Nepal, May 15 -- Although coups like the one imposed by King Mahendra in 1960-or the one done by his son Gyanendra in 2002-do exist as historical examples of a democratic system's sudden death, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue in their 2016-bestseller How Democracies Die that democracies don't always collapse 'suddenly'. They explain how democratic backsliding is a long, sustained and rather predictable process. To explain that, they use a simple phrase: Norm erosion before rule erosion.

It doesn't take an authoritarianism scholar to appreciate the difference between norms and rules. While the latter refers to the black letters of the law-for example, Rule 38 of the House of Representatives Rules, 2023, which allows a Prime Minis...