Voters line up at a polling station in the Punaka province of Bhutan.
Change is a word often used at election time, but in Bhutan you can sense it at every political meeting and on every door-knocking drive. In the run-up to the country's first-ever general election on March 24, voters and politicians had to figure out how democracy works and, more important, how to import the concept without hurting their traditions. A few weeks ago, in Khuruthang, a town in the verdant Punakha Valley, workers from the People's Democratic Party--the older (at just over a year) of Bhutan's two main parties--pitched a tent in the courtyard of the town's temple. Buddhism is central...
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