Project Name: Drivers of Local Conflict and Governance/ Nepal
Donor: Department for International Development (DFID) Nepal
Project Leader: Dr. Hari Dhungana
Duration: Sep – Dec 2012
Brief Description of the Project:
This study was designed to deepen the understanding of local level drivers of conflict and governance in Dailekh district. The methodology tested through the study in Dailekh will be extended to four other districts in the country, to be able to offer a more analytically robust and representative account of the local drivers of conflict and governance. This study was expected to provide a unique lens of ongoing political scene at the local level, within which local people struggle to move forward from the several years of violence and insurgency, and dream and negotiate through competing social and political visions for the future. While there has been increasing flow of funds at the local level through government and donor resources, the vacuum caused by the lack of elected representatives has given rise to informal mechanisms for resource allocations and other informal decision making arrangements. The local power structures and informal mechanisms thereby uniquely characterize the conflict and governance issues at lower end of political space in Nepal, prioritizing the needs based on the incentives of various individuals and groups. This study identifies the local institutional context as defined by participants, including formal and informal institutions, and the distribution and intersection of membership and leadership, analysis of fund flow to the VDC through various agencies and allocation, identity key leaders in the village and the relations between them, change and emergence of new leaders, understand the extent to which political, or other forms of affiliations shape participation and social interaction at the village level and describe the linkages between village politics and the district or regional politics, as mediated by party organisations or personal relations.
