Paul Staniland
The dramatic collapse of former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s government has created extraordinary churn and uncertainty at home, in the region, and geopolitically. A student-driven movement led to widespread demonstrations that triggered a crisis within the regime, most notably the military’s refusal to repress the protests. Hasina is now in India, and an interim government is in place in Dhaka, advised by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus. External observers are watching developments carefully to understand what trajectory Bangladesh might take.
The most important questions are domestic. The aftermath of political revolutions can go in numerous directions, from civil war to the consolidation of a new and broadly accepted political system, and everything in between. Hasina’s regime was what political scientists refer to as “competitive authoritarian”: there were elections, but her Awami League political party used the state apparatus to undermine the opposition and tilt the playing field to its advantage. The sudden end of that configuration has thrown the entire political system into a state of flux. The interim government is pursuing reforms of key sectors of the state, including the electoral system, the police, and the constitution.
The good news is that Bangladesh is better positioned for stability than many other post-regime change cases. A state structure is in place, even if hollowed out and in need of serious reform. The comparative lack of large-scale regional or ethnolinguistic cleavages avoids some of the sources of state failure and political polarization witnessed in other contexts (though violence in tribal areas is a worrying development). Labor mobilization, which has been a regular occurrence in recent months, is generally not a source of political breakdown in these cases.
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