In December 2010, a Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire. It ignited a spark across the Arab world that no established political force could ever match. Within months, four governments fell. The world watched and called it a new kind of revolution. And they were powered by smartphones rather than traditional party structures.Yet, fifteen years later, the fate of that movement has spiraled into a bitter irony. Tunisia itself collapsed back into one-man rule under Kais Saied in 2021. This same pattern, with regional variations, has repeated itself across South Asia. Governments collapsed in Colombo, Dhaka and Kathmandu, and newer forces were elected to power. But here, too, we are witnessing the same patterns of democratic backsliding across these countries.The vulnerabilities of modern uprisingsSamuel Huntington’s first three waves of democratisation were, however imperfectly, carried by organised political forces: liberal movements, rooted political parties, labor unions, independence coalitions and dissidents with fixed agendas. The contemporary protest wave is architecturally the opposite. It assembles through social media and shared outrage and frustrations rather than a shared ideology. To borrow the words of scholars W. Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg, these protests are driven by “connective action” rather than collective action.The youth-led Aragalaya movement against economic collapse, hyperinflation and energy shortages ended with a government vacuum in Sri Lanka in 2022. Similarly, a student protest against job quota policies that spread like wildfire through WhatsApp groups and TikTok videos brought down Sheikh Hasina in August 2024.Following this exact same pattern, in Nepal, a Gen Z uprising in September 2025, organised through decentralised social media campaigns against social media bans and corruption, dismantled the whole state apparatus within hours.All three protests share common elements. They were largely driven by youth through social media, and they had no central leadership, no party affiliation and no post-power plan. Consequently, these protests were extraordinarily easy to infiltrate, co-opt and redirect. These uprisings are part of a global wave of democratic backsliding, and Nepal is actively riding it.A country at a crossroadsTo understand the current crisis in Nepal, it helps to have a bit of context. Two decades ago, Nepal transitioned from monarchy to federal democratic republic, ending a decade-long Maoist insurgency. After that the political scene has been dominated by three main parties: Nepali Congress, Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) or CPN-UML and Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) or CPN-Maoist Their time in power became synonymous with corruption, instability and unfulfilled promises. Fast forward to September 2025, and a generation that grew up witnessing broken promises, frustrated by the lack of opportunities and the personalisation of politics by three faces, took to the streets. The movement was fuelled by the trend #Nepo-Kid that ran on social media, especially TikTok and Facebook, and spread like wildfire without centralised leadership or any official ties. The movement was impressive in both its size and speed, but as events unfolded, it proved surprisingly easy to manipulate. Just six months later, the Rashtriya Swatantra Party (RSP), a relatively new party with Balen Shah as a prime ministerial candidate, surged into power with a strong majority. But today that movement signals something quite different: a moment where populist mobilisation risks hollowing out the very foundations of democratic governance.Beneath the surface of the youth-driven movement, a darker undercurrent nexus was at play. An investigative report by the Nepal’s National Human Rights Commission’s (NHRC) recently revealed how technology was systematically misused to turn the September Gen Z protests violent and destructive. The misuse was such that the protesters ended up indulging in activities that could never consolidate democracy but instead risked pushing it to backslide. Forces were working to ensure that events would be steered in a destructive direction. At the same time, Shah allegedly amplified the anger by posting multiple statuses on Facebook to guide the protesters, as if he held their strings in his hands. Other critics have also raised concerns about his opaque relationship with elements of the security forces, which, they argue, undermines democratic accountability. Politicians such as Amresh Singh have gone so far as to warn that Nepal is sliding into a “Pakistan model” of democracy.The populist shortcutWhere genuine democratic movements build institutions, populist movements consume them. In Nepal, the parliamentary election was held six months after the protest, where RSP and Shah applied the classic political formula of riding a wave of anti-incumbency instead of fostering true legitimacy. They positioned themselves as the radical antithesis to a completely discredited leadership. Their entire political campaign was built on the negation of old political parties. Shah walked right past formal policy debates and public discourse. Instead, the movement he led chose to secure power through his personal aura, individual heroism and cult of personality – and it was amplified through digital platforms. They also created a highly aggressive ‘us versus them’ narrative during the election. Their success story does not promote deliberative democracy. Instead, a facade of democratic functioning was created. How democracies are dismantled from withinIn 2010, political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way introduced a new concept called “competitive authoritarianism“ after observing hybrid regimes, where democratic institutions exist on paper but are manipulated in actual practice. They explained how such regimes appear democratic on the surface, but the playing field is so heavily unbalanced that the entire state machinery, including the judiciary and the media, works in favour of the incumbent.If we look closely at the new government’s actions in Nepal, the country is heading in this exact same direction. Here, democratic backsliding is being driven by the blatant politicisation of the courts and the systematic marginalisation of alternative narratives, just like Levitsky and Way warned. For the first time since the end of the Rana regime, in