An appraisal of political reform agenda in Bangladesh
Monday, 16 July 2007
Hasan Mahmud
Over the last few months, Bangladesh has been passing through a mounting political havoc. Keeping our eyes on media reportages, we find that the reasons for this turbulence are multiple, ranging from economic and ideological to politico-cultural deficiencies of the incipient democracy in the country. The people in the country have strong predilection for freedom warranted by their long tradition of struggle against alien exotic powers since the historically recorded times. They stood against the Alexander's invasion, the Arian invasion, the Mogul invasion and finally against the British colonial rule that created Pakistan from which they won freedom in 1971. However, events and periodic changes in Bangladesh politics following its independence prove that their struggle for liberty is yet to end and liberation remains yet a far cry.
The rise of the populist regime during the liberation war engendered a startling opportunity for establishing a democratic political system. But untoward factionalism within the leading parties -- combined with sporadic military interventions -- after liberation moved away the course of democratic development. Consequently, we have experienced the cruel murder of the 'great leader of the nation', and then a continued period of military jackboot, intervened by short-lived democratic initiatives until the 1990 when the political parties coalesced into a single platform for claiming democracy, and finally put an end to the military regime. People were sanguine about the establishment of democracy under the leadership of the successors of the two most popular national leaders. Despite the formidable popularity of these leaders -- currently known as two Begums -- democratisation hopelessly failed once again.
There are numbers of opinions regarding this failure. Some attribute it to the grave hostility between the two leading parties, yet there are some pointing to the intolerance in politics in general and pervasive clientelism. However, I argue with all these reasoning attributed to the failure of democracy from the belief that Bangladesh is yet to observe the installation of democracy in its true sense. Some educated people also share this view, but differ with regard to the underlying causes. For them, economic backwardness, lack of mass literacy, widespread poverty, and consequently, lack of cultural as well as psychological dispositions required for democratic participation amount to the bulk of constraints to functioning of democracy. However, such a position only kindles a considerable extent of pessimism in the sense that none of these constraints looks surmountable in the short run. As such, the idea that democracy is not the right type of government for us develops among the mass people. This explains perfectly why people welcomed the military-backed interim government and also why there is call for "non-electoral democracy". The conundrum of such an expressed frustration in the struggle for democracy should be approached more prudently with a re-examination of our common understanding of democratic development in its historical perspective.
The vacillation in the course of democratic political development in the country is not unaccompanied in the history of the world. Rather, the whole contemporary of 'Third World' is replete with instances of political unrest and confusion. Most, if not all, of these countries have been struggling over decades for development which eventually brings the issue of democratic political development. In fact, democratisation has been the hallmark of any national development programme by the government in 'Third World' countries since the World War-II. Because of the lack of historical experience with democracy, aspirants find it difficult to construct a viable plan of action to further their development initiatives. Hence, there emerges a trend to emulate a model of democratic change and, among many, such models, particularly the European one of democratic development, have been espoused as the ideal type.
However, in spite of deliberate efforts by most of the stockholders involved, such a model has apparently failed to usher democratisation in the Third World and most of the countries are still far away from experiencing democracy. Why? This is particularly because, according to the comparative political scientists, people often confuse between causation and correlation in the process of democratisation in the West. That is they often assign causal significance to factors that might be regarded as correlates in a more careful analysis such as economic (industrialisation, affluence) and social conditions (individual rights, mass education), psychological disposition of people (search for modernisation, rational behaviour), etc. This confusion develops due to the fact that they, with a preconception of the existence of democracy, adopt a functional strategy that best explains the smooth and/or problematic operations of democracy, and hence miss the crucial issue of emergence at first place.
Nowadays, we see all of the democratic countries in the West are industrialised and economically advanced; socially modernised with mass education, secularisation, recognition of individual rights and differentiation; and politically stabile with more or less smooth functioning of democracy. Hence, we assume these conditions as prerequisites for democracy. This is true, but only at a stage when national politics has already been democratised. These do not tell anything about how to develop democracy in the first place.
One prominent political scientist, Dank wart Rustow, has found 'national unity' to be the only background condition in the emergence of democracy in the West. This national unity, he argues, may develop at any point of the history of a nation. From a comparative study of democracies in their historical course, he casts aside economic development or social differentiation as necessary prerequisites. We can also qualify this claim with examples from contemporary world politics: Singapore attained stellar economic development, yet struggling with democracy while India, being one of the poorest countries with vast illiterate people, has long attained sustained democracy. In fact, the preparatory stage for democratic development is a dynamic process, a prolonged struggle involving contending social classes. During the emerging democracies for the first time in history -- as in the case of France, or in England, or in Germany -- we see an emerging leadership from the mass come foreword to lead the depressed groups who previously lacked leadership and develop in them a clear sense of their collective interest in the struggle. There is no way to evade this struggle by copying the constitutional laws or parliamentary practices of some previous democracies. As such, "polarisation, rather than pluralism is the hallmark of this preparatory phase".
