Democratic crises in post -war Sri Lanka

Abstract

Democracy is a very prominent concept in the academic literatures. It is considered as a practical type of government and a system of socio-economic life of the people. However, practice of the democracy has been challenged in the present world. It is not exception to Sri Lanka. In the Sri Lankan context, fundamentals of democracy have been accepted within government framework since its liberated British empire and it was further strengthened by constitutional arrangements. Nevertheless, over three decade civil strife led to democratic crisis in Sri Lanka. Especially, civil war attacked democratic nature of political and civil administration of North and Eastern province of Sri Lanka. At the present post-war period, democracy is although considered as a main goal for government development policy, it has been challenged in various ways. In this backdrop, this dissertation attempts to analysis the democratic crises in the Eastern province of Sri Lanka. The above stated purpose is analyzed by studying both primary and secondary materials such as related books, documents, news paper articles, periodicals and website articles. Further, this dissertation entitled, "Democratic Crises in Post - War Sri Lanka: With Special reference to Eastern Province." is arranged as follows: Chapter one sketch introduction of the research which includes importance of research, research purpose, research problems, research hypothesis, research methodology and data collection, study area, literature review and research organization. Chapter two is related to the theories and basic assumption in relation to the concept of democracy. This chapter is formulated with the basic ideas, types and conditions of democracy. Chapter three introduces the study area. It provides socio-economic and political aspects of the area. Particularly, this study focus one of the provincial area, Eastern Province as a case. Chapter four is analyzing part. It analysis democratic crises which impacted on the political and civil administration of the province. Basically, this chapter is an empirical analysis with using collected data and chapter five concludes the dissertation with suggestions to uplift the situation in the study area. Major finding of this dissertation is practice of democracy in the eastern province has been challenged due to various reasons.