How Bhutan is governed: a democracy ordered from the throne

How the king gave his own powers away

Until the 1950s Bhutan was an absolute monarchy. Britannica describes the second half of the 20th century as a process in which the monarchs "increasingly divested themselves of their power", and the sequence is unusual for being driven from the top rather than won from below.

The third king created a National Assembly, the Tshogdu, in 1953, a Royal Advisory Council in 1965 and a Council of Ministers in 1968, and in 1968 he renounced his veto over the assembly's bills. In 1998 the fourth king dissolved the cabinet so that it could be partly elected by the assembly, transferred most of his administrative duties to it, and accepted that the assembly could remove him by a vote of no confidence. The cabinet of 1998 was an experiment of its own: its members were elected by the National Assembly for five-year terms, and the post of prime minister rotated each year among the five candidates with the most votes. Drafting of a written constitution began in 2001. Parties, illegal until then, were permitted by a royal edict of 22 April 2007, in anticipation of elections the following year, and the public was trained in the procedure through a mock vote.

The pre-2008 assembly is described in three different sizes. Wikipedia's article on Bhutan gives 130 members in 1953; Britannica gives 151, elected by village headmen or chosen by the king and the monastic order; Wikipedia's article on the politics of Bhutan gives 150, of whom 106 were elected for three-year terms, 34 were appointed and 10 represented the monastic body. Under that system each family, not each person, had one vote.

What the constitution keeps for the throne

The constitution of 18 July 2008 defines Bhutan as a democratic constitutional monarchy belonging to the people. The king is head of state, supreme commander of the armed forces, and the person in whom the Chhoe-sid-nyi, the dual system of religion and politics, is unified. He is not answerable in a court of law and his person is sacrosanct. He grants citizenship, pardons and land, confers the red scarf and the title of Dasho, and appoints the members of the independent commissions from lists put forward jointly by the prime minister, the chief justice, the Speaker, the chair of the National Council and the leader of the opposition.

What makes the text distinctive is what it takes away. Article 2 requires the king to retire at 65 in favour of an heir who has reached 21. It sets out how he can be removed if he violates the constitution: a motion passed by a joint sitting of Parliament and then a national referendum that must pass in every one of the twenty dzongkhags. The sources disagree on the parliamentary threshold. Wikipedia's summary of the constitution gives three-quarters of all members; its article on the politics of Bhutan gives two-thirds. And Parliament may change the provisions on the monarchy and the form of government only through a national referendum.

The legislature can overrule a royal objection. The king may return a bill with changes, but must assent to it if both houses pass it again after a joint sitting. A six-member Council of Regency, which includes the prime minister, the chief justice and the leader of the opposition, can exercise the royal prerogatives in the king's place.

Religion sits beside the state. The Je Khenpo, the chief abbot, heads the monastic affairs commission of the Drukpa Kagyu order, which Wikipedia's politics article describes as a de facto apolitical branch outside the three secular ones.

How Parliament is elected

The two houses are elected on opposite principles. The National Council is non-partisan: its 20 elected members stand as individuals and the king appoints five more. The National Assembly is the only body for which parties may put up candidates, and its seats are apportioned so that each dzongkhag returns between two and seven members.

Elections to the Assembly run in two rounds. Every registered party may contest the first. Only the two with the most votes go through to the second, and Britannica records that seats are then allocated between those two in proportion to their share in the second round. The winner forms the government and the runner-up the opposition, so the Assembly never holds more than two parties. Sitting members may not change party.

The government that emerges answers to the Assembly. The king recognises as prime minister the leader of the party with a majority of seats, and no prime minister may serve more than two terms. Ministers come from among the Assembly's members, must be natural-born citizens, and no more than two may come from any one dzongkhag. A third of the Assembly can move a vote of no confidence, and if two-thirds support it the king must dismiss the government.

Every citizen aged 18 who has been on the civil register of the constituency for at least a year may vote, by secret ballot, on presenting a citizenship card. The Election Commission draws the constituencies, which are reapportioned every ten years, and runs referendums as well as elections.

What the first elections produced

The National Council was elected on 31 December 2007 and the National Assembly on 24 March 2008. Two parties contested: the Bhutan Peace and Prosperity Party (DPT) won 45 of 47 seats and the People's Democratic Party (PDP) the other two. Five parties contested in 2013, when the PDP won 32 seats and 54.88% of the vote. Four contested in 2018, when the Druk Nyamrup Tshogpa (DNT) took the most seats and entered government for the first time. Britannica notes that three different parties won the first three elections. A fourth election was held over 2023 and 2024.