Since the preparatory stage involves conflicts among different classes with contrary interests, the next phase eventually brings forth the issue of making decision as to arrive at some kind of a consensus. Thus appears the recognition of opposition and diversity in unity. All the contending classes have different motives that are to come together in making choice in favour of democracy. During the final stage of habituation, two processes emerge, one among the parties, while the other among politicians competing for leadership within those parties.
Politics is a process of conflict resolution and reconciliation among human groups, and when a grand decision to compromise with oppositions fosters greater benefit for the whole community, political parties may find it useful to submit their major concerns for resolution by democratic procedures. When the democratic decision has been made, the party leaders turn their emphasis from struggle to protection of their share in the system and with the extension of suffrage; they seek to unite the supporters into a party organisation which links the individuals to national politics through the leadership.
There is another source of our current misunderstanding of democratic practices that relates to the nation state. We generally conceive the nation state as an outcome of a non-violent process of political development where the citizens are rational individuals-- respect individual rights, freedom of speech and opposition, rule of law, secular beliefs, etc. But research by prominent scholars show none of these as the precondition for the development of the nation state that contains democracy. As Charles Tilly argues, war and preparation for war was the most influential factor behind the development of the modern nation state which eventually emerged as the ideal type democratic political organisation in the West, and later, most of the world. However, he also observed other factors-- a kind of cultural homogeneity, prevalence of a peasantry and an extensive and decentralised but uniform political structure.
From the two perspectives on democracy in the European history, we can attempt to revisit on our national politics, and thus reach some pragmatic solutions towards seemingly insurmountable riddles through proper political reform. The first precondition for democratic development had been attained during our liberation war when the whole nation became united against Pakistani colonial rule. There were diversity among political parties and their interests as it is now. But we could not transform this diversity into unity in the second stage of transition towards effective democracy. From the very beginning, we observed intolerance and irreconcilable contention among different political parties representing divergent group interests, and hence thwarting democratic evolution by frequent revolutions and military coups. The parochial outlook and stubborn refusal to submit to the greater national interest seem to have been intrinsic in all of our major political parties nowadays. But still we have most other preconditions at hand that we may utilise in our search for true democracy. We have acquired independence through a massive war that mobilised all inhabitants into a single nation. We have a considerably homogeneous populace, comprising more than 95 per cent Bengalis in terms of culture, more than 85 per cent Muslims in terms of religion, more than 85 per cent rural farmers in terms of resident and occupation, and all disparately craving for democracy.
The most critical problem towards democracy, then, seems to do with mobilisation by different political parties who occupy the driving seat in the process of democratic development. But the fundamental questions are -- what type of political parties does perform this historical task? What are the characteristics of such party? What are the character and the role of the leadership? Certainly the answers to all these questions will suggest something different then what we have experienced so far. A political party must be representative of its followers, must strive to secure the interests of the individuals it represents. The leadership should come out of the consensus among the ordinary people with qualified capability of mobilisation and bargaining in the national arena for just share of benefits for its supporters. When most of the parties and their leadership transform themselves to carry out these basic functions, democracy will inevitably appear in our national politics.
Therefore, it is clear that political reform has an imperative in Bangladesh. The above discussion provides evidences that lack of education or economic backwardness are not the real hurdles to the democratic political development. The real problems lie in our political structure and the way politics is practised. This strongly supports the present interim government's efforts to reform the major political parties so as to make them representative and establish accountability of the leadership. Yet the government should also make certain the participation of all the divergent interest groups with their different political parties, be it large or small. This points to the marginal people -- the workers in different sectors, farmers, small occupations groups, religious groups and ethnic groups. In fact, these marginal groups of people comprise the majority of population in Bangladesh.
Therefore, the strategies for creating level-playing ground in national politics must accommodate all the existing social classes and the parties that represent them. Electoral system should be reformed to ensure that the major parties couldn't gnaw out the small parties as we have experienced so far. Also there are instances that popular local leaders within the major parties are often booted out by non-political new entrants by means of wealth.
This later practice is said to bring about the pervasive corruption in our political culture. And another crucial aspect of the current efforts to reform political parties is that mass people's voice should be incorporated in the process, for they are the ultimate decision-makers in democratic politics. Once they are conscious about what they have at stake, and find the level-playing ground in national political arena, they would be able to help secure a sustained democracy which would work for every individual's benefit.
