The entity which came to be known in English as the “Tibetan Government in Exile,” formed on 28 April 1959 and based in the Western Himalayas in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, was actually the transposition of what in Tibet was called the "Ganden Phodrang Shung". Ganden Phodrang means “Palace of Ganden” (referring to Ganden monastery), and Shung means “administration”. This was the political organ established in 1642 by one of the Tibetan religious orders called the Gelug sect to govern Central Tibet. Its duties were automatically granted to the successive Dalai Lamas (or mostly their regents) since then. After some inner turmoil due to the might of the Dzungar Mongols, the political system of Central Tibet started to be governed under the dual system known as “Chösi Zungdrel”  (“coordination of religion and state”) in 1720. Based in Lhasa, it was divided into two administrations of around 200 officials (zhungzhap) each, a secretariat in charge of monastic affairs, the "Yigtsang", composed of monastic officials, called "Tsedrung", exclusively recruited within the Gelug order, and a cabinet ("Kashag") in charge of civil affairs, composed of lay members of the nobility known as "Drungkhor". Nevertheless, among the 4 members ("Kalön") of the Kashag, one was a monk.

The Gelug order is bicephalous. One head, the Ganden Tripa (“Holder of the Ganden Throne”) is the spiritual leader. This is an appointed office, awarded on the basis of a competitive examination and held for a seven-year term. The other head, which is a “reincarnation lineage” and therefore a lifetime position, is the Dalai Lama, holder of the Ganden Phodrang Shung, who is the temporal leader. The office of the Dalai Lama and his regents can in a sense be compared to that of a political commissar. 

In terms of geopolitics, when the Ganden Phodrang moved into exile, they wanted not only to retain the political power they held in Tibet, but to extend it over the spiritual leaders of the other Tibetan sects under the pretext of uniting against the Chinese in their new straitened circumstances. In 1962, the Gelug Yigtsang (religious secretariat) was abolished. The 14^th Dalai Lama thus concentrated on himself the entire power of the old Gelug regime, and extended it to all the Tibetan Buddhist sects, as well as the "Bön" (shamanic) and "Kachee" (Muslim) religions, becoming both the “religious and political leader” of all the Tibetans, which was unprecedented. For the outer world the Dalai Lama could thus become the symbol of Tibetan national identity in exile, and seen as the leader of his own “Vatican” (located in Dharamsala, India). He even started to be known abroad as “His Holiness”, like the Catholic Pope.

Even before fleeing Tibet, they had made progress in this direction with one sect, the Sakya, organising a “take-over” by changing its order of succession. The son of the 40^th Sakya Trizin (“Sakya Throne Holder”) had been enthroned in 1950 following the death of his father. Normally he should have kept the title, but the Ganden Phodrang intervened and in 1952, amid growing threats from Chinese invaders, gave the title instead to a seven-year-old boy called Ngawang Kunga, regarded as the reincarnation of a master of another sect, the Nyingma, who then became the 41^st Sakya Trizin.

Once in exile, the aforementioned plan to combine all Buddhist and non-Buddhist sects under a single administration led by the Dalai Lama could commence, thanks to the arrival of money from the U.S. (first via the CIA and later via the National Endowment for Democracy and the US State Department-sponsored Tibet Fund). As such the Ganden Phodrang was able to gain leverage for the Gelug sect over the other sects, but in doing so, they faced opposition from exile Tibetans from those sects. The spiritual leaders Dudjom Rinpoche (head of Nyingma sect) and the 16^th Karmapa Rangjung Rigpe Dorje (head of Karma Kagyu sect) were strongly averse to depend on the religious doctrines of the Gelug sect. Equally, Tibetans from the provinces not previously under the Ganden Phodrang’s control were recalcitrant in the face of this initiative. Amdo province, which was already under the control of the Chinese Emperors and then of the Kuomintang before the arrival of Mao’s Communists, and Kham province in Eastern Tibet whose guerrilla forces had fought against the Chinese (with no support from the Ganden Phodrang). This opposition found expression in the 1960s and 70s through the “Thirteen Group” a collection of refugees from thirteen resettlement camps in India (and one in Nepal).

Its General Secretary Gungthang Tsultrim, a former official of the aforementioned guerrilla force, was supported by the 16^th Karmapa, who served as the group’s spiritual advisor. The consolidation attempt was blocked but apparently those responsible sought to avenge their failure. In 1977, Gungthang Tsultrim was assassinated. It is said that the killer confessed to being paid by the Tibetan exile administration for the hit, and to have been offered an even larger bounty for the Karmapa.

