Leaderless But Not Powerless: The Gen Z Andolan and Electoral Transformation in Nepal

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In September 2025, youth protests following a social media ban in Nepal culminated in the resignation of the prime minister and the dissolution of parliament. Thousands of movement participants caucused on Discord, selecting Sushila Karki to lead the interim government and become the country&rsquo;s first female prime minister. In March 2026, Nepal elected the Rastriya Swatantra Party, which was founded in 2022, in a landslide, producing the first single-party parliamentary majority since 1999.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">Nepal&rsquo;s &lsquo;Gen Z Andolan&rsquo; was one of dozens of youth-led, anti-corruption movements worldwide in 2025. Like earlier digitally networked movements, it was nominally leaderless and inspired by global trends. Yet unlike many predecessors and peers, it avoided democratic breakdown and translated protest into durable electoral change.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 23 activists and five Nepali politicians, I argue that three features distinguished the Andolan: (1) despite its leaderless ethos, representative groups emerged to define goals and negotiate with elites; (2) anti-corruption framing preserved moral authority despite episodes of violence; and (3) military accommodation facilitated a legitimate interim transition rather than democratic breakdown. These findings inform scholarship on digitally networked movements and may offer lessons for democratic organizing in the Global South.</span>