Sri Lanka in 2024 and 2025: transformation within bounds

Journal article

Between 2024 and 2025, Sri Lanka experienced a political rupture without precedent as the National People’s Power won overwhelming electoral mandates, shattering dynastic rule, and promising systemic transformation. Yet the government’s first 15 months revealed how thoroughly sovereignty had already been circumscribed. Economic policy was bound by inherited IMF programs and creditor-shaped debt restructuring. Foreign relations required simultaneous subordination to India and China. Security-sector reform foundered as land appropriation and wartime impunity persisted. When Cyclone Ditwah struck, in November 2025, it exposed the cruelest paradox. Fiscal consolidation had constrained capacity for climate adaptation in a country responsible for negligible emissions yet catastrophically vulnerable, revealing how structural forces shape what even decisive electoral victories can accomplish in the contemporary Global South.

Authors: Kelegama, T; Moramudali, U

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Journal: Asian Survey
• Volume: 66
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 376-389
• Publication date: 2026-04-01
• Acceptance date: 2026-01-01
• DOI: 10.1525/as.2026.66.2.376
• EISSN: 1533-838X
• ISSN: 0004-4687
• Language: English
• Keywords: debt restructuring; climate vulnerability; geopolitics; IMF; postwar accountability