The Historical Dynamics of the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal

With the Maoist insurgency in Nepal currently bound in the more pacific realm of electoral politics, questions arise about how an initially modest insurgency came so close to overwhelming the Nepali state. This paper seeks to address two primary questions: first, why did the insurgency arise where and when it did, and second, after its initial efforts what accounts for the rapid geographic spread of the insurgency? In order to address these questions, the paper engages in a subnational analysis of the dynamics of the civil conflict, systematically marshaling district-level information from the 75 districts of Nepal. At the same time, it places the rise and spread of the insurgency in historical context and argues that development over time is critical to understanding the nature of the civil war. In so doing, the paper offers a systematic analysis of the political history and geography of the war and offers a corrective to quantitative but generally ahistorical accounts of the war found in existing research