Student protests in Nepal: How deliberate decisions and non-deliberate outcomes gave rise to a democracy and abolitionist movement

This study examines the dynamics of the 2003-04 'anti-regression' student movement in the Himalayan kingdom. This case study, based on more than a hundred interviews with student leaders during the episodes of contention, highlights the role of strategic actions in shaping dialectic relationships between rational and non-rational choices during movement emergence and development, a point that previous literature on social movements has systematically failed to stress.