the name of efficiency, the long-standing, informal rule of appointing the senior-most judge as the chief justice has been violated. This was a deliberate move to fill the Supreme Court with political loyalists. At the same time, the government is working to systematically crush dissenting opposition voices. By banning trade unions and student unions, it is tilting the political playing field in favour of the RSP and Shah. Moreover, it is using subtle brainwashing techniques across social media pages and groups while discrediting mainstream media outlets. It is doing so by mobilising extremist internet cadres to label critical news organisations as being affiliated with rival political parties. This is not only undermining the independence of the press but also an attempt to replace watchdogs with obedient lapdogs. Nepal is gradually shifting towards a police state. Business leaders and politicians from rival parties are being arrested without due process, which is fuelling a massive capital flight that will only worsen the economic situation. Moreover, the government’s bulldozer terror against informal settlements has violated basic human rights principles that should be inalienable in a democratic state. Governance by ordinanceThe executive machinery surrounding Shah is weaponising the exceptional constitutional provision of ordinances and turning it into a rule. Even though the government commands a supermajority, it has consistently opted for shortcuts instead of passing laws properly through the parliament.Under the constitution, an ordinance is strictly meant to be an emergency measure. It is a legal safety valve, designed only for extraordinary circumstances when immediate action is required and parliament is not in session. When a government transforms this rare exception into an everyday tool of administration, it fundamentally shifts the balance of power destroying parliamentary sovereignty. This practice goes against the spirit of the constitution. If left unchecked, it risks normalising executive overreach and eroding the foundations of democratic system.Why this matters beyond NepalIn today’s world, Nepal does not sit in isolation. Nepal’s story influences the stories of other nations. Nepal is a part of a much larger global narrative about the limitations of digital mobilisation as a democratising force. Social media can assemble millions but cannot build institutions. Outrage can remove governments but cannot replace them with accountable alternatives. Democratic participation can be hijacked for colour revolutions and authoritarian consolidation. Every democracy faces a version of these vulnerabilities.Digital mobilisation can topple governments with breathtaking speed, but it rarely leaves behind durable democratic institutions. And as the region’s largest democracy begins to feel the tremors of digitally fuelled unrest leading to regime change, the fragility of political orders across South Asia becomes even harder to ignore.What can still be done in NepalDespair is not a strategy. After the Gen Z uprising, Nepal’s democratic institutions were damaged but not destroyed. As Nepal’s President Ramchandra Paudel said, “Bado jukti le jogayeko Sambidhan.” It means this is a constitution protected by strong logic, and that logic has not yet run out. But what is needed now are political solutions, not merely technical ones, and they must be immediate.The most urgent demand is simple: the prime minister must face parliament. Governance by ordinance must be stopped. Avoiding legislative scrutiny is not democratic leadership; it is evasion. If RSP’s leadership refuses to uphold this basic constitutional obligation, then RSP itself must find the courage to hold Shah internally accountable. A party that swept to power on promises of transparency cannot afford to protect opacity within its own ranks. Accountability must also extend to what happened during and after the Gen Z uprising. A full, unredacted NHRC report, not a brief summary, must be made public. The formation of a shadow investigating committee, led by civil society, is necessary to investigate the uprising, document human rights violations and the roles of security agencies.The judiciary is another critical battleground. There must be internal unity within the judiciary to resist executive interference and preserve the separation of powers. The Nepal bar association has a particular responsibility here; it must stand as an institutional shield, defending judicial independence and advocating loudly for accountable governance.Civic space must be reclaimed and rebuilt, but differently than before. The banning of trade unions and student organisations must be challenged through courts and through sustained civil society pressure. It is not a policy issue; it is a constitutional emergency.Critically, the civic space that now emerges in Nepal must be intergenerational and collectively led, not organised around a few faces. One of the lessons of the Gen Z uprising is that anything built around individuals is not sustainable.Finally, the political opposition must get its own house in order. Cross-party democratic coalitions are essential, but they will remain hollow unless internal democracy is genuinely respected within each party. Opposition leaders who suppress dissent within their own organisations have no moral authority to demand accountability from the government. And this is also not a time for division; it’s an hour of unity. Only then can opposition parties move beyond fragmented resistance and forge a broad democratic coalition capable of checking the government’s actions.The fate of Nepal resembles the myth of Sisyphus, where the boulder of democratic reform pushed painfully uphill by citizen mobilisation, rolls back under the weight of an even more authoritarian and non-transparent control. But like Sisyphus, fron Camus’s perspective, is not simply a figure of tragedy. He is aware. And awareness, even in the face of absurdity, is the beginning of resistance.Nepal’s youth were very hopeful before organising the protests. The question now is whether they will allow what they have built to be quietly disassembled in their name, or take the same energy that brought them into the streets and redirect it toward the consistent, less dramatic, but far more durable work of protecting the institutions that make democracy real.The boulder need not always fall.Abhijeet Adhikari is a Gen-Z leader from Nepal.