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Authoritarianism in Bangladesh?

Habibul Haque Khondker
Most commentators readily accept the fact that democracy in Bangladesh is weak, even fragile. And they often hasten to add that democracy is a practice and we will get better with practice. I contend that there is no guarantee that Bangladesh will be more democratic; nor is it a forgone conclusion that Bangladesh will be less democratic.
In order to ensure that the transition leads to more, rather than less, democracy, we need to assess the present health of democracy. We must ask why politics is so confrontational. In order to do that we must shun a reductionist analysis focusing on the psychology of the individual leaders.
The answers lie in the structure and culture of Bangladesh society.
Bangladesh can be best described as competitive authoritarianism. The two party-systems that has evolved are often viewed as a sign of democratic maturity, but upon closer examination, one would find that underlying democratic facades, there is an authoritarian regime.
Rather than rehashing the check
list of standard criteria of democracy: freedom of expression, regular and credible elections, separation of power, etc. a la Schumpeter or other democracy theorists, one can resort to a much simpler set of criteria. Whether democracy is present or not can be proved by a simple test. In a democracy losers in the election accept the election results and not accuse of unfairness or irregularity in election; and second, leaders of the major political parties appear in talk shows to present their views and do not avoid the hot seat. These two criteria of democracy may appear simplistic but they are not.
On both counts, Bangladesh fails. Since 1990, the official year of transition to democracy from authoritarian rule, Bangladesh has gone through four elections and in each occasion the party that lost the election, slammed the charges of impropriety and fraud in the elections. In a true democracy, you cannot be a bad loser. Second, with the exception of Sheikh Hasina’s participation in a nationally shown debate in 1990 and her appearance on the BBC’s Hardtalk, the leaders of the two major parties did not appear in any televised talk shows.
So on second count, Bangladesh fails the democracy test as well.
Political systems are often naively divided as either democracy or authoritarianism. This is very simplistic. There are many shades inbetween.
Careful analysts have introduced
another in-between category, the hybrid-regime. The hybrid-regime is one notch above authoritarian regime such as China. Bangladesh, as Singapore and Nepal, has been categorised as a hybrid regime in the classification of the Economic Intelligence Unit which uses a rather stringent criteria that put France, Italy, India, etc., as flawed democracies and only 26 countries such as Norway, Denmark, Finland, UK, USA as full democracies.
Freedom House ranks Bangladesh
as partly-free.
Admittedly, Bangladesh has a procedural democracy, an electoral democracy at best. The electoral democracy in Bangladesh is the reason why the bulk of the political discussion revolves around how elections should be held, who
should be in charge to supervise elections and so on and very little on party finance and transparency of the electoral finance.
Some writers, such as Douglass North, known as historical institutionalists, prefer to explain political and economic developments in terms of controlling rent but not in any which way you can. There has to be rules of institutions that would guide the game. In some countries — advanced industrial democracies you have an open
access order, in the majority of the countries outside the small fortunate ones there exist a limited access order where rents are shared by a limited number of people who are close to power. This argument, though schematic, has certain merits. Much of it explains the fierce competition in Bangladesh politics and the durability of the patronage system.
But one of the important factors overlooked by the analysts of Bangladesh politics is the role of social status. Face or reputation is always of paramount importance for not only politicians but people of all high status. The exceptions are rare indeed. Most people try to present themselves as people of high status. The competition over status is often revealed in conspicuous consumption. This explains why losers in election are loath to concede defeat. Conceding defeat in an election, they fear, may be construed as accepting a lowered status. Remember, the whole controversy over seating arrangements after the 2008 elections. Not having a front seat may lower one's status. By denouncing the election as fraudulent the leaders try to remain in high-pedestals in the eyes of their supporters.
The idea of competitive authoritarianism was mooted by Steven Levitsky of Harvard University and Lucan A.Way of University of Toronto. From the mid- 1990s they observed the post-socialist transition, where the new regimes were retaining many of the authoritarian characteristics. They also examined some Latin American, African and Asian new transitional societies and developed the idea of competitive authoritarianism. We need not buy their arguments wholesale but we can ignore their ideas only at our own peril.
Late Sam Huntington and other protagonists of wave theorists also noted "reverse-waves." True, in many cases, authoritarian systems have opened up as democracies but sadly, sometimes, fledgling democracies have relapsed into authoritarian systems.
In competitive authoritarianism, you have elections without democracy. Democracy debate in Bangladesh must move beyond elections. The challenge for Bangladesh is how to transform a formal democracy into a substantive democracy.
The writer is a Professor of sociology at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi.