress the Constitution’s key provisions, in many instances the delegated legislation and policies required to give life to these laws have yet to be formulated, which is preventing the meaningful implementation of the Constitution’s content. For example, several federal laws on education, health and civil service restructuring remain stalled, leaving provinces unable to exercise authority envisioned in the Constitution. Sub-national governments continue to struggle to carve out autonomous governance space; and purpose-built constitutional bodies only fulfill a fraction of their envisaged potential.

Ten years since promulgation, it must be asked whether the Constitution is helping to construct a state architecture in which the rule of law and the values of constitutionalism are respected and nurtured, where government is closer and more responsive to citizens’ needs, and where justice is enjoyed by all. A comprehensive, forward-looking appraisal of the performance of the 2015 Constitution is therefore essential.

The electoral system and representative political processes are under–performing

To date, elections in Nepal have rarely been disrupted and always been observed as free and fair. However, technically successful elections have regularly elevated failed parties and leaders instead of penalizing them. Electing the same leaders and expecting positive change is delusional: a return to public-focused politics requires the lawful jettisoning of such leaders.

More importantly, electoral design and related legal-regulatory frameworks must be interrogated and reformed for having permitted party opacity and obduracy, for failing to include a quarter of eligible voters, and for implementing a mixed model that confounds public will and perverts affirmative inclusion. Issues such as party‑controlled proportional lists, weak enforcement of spending limits, and a voter roll that omits large numbers of young and migrant citizens distort representation.

The fragmentation and proliferation of parties and a rotation among those occupying executive office have brought back—and heightened—public anxiety that adjustments to date have only been cosmetic rather than the hoped-for fundamental transformation of representative political processes. Future elections must reflect a reformed electoral system.

The churn within Nepali political parties is long overdue and necessary, but insufficient insofar as stable, public-focused government is concerned.

Following elections, further distraction is inevitable around the formation of a ruling coalition and cabinet. For politics to stabilize and deliver, the incoming government and opposition must maintain focus on public anxiety about responsive and accountable governance, not just in Kathmandu but across the country.

The refreshed executive and legislative government must reorient public administration to better reflect sub-national economic and societal needs while reforming public facing political and economic processes.

The March 2026 elections will test whether political renewal can translate into institutional reform—most notably in constitutional implementation, economic governance and meaningful youth inclusion. The outcome will signal whether Nepal is entering another cycle of fragmented elite bargaining, or whether the post‑conflict settlement can finally evolve to meet the expectations of a new generation.

(The authors are associated with Niti Foundation, a Kathmandu-based research organization)