Social Inclusion and Social Protection in Nepal

The manuscript explores aspects of the politics of policy-making in a range of domains related to inequality and exclusion, including federalism, quotas in public service, labour regulations and cash transfer schemes. It offers insights into the underlying political dynamics of policy change in a fast-changing nation-state, and in particular, the views and perspectives of different actors on those policy changes. This includes those who receive the cash transfers, aid donors, bureaucrats and civil society groups. Looking at such a wide range of large and important topics from such a variety of perspectives was an ambitious task. While many new empirical findings were made and a magisterial overview of the landscape of the social inclusion agenda was gained, the breadth was at the expense of depth. This highlights some of the limitations of the grounded theory approach and the research design.