Bhutan Becomes a Constitutional Monarchy
Bhutan became a constitutional monarchy in 2008 because its king insisted on it against his subjects' wishes. The Wangchuck dynasty had ruled since 1907, and the fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, came to the throne at sixteen in 1972. He is best known for the phrase gross national happiness, coined in the late 1970s as an argument that development should be measured by something other than output, and later built into a formal index covering health, education, ecology, culture and governance. He also gave power away in stages nobody asked him to. Executive authority was transferred to an elected council of ministers in 1998, the National Assembly was given the ability to remove the king by a two-thirds vote, a draft constitution was circulated to every household in 2005, and the king toured the country arguing for it against audiences who told him they were content as they were. He abdicated in 2006 at fifty-one in favour of his son, so that the transition would be complete before the constitution took effect. Elections were held in 2007 and 2008, with a mock poll first to explain the procedure, and the constitution was signed in July 2008. The record has a large exception. In the early 1990s Bhutan's citizenship laws and a one-nation policy of dress and language led to the expulsion of some 100,000 ethnic Nepalis from the south, about a sixth of the population, most of whom spent two decades in camps in Nepal and were eventually resettled abroad. The country is also the only carbon-negative state in the world, with a constitutional requirement that sixty per cent of its territory remain forested, and it did not have television or the internet until 1999.
- Year: 2008 CE
- Category: Political