The writer is a Monbusho Scholar in the Global Studies Programme, Sophia University, Japan
and may be reached at
mahmud735@gmail.com
Over the last few months, Bangladesh has been passing through a mounting political havoc. Keeping our eyes on media reportages, we find that the reasons for this turbulence are multiple, ranging from economic and ideological to politico-cultural deficiencies of the incipient democracy in the country. The people in the country have strong predilection for freedom warranted by their long tradition of struggle against alien exotic powers since the historically recorded times. They stood against the Alexander's invasion, the Arian invasion, the Mogul invasion and finally against the British colonial rule that created Pakistan from which they won freedom in 1971. However, events and periodic changes in Bangladesh politics following its independence prove that their struggle for liberty is yet to end and liberation remains yet a far cry.
The rise of the populist regime during the liberation war engendered a startling opportunity for establishing a democratic political system. But untoward factionalism within the leading parties -- combined with sporadic military interventions -- after liberation moved away the course of democratic development. Consequently, we have experienced the cruel murder of the 'great leader of the nation', and then a continued period of military jackboot, intervened by short-lived democratic initiatives until the 1990 when the political parties coalesced into a single platform for claiming democracy, and finally put an end to the military regime. People were sanguine about the establishment of democracy under the leadership of the successors of the two most popular national leaders. Despite the formidable popularity of these leaders -- currently known as two Begums -- democratisation hopelessly failed once again.
There are numbers of opinions regarding this failure. Some attribute it to the grave hostility between the two leading parties, yet there are some pointing to the intolerance in politics in general and pervasive clientelism. However, I argue with all these reasoning attributed to the failure of democracy from the belief that Bangladesh is yet to observe the installation of democracy in its true sense. Some educated people also share this view, but differ with regard to the underlying causes. For them, economic backwardness, lack of mass literacy, widespread poverty, and consequently, lack of cultural as well as psychological dispositions required for democratic participation amount to the bulk of constraints to functioning of democracy. However, such a position only kindles a considerable extent of pessimism in the sense that none of these constraints looks surmountable in the short run. As such, the idea that democracy is not the right type of government for us develops among the mass people. This explains perfectly why people welcomed the military-backed interim government and also why there is call for "non-electoral democracy". The conundrum of such an expressed frustration in the struggle for democracy should be approached more prudently with a re-examination of our common understanding of democratic development in its historical perspective.
The vacillation in the course of democratic political development in the country is not unaccompanied in the history of the world. Rather, the whole contemporary of 'Third World' is replete with instances of political unrest and confusion. Most, if not all, of these countries have been struggling over decades for development which eventually brings the issue of democratic political development. In fact, democratisation has been the hallmark of any national development programme by the government in 'Third World' countries since the World War-II. Because of the lack of historical experience with democracy, aspirants find it difficult to construct a viable plan of action to further their development initiatives. Hence, there emerges a trend to emulate a model of democratic change and, among many, such models, particularly the European one of democratic development, have been espoused as the ideal type.
However, in spite of deliberate efforts by most of the stockholders involved, such a model has apparently failed to usher democratisation in the Third World and most of the countries are still far away from experiencing democracy. Why? This is particularly because, according to the comparative political scientists, people often confuse between causation and correlation in the process of democratisation in the West. That is they often assign causal significance to factors that might be regarded as correlates in a more careful analysis such as economic (industrialisation, affluence) and social conditions (individual rights, mass education), psychological disposition of people (search for modernisation, rational behaviour), etc. This confusion develops due to the fact that they, with a preconception of the existence of democracy, adopt a functional strategy that best explains the smooth and/or problematic operations of democracy, and hence miss the crucial issue of emergence at first place.
Nowadays, we see all of the democratic countries in the West are industrialised and economically advanced; socially modernised with mass education, secularisation, recognition of individual rights and differentiation; and politically stabile with more or less smooth functioning of democracy. Hence, we assume these conditions as prerequisites for democracy. This is true, but only at a stage when national politics has already been democratised. These do not tell anything about how to develop democracy in the first place.
One prominent political scientist, Dank wart Rustow, has found 'national unity' to be the only background condition in the emergence of democracy in the West. This national unity, he argues, may develop at any point of the history of a nation. From a comparative study of democracies in their historical course, he casts aside economic development or social differentiation as necessary prerequisites. We can also qualify this claim with examples from contemporary world politics: Singapore attained stellar economic development, yet struggling with democracy while India, being one of the poorest countries with vast illiterate people, has long attained sustained democracy. In fact, the preparatory stage for democratic development is a dynamic process, a prolonged struggle involving contending social classes. During the emerging democracies for the first time in history -- as in the case of France, or in England, or in Germany -- we see an emerging leadership from the mass come foreword to lead the depressed groups who previously lacked leadership and develop in them a clear sense of their collective interest in the struggle. There is no way to evade this struggle by copying the constitutional laws or parliamentary practices of some previous democracies. As such, "polarisation, rather than pluralism is the hallmark of this preparatory phase".
