Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the role of borderland and frontier regions in Nepal and Sri Lanka's post-war peacebuilding and reconstruction efforts. It compares post-war politics and development processes in the two countries focusing on centre-periphery dynamics, and new forms of claim-making..

Paper long abstract:

Much of the writing on conflict and post war transitions in South Asia suffers from methodological nationalism. The state is taken as a given and there is an implicit assumption that post-war statebuilding and development involves the rebuilding of institutions at the centre, followed by the diffusion of power outwards towards the margins of the state. Such a perspective misses the constitutive role that frontier and borderland regions play in shaping power relations and authority at the putative centre.

This paper focuses on the role of borderland and frontier regions in Nepal and Sri Lanka's post-war peacebuilding and reconstruction efforts. It draws on emerging findings from a 2-year research project ('Borderlands, Brokers and Peacebuilding in Nepal and Sri Lanka') and compares post-war politics and development processes in the two countries focusing on centre-periphery dynamics. It examines how a variety of political actors operating in these peripheral zones (Tamil nationalist and Muslim parties in Eastern Sri Lanka, Madhesi parties in the Tarai region of Southern Nepal) have navigated the complex and opaque post-war political landscape and negotiated shifting patronage networks. In examining the new forms of claim-making that are emerging from the peripheries, the paper stresses the importance of political brokers, who have been neglected in existing studies but play a key role in balancing demands from communities at the margins with the need forge alliances with and extract resources from political actors at the centre.