After the 16^th Karmapa’s death of cancer in 1981, a new opportunity appeared, as it had with the Sakya Trizin, to take the lead over the appointment of the successor. With the complicity of renegades within the Karma Kagyu order, the Ganden Phodrang engineered a takeover of the spiritual leadership of the sect. A deal had already been struck in the mid-1980s by senior Karma Kagyu clerics such as Tai Situ and Akong Tulku with the mainland Chinese authorities: in return for being allowed back into Tibet to rebuild semblances of their former monastic fiefdoms ("labrang"), funded by the contributions of Taiwanese and Western supporters, they agreed to appoint a young successor to the 16^th Karmapa inside Tibet, who would be trained to convey his devotees’ loyalty to the Chinese state. The boy, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, was appointed in 1992 with the blessing of the PRC’s Religious Affairs Bureau and the state-run Buddhist Association of China.

The Dalai Lama and his exile administration, in an apparent gesture of political conciliation, agreed with this investiture. In fact, the recognition of the new Karmapa by the Ganden Phodrang also played to its own geostrategic ambition to exert control over the influential Karma Kagyu sect. In late 1999, in order to validate and secure their control, the Exile Tibetan administration participated in the exfiltration of Ogyen Trinley Dorje into India. For the next 17 years they proceeded to indoctrinate him within a Gelug insitution (Gyuto Monastery), not far from the Dalai Lama’s own residence. Rumours were allowed to spread that the young Karmapa could be a potential successor to the Dalai Lama, when in fact the only formal role he could ever have potentially played would be that of a “regent” within the Ganden Phodrang system. In reality, the fact that he never disconnected himself from China meant that Ogyen Trinley Dorje would never have provided such utility, except perhaps in the imagination of some journalists.

However, after all the pursuit of this strategy only resulted in a loss of credibility. In trying to appear as “the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and the Tibetan people”, by privileging the political Chinese investiture over the spiritual Tibetan one, the Dalai Lama was instrumental in creating a split among Tibetans – against his stated principle of unifying them. Also as a consequence, in the long run this strategy seems to have helped China to gain more influence over Tibetans via a China-friendly Karmapa than it did to garner favour towards Tibetan independence and against Chinese rule.

The geo-strategic approach of the exile administration to retain and extend power with the hope that they would soon return to Tibet was based on weak and non-binding promises of the U.S. It was a concept which did not work. The situation of the exiled Tibetans was relatively obscure on the world stage until the late 1980s when the U.S. decided to use the Dalai Lama as a tool of soft power against China. By 2008, the strategy of uniting Tibetans under Gelug hegemony against the Chinese, while waiting for China to apologise for their occupation and then leave Tibet, had been accepted as a failure by the Dalai Lama.

It took three more years before the Dalai Lama decided to abdicate his temporal leadership and cancel the Ganden Phodrang system. 2011 marked the ceremonial funeral of the Ganden Phodrang and a major strategic shift. The “Government in Exile” ("Tsenjol Bodzhung") became the “Central Tibetan Administration” ("U Bodmi Driddzuk"), demanding no more autonomy than that offered by the TAR constitution and supposedly ready to comply with the Chinese, so much so that the former role of Kalon Tripa (equivalent of “Prime Minister”) became “Sikyong” which in Tibetan implies “political leader” but in Chinese (司政; sīzhèng) means “secretary”, i.e. an administrative, not political head.

The problem with this re-branding to fit more with a Chinese administration than Tibetan is that the Chinese administration of Tibet already exists, without requiring a duplicate. So while the name has changed, in practice it is a dream. The future of the CTA is unclear now that the U.S. has cut its overseas aid budget for exiled Tibetans. One thing for sure is the functional extinction of the religio-political institution of the Dalai Lamas. While many have speculated over the 15^th Dalai Lama when the present 14^th passes away, the question nobody seems to ask is what the function of a 15^th Dalai Lama would be? It is presumed a Dalai Lama appointed by the Chinese government might serve a limited ceremonial role like the current Panchen Lama. He would surely not be afforded the right to hold personal assets, or be given responsibility for the Potala Palace in Lhasa (e.g. in the way that Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje is responsible for Tsurphu Monastery). But wouldn’t a 15^th Dalai Lama born outside China be a “Dalai Lama without Portfolio”?