This study reconceptualizes sovereignty in post-conflict contexts by examining how authority in Nepal is dispersed across formal institutions and informal networks. It addresses the limits of state-centric frameworks in explaining governance dynamics where power is neither unified nor exclusively institutionalized.The article adopts a conceptual and theory-building methodology grounded in critical political sociology. It synthesizes contemporary scholarship on sovereignty, informality, and post-conflict governance, and develops an integrated analytical framework that draws on relational theories of power, hegemony, and political economy. The approach is interpretive and comparative, with Nepal serving as an illustrative case to refine broader theoretical claims.The analysis demonstrates that sovereignty in post-conflict Nepal operates as a fragmented and negotiated phenomenon rather than a centralized authority. Informal actors including political networks, local intermediaries, and socio-economic elites play constitutive roles in governance, often complementing or contesting formal state structures. This produces a hybrid system where legitimacy and control are continuously reconfigured.The study advances a novel conceptual framework that integrates fragmented sovereignty with informal governance, moving beyond conventional dichotomies of strong versus weak states. It contributes to critical state theory by offering a more nuanced understanding of authority in the Global South.The findings have implications for governance reform, peacebuilding strategies, and development policy by highlighting the need to engage with informal institutions as integral components of political order rather than as deviations from it.
K. Kunwar· Critical Journal of Social S...· 0 citations
The rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into public governance systems has profoundly impacted how government agencies make administrative decisions, develop policies and deliver services in the context of democratic organizations. However, existing governance theories are unable to articulate how human cognition and machine intelligence cooperate in a co-decision making environment within government. A pervasive problem in existing governance literature and theories about AI and government is the lack of clarity or the fragmentation of theory regarding the interaction between human intelligence and machine intelligence in such hybrid governance systems particularly when concerning the accountability, the legitimacy, and the quality of decisions in an AI public administration setting. This study attempts to bridge this void. More specifically, this study proposes Cognitive Governance Systems (CGS) Theory as an original explanatory framework of the interaction between human intelligence and machine intelligence in a co-decision making context of democratic government. The research follows a theory building and theory validation-oriented design that is achieved via systematic literature review synthesis. Within this new CGS Theory, we present a cognitive system-based view of governance, conceptualized as a distributed cognition system that includes six elements: human intelligence, machine intelligence, human and machine learning cognition, the interface among those two intelligences (interaction mechanism), the framework on which governance is situated (democratic principles), and the capability of that governance system to perform, respond and evolve (resilience and adaptiveness). This new paradigm in cognitive governance theory explains why the interplay among these six elements influences the quality of decision making, the effectiveness of public policies, and the sustainability of public trust in the age of AI enabled governance systems. Our approach is built with a view to enable future empirical testing, with mixed-method techniques, such as the Delphi study method, survey instruments, and structural equation modeling (SEM).
K. Kunwar· Journal of Advances in Socia...· 0 citations
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