Abstract
Bangladesh is a country that thinks of itself as small. It is surrounded on nearly all sides by giant India and with even larger China towering a bit further away. This feeling of being small may account for the persuasive idea that everything Bangladeshi is special: its history, its culture, the tremendous sacrifices for its language and independence, and its sustained economic growth and human development achievements. Professor Ali Riaz, chair of political science at Illinois State University in USA and a close student and critic of Bangladeshi politics for several decades, sets out, in this volume, to put its political history in a larger, comparative context. He discusses its regime type vis-à-vis existing typologies, and he debates how different theories of democracy may shed light on the relatively young country’s political history. He does not entirely succeed, though, and the discussion often seem superficial. It is very much a volume on very Bangladesh-specific themes with little on how a study of Bangladesh might add to a more general knowledge. None the less, the volume is a treasure trove of information—and even more so for bringing together details and information that have existed in diverse and disconnected places before.
The volume is divided into seven chapters that walk the reader chronologically through the country’s modern history and that taken together deal with four basic questions: the making and nature of Bangladeshi nationalism; the nature of Bangladesh’s democracy (what he terms its ‘maturity and quality’; p. 6); the struggle over its identity as both a Bengali and a Muslim nation; and, in a final chapter, ‘the paradox’ of its economic development. The ambition is to investigate the political processes, institutions and actors in order to ‘unravel the problems and prospects of this young nation’ (p. 3). He seems surprisingly ready to endorse dyed-in-the-wool Orientalist Ernest Renan’s idea that the nation is ‘a soul, a spiritual principle’ (p. 4), but apart from that his take on the political life of his nation is both informed and critical.
The conventional narrative of secular Bengali nationalism’s historical trajectory points to its beginnings in the nineteenth century ‘Bengal renaissance’. Riaz shares this narrative but also points out that there were variants, including various Islamist movements (the Faraizis, Dudu Miyan, others) and low caste Hindu movements, and that altogether these make for a complex picture. In doing so, he avoids the comfortable narrative of a few men and their actions. Occasionally he slips, and the chapter ‘Quest for a National Identity’ on the nature of the language movement of the 1950s is mostly about the few great. But his broader outlook allows him to suggest that the movement’s rejection of the joint Pakistan state did not constitute a denial of Islam or any disavowal of religious identity (p. 197). This point has much to commend itself. One might argue that he under-communicates, first, the exploitation of religious sentiments and the riots against Hindus even in the 1950s, and, second, that the resurgence of religious sentiments in recent years did not come out of thin air but fed on existing bigotry in certain segments of society. Also Riaz’s ‘secular Bengalis were also Muslim’ narrative does not explain the recent demise of the country’s fabled secularist identity. That is probably better explained by a narrative of a statist ideology out of sync with the majority population, as does Mubashar Hasan (2017) in a recent article.
Riaz’s particular orientation is political science and authoritarian versus democratic regime types. This comes out in his very interesting chapter on the rise of authoritarianism in the country (Chapter 2). Although it would be wrong to suggest that Riaz is the first to point to the conflicts and the many unfortunate decisions made by an inept leadership during the first years of the independent country’s history (one might point to Moudud Ahmed’s [1984] Bangladesh: Era of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman for instance, and there are others), it would not be wrong to suggest that Riaz has put together a comprehensive and informed outline of the problems that beset the young nation. He details the quick decent into ‘populist authoritarianism’ under its independence hero, the all-powerful and yet powerless Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and the later phases of authoritarianism under Ziaur Rahman and H. M. Ershad. He points at the divisions in the new state’s political and administrative leadership, including its army, the daunting and failed task of curbing the easy availability of firearms, the ruling party’s internal factionalism, the nepotism, the failed economic policies and the ruling party’s self-interested partial implementation of government policies. This is a sensitive part of the country’s history, highly politicized even today, and it is still problematic to question the personal qualities of Mujibur—who still, for so many reasons, is a hero.
Chapter 3 details the political history from the reintroduction of democracy in 1990/1991 until the 2014 election. It is a history of renewed optimism to begin with, in which the institutions of democracy seem to become ever more established and the caretaker government institution, in particular, ensures fair and legitimate elections. Somehow, slowly, these institutions are nonetheless undermined, and the chapter is entitled ‘From Optimism to Retreat of Democracy’. The situation today in Riaz’s portrayal (the volume ends in 2015) is rather bleak: the Awami League has outwitted its rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and has introduced a semi-autocratic form of government complete with draconian laws like the infamous ICT act often employed to suppress opposition.
