The First Universal Suffrage Election, at County (Gewog) Level, in Bhutan

Ura Karma

No 4, IDE Discussion Papers from Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO)

Abstract: Following a Royal Edict to adopt universal suffrage in election for local government institutions, maiden elections were held in 199 gewogs (counties) in Bhutan in 2002 to elect their chief executives. This paper gives an account of this first time event in a country where most villagers had never seen secret ballots and poll booths. It synthesizes detailed data, mostly qualitative, collected soon after the election was over, and assesses aspects of electoral participation that His Majesty the King of Bhutan has introduced steadily to deepen democracy. Beginning with a glance at the territorial organization of the Bhutanese state within which the counties are embedded, the paper compares the electoral results with the relevant election rules.

Keywords: Voter turnout; Candidate criterion and attributes; Nominations; Elections; Local government; Politics; Democracy; Bhutan; 選挙; 地方自治; 政治; 民主主義; ブータン (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F15 O14 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in IDE Discussion Paper = IDE Discussion Paper, No. 4. 2004-07-01

Downloads: (external link)
https://ir.ide.go.jp/record/38161/files/IDP000004_001.pdf First version, 2004 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper4

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Publication Office, IDE 3-2-2 Wakaba, Mihama-ku, Chiba-shi, Chiba 261-8545 JAPAN
http://www.ide.go.jp/English/Publish/Order

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IDE Discussion Papers from Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michitaka Imamitsu ().