Now comes the monarchy’s most unexpected gift—devolution of power to the people—and Peldon finds it hard to accept. Like many Bhutanese, she wept that day in December 2006 when, after 34 years on the throne, Jigme Singye Wangchuck abdicated in favor of his son, opening the way for parliamentary elections. Peldon reveres the fourth king as a visionary who has led by example, investing in schools and roads rather than palaces and personal bank accounts. His son and successor, Oxford-educated Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, arrived in Dungkhar last year to encourage villagers to vote. Peldon admires the young monarch, but the point of the elections eludes her. “We have a good and wise king,” she says. “Why do we need democracy?”

Rural peasants aren’t the only ones harboring doubts. At a trendy Thimphu nightclub called P. Wang, a trio of power brokers relaxes after a round of golf, singing karaoke and toasting the monarchy. “I don’t want democracy, because it can lead to chaos, like in Nepal or India,” says Tshering Tobgay, a businessman. “But whatever the king says, we must eat—whether sweet or sour, poisonous or delicious.” Even Bhutan’s chief election commissioner concedes that he would prefer not to have elections. “Given the choice, of course, we’d want to continue to be guided by the monarchy,” Dasho Kunzang Wangdi says. So why change? “It’s a simple thing: The king wants it.”

The strongest voice for reforming the monarchy, ironically, has been the king’s. What would happen, he has argued, if Bhutan fell into the hands of an evil or incompetent ruler? He won the argument—as kings often do—but his stepchild, democracy, has had a few wobbly first steps. Even fielding viable candidates has been a challenge, owing in part to the king’s insistence that all aspirants to national office be university graduates—this in a country where less than 2 percent of the people have bachelor’s degrees. Nevertheless, last summer two top government ministers—Jigme Y. Thinley and Sangay Ngedup—resigned their posts to lead opposing parties into the elections.

Whoever becomes Bhutan’s first prime minister this year will likely not deviate from the policy of Gross National Happiness. Ngedup, a jovial former agricultural minister who calls the king’s abdication a “very Buddhist form of nonattachment,” has a special reason to stay the course: As elder brother of all four of the fourth king’s wives, he is the new king’s uncle. Thinley, for his part, is one of the policy’s principal architects and has traveled the globe promoting the happiness gospel. “This idea has captured the imagination of the larger world,” Thinley says. “People are searching for a new definition of prosperity.”