Chapter 4 seeks to lift the Bangladesh case to a more general level. Riaz discusses briefly relevant literature and introduces a rather activist definition that he calls ‘substantive democracy’. This includes ‘the spirit of democracy; that is the empowerment of the people to pursue their interests autonomously from the entrenched structures and dominance of privileged segments of the society’ (pp. 111–112). The discussion over a page and a half is obviously too short to justify the full implication of such an interventionist definition and this reader fails to see its usefulness. What does ‘autonomous’ mean in this context, for instance? This interventionist definition is a mixture of various ideological strands—the universal vote, human dignity, liberalism and open society—that are not necessarily connected (here I highly recommend John Dunn’s [2005] excellent Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy). The mixture is too muddled to make it useful as a devise to understand an actual living polity.
That being said, Riaz’s discussion is not uninteresting. An important part is the effort to understand what ‘ordinary’ Bangladeshis think about democracy. He notes an overwhelming affinity for democracy and yet ‘a lack of clear understanding, perhaps awareness, among Bangladeshis as to what democracy means’ (p. 115). He also points to the high and increasing voter turnout and the centrality of the ‘free and fair vote’ in the voters’ perception of democracy, and yet their low estimation of political parties and contrasting high estimation of the armed forces. This discussion is good and packed with survey data and other information. However, it suffers from a poorly formed definition of democracy as a set model, one that may be measured. He could have asked other questions instead, for instance; what ideas of political representation or authority Bangladeshis hold and that help explain the kind of political culture we see in the country (Anastasia Piliavsky’s [2014] introductory essay in Patronage as Politics in South Asia is an excellent discussion piece). But he does not. He concludes the part-discussion with pointing out that populist authoritarianism ‘is not entirely an alien idea’ to the leaders and voters of the country (p. 126) and that the long line of strong leaders in the subcontinent is not a surprise. But to the question of why that be so, he offers no explanation.
After a long and informed discussion, Riaz characterizes Bangladesh as a ‘hybrid regime’ (p. 139). Here he writes himself into a tradition of state or regime comparisons. The effort to bring detailed knowledge of a particular country’s history and political culture to that comparison is laudable. He should possibly also be able to challenge existing paradigms, but if he does this cannot be gleaned from the text. Interestingly, he underlines the nature of the Bangladeshi elite to understand this particular formation and points to its surprising ‘lack of hegemony’ (p. 140). This absence of an ideology to legitimize its position, he explains with the concept of ‘tutelary power’: Party leaders, he writes, are given ‘unbridled power’ and are subject to very limited accountability or checks (p. 142). This concentration of power in the hands of one person has found its most palpable example in the current prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, but is equally found in earlier regimes, including that of Khaleda Zia. The mechanism of this development is the clientilistic relationships established in a patrimonial political culture. There is no need for an ideology to rule; it suffices with a majority in parliament and coercion. The delegation of all authority to the winner in a system where the winner takes all creates a democracy in which there is no accountability, only a fierce, passionate and unruly struggle for power.
The chapter on the nation’s cultural orientation repeats the often seen idea that personal religiosity is on the rise. The statistics are certainly a chilling read, including support for suicide bombers, but more questions may and should have been asked about the quality of the surveys. The increase is blamed on ‘ontological insecurity’ due to globalization, and Riaz suggests that with the absence of leftist ideologies ‘religion became the only mode of resistance’ (p. 210). A similarly weak analysis is found in his discussion of the country’s economic miracle. The basic ‘paradox’ mentioned in the ‘Introduction’ is that economic growth has taken place alongside a slow descent into political unrest and even chaos. However, he skirts the issue by concluding that the successes of the country ‘are the result of the hard work of the resilient ordinary Bangladeshis’ (p. 229)—as if other countries do not enjoy economic growth because their ordinary people do not work hard enough. He does point out, though, the consistency of economic policies across regimes since the early 1980s, a point which is remarkable and seems quite significant. The reader, however, is not offered an explanation as to why a divisive and conflictual elite would come to agree on the economic policy of the country, or whether the neoliberal and business-friendly policies followed by the various regimes have actually worked.
In all, Riaz could have allowed himself to be bolder and put his Bangladesh in a framework more clearly comparative. Bangladesh is a country of 160 million people, equal to Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and half of Colombia put together. What happens in Bangladesh is not a peculiarity, it is a very significant portion of what the world is. Riaz has tried to be less inward-looking than most, but ultimately this otherwise valuable volume is more concerned with the political development of Bangladesh than with any comparison.