Women hold few seats. The Inter-Parliamentary Union recorded 2 women among 47 Assembly members in January 2024, or 4.3%, against 17.4% in December 2021 and 8.5% after the first election in March 2008. Britannica describes women as underrepresented in the higher levels of government, while noting their active role in community decision-making.

How justice works in the courts

The legal system grew from the Tsa Yig, the code of the 17th-century founder Ngawang Namgyal, and was influenced by English common law in the 20th century. The courts were separated from the executive in 1968, when a High Court was created to hear appeals from the districts. Until 2008 the king was the final court of appeal and could recall any judge.

The 2008 constitution set up a ladder of courts: dungkhag courts in thirteen subdistricts of six dzongkhags, a dzongkhag court in each of the twenty districts, the High Court as the first court of appeal and the Supreme Court, established in 2009, as the last. Criminal trials take place before a panel of judges, a model Wikipedia's politics article likens more to the Napoleonic system than to the adversarial one. Bhutan has not accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. Parliament decriminalised homosexuality in 2020.

How the districts and villages govern themselves

Below the national level the country is run through the twenty dzongkhags, each with a district administration headed by a district officer answerable to the minister of home affairs, and a district council, the Dzongkhag Tshogdu. Some dzongkhags are further divided into dungkhags, or subdistricts.

The village tier is the gewog, a group of villages with an elected council led by a headman, the gup, and a deputy, the mangmi, on five-year terms. Both also sit on the district council. Towns designated as thromdes elect a mayor, the thrompon. The smallest electoral unit is the chiwog, a subdivision of a gewog drawn by the Election Commission. International boundaries and the boundaries of dzongkhags and gewogs can be changed only with the consent of three-quarters of the members of Parliament.

Who Bhutan stands with abroad

India is the relationship that every other one is measured against. Britain guided Bhutan's external affairs from 1910 and India from 1949, under a treaty whose second article had Bhutan agree "to be guided by the advice of the Government of India in regard to its external relations". The treaty was revised in February 2007 and the revision took effect on 1 January 2011. The guidance clause was replaced by an undertaking to cooperate on national interests and not to allow either territory to be used against the other, and a preamble affirming each side's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity was added.

Security still rests on India. Britannica records that India treats an attack on Bhutan as an attack on India; the Royal Bhutan Army is trained by India and has no air arm, relying on the Indian Air Force's Eastern Air Command. Indian and Bhutanese citizens cross into each other's countries without passport or visa, on national identity cards.

Bhutan has no formal diplomatic relations with China. The first bilateral agreement between them was signed in 1998, and border talks continue over about 269 square kilometres; this catalogue records the dispute and takes no position on it. It also has no formal relations with the United States or the United Kingdom, which deal with it through their embassies in New Delhi. Only India, Bangladesh and Kuwait keep resident embassies in Thimphu.

Wikipedia's article on Bhutan gives the number of countries Bhutan has relations with as 56 in its opening and as 58, plus the European Union, further down, the latest being Qatar on 16 October 2025. Bhutan joined the United Nations in 1971, was the first state to recognise Bangladesh's independence in 1971, and was a founding member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in 1985. It also belongs to BIMSTEC, the Group of 77 and the Non-Aligned Movement. Relations with Nepal have been strained since the 1990s by the question of the refugees.

What the refugee question still decides at home

The expulsions of the early 1990s, which the history article sets out in both the government's account and the refugees' account, left a political residue. Britannica records a number of unregistered parties, made up mostly of ethnic Nepalis and operating from abroad, often coordinated by the Druk National Congress; the government does not recognise parties associated with the refugees and regards them as a threat.

The constitution's citizenship rules shape who can vote. A natural-born citizen must have two citizen parents. Naturalisation requires at least 15 years of lawful residence, the ability to speak and write Dzongkha, knowledge of Bhutanese culture and history, and no record of having spoken or acted against the Tsawa-sum. Dual citizenship is prohibited. Wikipedia's article on Bhutan records that minorities have been represented in the cabinet, Parliament and local government since 2008, and also that citizenship cards and voting rights are restricted for relatives of refugees whose status has been reviewed.

Outside assessments of the result differ in their categories. Freedom House rates Bhutan "Partly Free"; the Economist Intelligence Unit called it a "hybrid regime" in 2023; the V-Dem project classified it as an electoral democracy for 2024.