Politics and Governance in Bangladesh: Uncertain Landscapes (Routledge Studies in South Asian Politics)

Since its Independence in 1971, Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in terms of reducing poverty levels, achieving high levels of economic growth over a sustained period of time, and meeting its Millennium Development Goals (MDG) targets set by the United Nations. With some justification, Bangladesh is considered an international development success story, and the country appears to be well on track to meet its policy target of becoming a middle-income country by 2021, the same year the country will celebrate 50 years of Independence. This book explores the central issue of Bangladeshi politics: the weakness of governance. The coexistence of a poor governance track record and a relatively strong socioeconomic performance makes Bangladesh an intriguing case which throws up exciting and relevant conceptual and policy challenges. Structured in four sections - Political Settlement, Elites and Deep Structures; Democracy, Citizenship and Values; Civil Society, Local Context and Political Change; Informality and Accountability Ő the book identifies and engages with these challenges. Chapters by experts in the field share a number of conceptual and epistemological principles and offer a combination of theoretical and empirical insights, and cover a good range of contemporary issues and debate. Employing a structurally determinist perspective, this book explains politics and society in Bangladesh from a novel perspective. Academics in the field of governance and politics in developing countries, with a focus on South Asia and Bangladesh will welcome its publication Cover 1 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Dedication 6 Table of Contents 8 List of figures 11 List of tables 12 Notes on contributors 13 Acknowledgements 14 Introduction: contesting political space: who governs in Bangladesh 16 Agrarian legacy: from feudal deference to mastaanisation 20 Institutions and organisations: the reality-rhetoric gap 21 Bengali or Bangladeshi? The foundations of present political contention 22 Deep structures: the social and cultural prison 25 Chapter outline 28 1 Party dysfunction and homeostasis in Bangladesh: the old disorder restored (or not) 32 Democracy’s trajectory in Bangladesh 33 Rules of the dysfunctional game 35 The caretaker interregnum and the elections of 2008 37 The old (dis)order restored 39 Breaking away from homeostasis 44 Misperceived homeostasis? 45 Prognosis 46 A third scenario 47 Conclusion 50 2 Where are the drivers of governance reform? 54 The challenge 54 A paradigm for state building 54 How does Bangladesh fit the paradigm? 57 The potential drivers of governance reform 62 Donor support for governance reform 69 The way forward 73 3 Citizen-centered governance: lessons from high-performing Asian economies for Bangladesh 77 Introduction 77 Governance and development 83 Lessons of development from high-performing economies with special reference to Singapore 89 Democracy and development 94 Future directions: a blind alley or a rising sun? 97 4 Governance, rights and the demand for democracy: evidence from Bangladesh 101 Introduction 101 Governance in Bangladesh between frustration and hope 104 Methods 108 Support for democracy: ambiguous democrats and ambiguous theocrats 108 Ambiguity around governance: a question of being pragmatic 113 Conclusion 118 5 Deconstructing the natural state? Is there room for de Tocqueville or only Gramsci in Bangladesh 122 Introduction 122 Significance of the natural state for civil society 123 The concept of permeability 125 Apparent and hidden behaviour 125 ‘Natural, limited access states’ applied to Bangladesh 126 Social origins of present deep structures 128 The surreal context for civil society 129 The demand side role of civil society 131 Holistic and marginal risk: sustaining the demand side 131 The PMUS case 132 Conclusion 136 6 When things go wrong in NGOs: what can be learned from cases of organisational breakdown and ‘failure’? 140 Introduction 140 NGOs in Bangladesh 142 Narratives of NGO decline, disintegration and ‘failure’ 145 Case study: Comilla Proshika 147 Making sense of ‘things going wrong’ 149 What can we learn from all this? 152 Conclusion: ‘failure’ as process and progress 155 7 The significance of unruly politics in Bangladesh 158 Introduction: why political rule- breaking matters 158 Motivations 159 Some ideas about unruly politics 165 Unruly politics in Bangladesh 173 Conclusions: what unruliness means for the governance agenda 179 8 Governance challenges in Bangladesh: old wine in not so new bottles? 183 Introduction 183 Using governance to understand political developments in Bangladesh 184 Bangladesh: a brief governance update 187 Peeking into the future 189 References 192 Index 207