Since the preparatory stage involves conflicts among different classes with contrary interests, the next phase eventually brings forth the issue of making decision as to arrive at some kind of a consensus. Thus appears the recognition of opposition and diversity in unity. All the contending classes have different motives that are to come together in making choice in favour of democracy. During the final stage of habituation, two processes emerge, one among the parties, while the other among politicians competing for leadership within those parties.
Politics is a process of conflict resolution and reconciliation among human groups, and when a grand decision to compromise with oppositions fosters greater benefit for the whole community, political parties may find it useful to submit their major concerns for resolution by democratic procedures. When the democratic decision has been made, the party leaders turn their emphasis from struggle to protection of their share in the system and with the extension of suffrage; they seek to unite the supporters into a party organisation which links the individuals to national politics through the leadership.
There is another source of our current misunderstanding of democratic practices that relates to the nation state. We generally conceive the nation state as an outcome of a non-violent process of political development where the citizens are rational individuals-- respect individual rights, freedom of speech and opposition, rule of law, secular beliefs, etc. But research by prominent scholars show none of these as the precondition for the development of the nation state that contains democracy. As Charles Tilly argues, war and preparation for war was the most influential factor behind the development of the modern nation state which eventually emerged as the ideal type democratic political organisation in the West, and later, most of the world. However, he also observed other factors-- a kind of cultural homogeneity, prevalence of a peasantry and an extensive and decentralised but uniform political structure.
From the two perspectives on democracy in the European history, we can attempt to revisit on our national politics, and thus reach some pragmatic solutions towards seemingly insurmountable riddles through proper political reform. The first precondition for democratic development had been attained during our liberation war when the whole nation became united against Pakistani colonial rule. There were diversity among political parties and their interests as it is now. But we could not transform this diversity into unity in the second stage of transition towards effective democracy. From the very beginning, we observed intolerance and irreconcilable contention among different political parties representing divergent group interests, and hence thwarting democratic evolution by frequent revolutions and military coups. The parochial outlook and stubborn refusal to submit to the greater national interest seem to have been intrinsic in all of our major political parties nowadays. But still we have most other preconditions at hand that we may utilise in our search for true democracy. We have acquired independence through a massive war that mobilised all inhabitants into a single nation. We have a considerably homogeneous populace, comprising more than 95 per cent Bengalis in terms of culture, more than 85 per cent Muslims in terms of religion, more than 85 per cent rural farmers in terms of resident and occupation, and all disparately craving for democracy.
The most critical problem towards democracy, then, seems to do with mobilisation by different political parties who occupy the driving seat in the process of democratic development. But the fundamental questions are -- what type of political parties does perform this historical task? What are the characteristics of such party? What are the character and the role of the leadership? Certainly the answers to all these questions will suggest something different then what we have experienced so far. A political party must be representative of its followers, must strive to secure the interests of the individuals it represents. The leadership should come out of the consensus among the ordinary people with qualified capability of mobilisation and bargaining in the national arena for just share of benefits for its supporters. When most of the parties and their leadership transform themselves to carry out these basic functions, democracy will inevitably appear in our national politics.
Therefore, it is clear that political reform has an imperative in Bangladesh. The above discussion provides evidences that lack of education or economic backwardness are not the real hurdles to the democratic political development. The real problems lie in our political structure and the way politics is practised. This strongly supports the present interim government's efforts to reform the major political parties so as to make them representative and establish accountability of the leadership. Yet the government should also make certain the participation of all the divergent interest groups with their different political parties, be it large or small. This points to the marginal people -- the workers in different sectors, farmers, small occupations groups, religious groups and ethnic groups. In fact, these marginal groups of people comprise the majority of population in Bangladesh.
Therefore, the strategies for creating level-playing ground in national politics must accommodate all the existing social classes and the parties that represent them. Electoral system should be reformed to ensure that the major parties couldn't gnaw out the small parties as we have experienced so far. Also there are instances that popular local leaders within the major parties are often booted out by non-political new entrants by means of wealth.
This later practice is said to bring about the pervasive corruption in our political culture. And another crucial aspect of the current efforts to reform political parties is that mass people's voice should be incorporated in the process, for they are the ultimate decision-makers in democratic politics. Once they are conscious about what they have at stake, and find the level-playing ground in national political arena, they would be able to help secure a sustained democracy which would work for every individual's benefit.
The writer is a Monbusho Scholar in the Global Studies Programme, Sophia University, Japan
and may be reached at
mahmud735@gmail.com