Hybrid Sovereignties and Generational Rupture: Reconfiguring Governance in Post-Crisis Madagascar
Velomahanina Tahinjanahary Razakamaharavo

Madagascar’s 2025 conflict and political crises represent the apex of a long-entrenched hybrid political order in which formal institutions, military actors, oligarchic networks, religious intermediaries, and digitally mobilized youth compete for authority and legitimacy. The Gen Z-led uprising exposed deep generational cleavages and the fragmentation of sovereignty, while the military’s renewed political role features the persistence of praetorian dynamics. Rebuilding civilian authority will require embracing managed hybridity through inclusive political compacts and targeted structural reforms aimed at curbing state capture, strengthening civil-military relations, and addressing the vulnerabilities introduced by digital mobilization.

Dr Velomahanina Tahinjanahary Razakamaharavo is a Research Fellow at the University of Reading. Her work focuses on peacebuilding, conflict recurrence, governance of emerging technologies, and resilience to climate-related risks. She holds a PhD in International Conflict Analysis from the University of Kent and has held research, policy and teaching positions across Europe, including at the Technical University of Munich, the European University Institute, Geneva Graduate Institute, Uppsala University, Umeå University and UCLouvain. She led the ESRC-funded HYBRICON project on conflict and hybrid governance and is the Author of the Monograph “Peacebuilding in Madagascar. A Multi-levelled Peace”.

Nepal’s Gen-Z ‘Revolution’: Was it a Revolution and What is Likely to Happen in the Elections in March?
David Gellner and Krishna Adhikari

Both participants and observers are even now puzzling over what happened in Nepal on September 8 and 9th 2025. Plenty of conspiracy theories, simplistic explanations, and instant analyses are on offer: Was it a monarchist plot? Could it have been organized by a distant or neighbouring foreign power? Was it just a nihilistic expression of fury from a social-media-saturated youth angry at the banning of Facebook and WhatsApp and furious at the images they had seen of Nepokids (the children of politicians and the business elite) cavorting in ski resorts while they battled with unemployment? What was the role of the Army, of India, and of the monarchists? How was it possible for life to go back to ‘normal’ so quickly?
Much of the arson and violence on the second day was planned, though whether anyone will ever be held to account is very much an open question. Whether the new political forces claiming to represent the aspirations of Gen-Z will be able to defeat the established parties in the elections is very much an open question. If they do so, whether and how they will be able to renew the country is also an open question. Whether the programme of the new forces will involve undoing the achievements of the 2015 Constitution (secularism, republicanism, federalism, quota systems for minorities) also remains to be seen and, either way, their position is likely to be highly contentious.
By comparing Nepal to Madagascar, it is hoped that some larger issues of youth, development, migration, and networked globalization can be addressed.

David Gellner FBA is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology and Emeritus Fellow of All Souls, University of Oxford. He has been doing research on Nepal since 1980. His most recent publications with Krishna Adhikari are the co-edited Nepal’s Dalits in Transition (Vajra, 2024) and an analysis of the September ‘revolution’ published six weeks after the events: www.theindiaforum.in/politics/gen-z-and-nepals-ongoing-struggle-change.

Krishna Adhikari is an Affiliate of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford. He was in Nepal during the events of September. He has a Master’s in Social Work from Goteborg, Sweden, and a PhD on the dynamics of social capital in CBOs in Nepal from the University of Reading (2007).