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The need for physical distancing during this COVID-19 pandemic has raised the need for innovative campaign methods to be developed by election contestants because conventional campaign methods such as rallies, public meetings, etc. are prohibited in some jurisdictions. Distant and online election campaigning may be seen as restrictive to both contestants and voters alike due to physical and technological barriers that appear. To what degree is this true?

As part of the initiative on the e-Parliament strategy, specialised consultants and stakeholders recommended the Parliament of Bhutan to build a series of focussed, high-impact services which will overtime led to an adaptive and evolving e-Parliament. The primary recommendation entails a significant investment in people and a local ICT capability.

A three-day media symposium on The Role of Journalism in Bhutanese Democracy was held from 11 to 13 August 2025 at Terma Linca Resort, Thimphu. It brought together the Members of the Parliament of Bhutan, parliamentary communication officials, senior journalists and media experts.

On 6 July 2025, the Parliament-Youth Engagement Forum was held at the Royal Thimphu College (RTC), bringing together around 57 participants. Among them were 29 Bhutanese youths from 10 schools across three districts. They were joined by parliamentarians, the Secretary General of the National Assembly, secretariat staff from the National Assembly and National Council secretariats, civil society representatives and media personnel.

To strengthen parliamentary communication, two workshops were held in Paro (14–16 April) and Haa (5-7 May) for Members of the National Assembly and the Secretariat staff of Bhutan’s Parliament. These back-to-back capacity-building events were respectively on Media Engagement and Digital Tools, and Parliament Communication Planning.

A five-day workshop on Strengthening Parliamentary Budget Scrutiny in Bhutan was held at the Namgay Heritage Hotel in Thimphu from 31 March to 4 April 2025.

This discussion paper is a result of the work performed at the Democracy in South Asia Outlook Forum in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on 28–30 November 2024, convened by International IDEA and the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA). The forum brought together a multidisciplinary group of experts from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

This case study examines the enfranchisement of Bhutan’s international and internal migrants. Compared with other South Asian countries, Bhutan stands out for adopting absentee voting policies and processes that aim for

To strengthen ties between the Parliament of Bhutan and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), the International IDEA Bhutan Project Office organized a three-day sensitization workshop on parliamentary procedures and committee systems from September 25–27 in Haa, Bhutan. The workshop aimed to address common challenges and foster collaboration toward shared goals in democratic governance.

A four-day Parliamentary Research Training was held at Tsherim Resort, Paro, for 64 Assistant Research Officers (AROs) and Research Assistants (RAs) from the National Assembly and National Council. The group was composed of 30 men and 34 women.

In July, a series of workshops on public hearings were organized for the newly elected members of Bhutan's National Assembly, their staff, and Civil Society Organizations (CSO).

The 9 January election in Bhutan saw the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) led by a seasoned political leader, Dasho Tshering Tobgay, returned to the government after being ousted in the 2018 elections. As part of its electoral process, Bhutan has two rounds of elections.

The recently concluded workshops on Media Literacy Training and Effective Communication Skills held in Paro for members of the National Council of Bhutan (NCB) and secretariat staff have ushered in promising outcomes for the nation's democratic processes.

The Honorable Members and secretarial staff of the National Council of Bhutan attended a weeklong training program aimed at improving the use of public hearings—a formal proceeding designed to receive testimony from all stakeholders—in the house proceedings to improve oversight, scrutiny, and public engagement.

Under the theme of ‘Taking Parliament to the People’, International IDEA and Bhutan’s Parliamentary Secretariat jointly hosted a three-day workshop for members and staff of the country’s parliament. Held from 20-22 May 2022, the workshop was designed to increase the use of public hearings in Bhutan’s parliamentary process.

A five-day workshop was held in October 2021 for 22 secretariat staff of the National Assembly (NA) and National Council (NC), the two parliamentary houses of Bhutan. The workshop aimed at identifying the Parliament of Bhutan’s communication needs and explore opportunities of leveraging new possibilities provided by the mainstream and social media platforms for effective parliamentary communications.

Identifying obstacles and focusing on long-term solutions to propose strategies for equal representation

The health of a democracy can be measured from the engagement of its citizenship. In Bhutan, this wisdom is well received because it is traditionally accepted that citizens have to contribute towards the welfare of the communities and the society they live in.

Centre-left Druk Nyamrup Tshogpa (DNT) will form the third elected government of Bhutan following Lotay Tshering’s win in the 18 October parliamentary election. With the ruling People’s Democratic Party eliminated in the first of the two rounds of the election, the country voted between DNT and the Druk Phunsum Tshogpa (DPT), which governed between 2008-2013.

Two secretarial officers from the Bhutanese Parliament underwent a vigorous two-week Fellowship Programme from 20-31 August 2018 at the state parliament of Tasmania, Australia. The Fellowship Programme was part of regular fellowship programme facilitated  by International IDEA since 2014 as part of strengthening institutional capacity of the Parliament of Bhutan.