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1 Party dysfunction and homeostasis in Bangladesh
The old disorder restored (or not)1
Harry Blair
The politics of Bangladesh are often perceived as dysfunctional, disruptive, hovering just on (and sometimes over) the edge of serious instability, which is forestalled temporarily by caretaker governments, military rule or (most recently) a combination of the two. A different approach, however, would hold that over the past two decades this seeming dysfunctional instability has become in fact a kind of stable system with a structure and rules of its own, which its actors follow. This system exhibits a kind of homeostasis, in that it contains an inherent tendency to recover from perturbations and return to its former state, which it then maintains. The system also exhibits contradictions, however, in that it gives its principal actors incentives to break the rules. Thus far, rule-breaking efforts have been frustrated and the system has returned to norm, but this self-correcting tendency may not last indefinitely. Eventually all social systems give way to new dispensations.
āHomeostasisā has long been a powerful concept in the biological sciences including medicine. It denotes the property of a system to react to external changes with self-correcting mechanisms. In the human organism, common examples are body temperature and blood glucose; external agents may cause either to go beyond the normal range, but protective mechanisms will generally return either measure to its norm. With most infections or diseases, the body likewise takes action to rid itself of the invading pathogens to restore a healthy stability. The concept can also be employed as an historical metaphor, for instance in considering the European upheavals of 1848, when democratic insurgencies threatened to overturn autocratic rule but national systems soon returned to their previous condition. The Paris Commune of 1870 provides another good example here. Eventually virtually all the Western and Central European countries moved to democratic systems, but authoritarian rule in its many variations was for centuries the homeostatic condition. And for most of capitalismās history as well, economic panics and recessions have tended to dissipate as demand and supply gradually recovered.
For Bangladesh over the last two decades, homeostasis has consisted of a volatile two-party system which has drawn a large portion of society and bureaucracy into its maelstrom, fueled massive corruption and disrupted the economy, but which has nonetheless persisted, resisting all attempts to change it.2 As with any system that lasts over time, this one has had a certain structure with a set of āRules of the Gameā that facilitated its continuance. At times key actors have attempted to break the Rules and change the Game, with the latest attempt being the Caretaker Government (CTG) of 2007ā2008, but so far the old system has re-established itself in essentially the same form each time. What is it that enables the polity to endure in this fashion, and what are the chances that it may evolve into something different? These two questions comprise the central focus of this chapter.
This chapter offers a continuation and updating of an analysis I published in 2010,3 which endeavored to explain the dysfunctional political system of the 1991ā2007 period and the caretaker regime of 2007ā2008. The present offering begins with a brief reprise of that analysis, looks briefly at the December 2008 election, and then goes on to look at subsequent political events and their debilitating impact on the political system. The chapter concludes with some speculation on how developments in these areas collectively might affect the future of politics in Bangladesh.
Democracyās trajectory in Bangladesh
By coincidence, Freedom House started compiling its āFreedom in the Worldā index in 1972, just after Bangladesh had achieved its independence in December 1971, so it is possible to chart the countryās democratization trajectory virtually from its beginning. Figure 1.1 shows the Political Rights and Civil Liberties scores individually and then added together for the entire 1972ā2010 period.4 The first two decades saw a series of wild gyrations with the successive democracy/dictatorship fluctuations during the regimes of the countryās first three leaders.
Figure 1.1 Bangladesh Freedom House scores, 1972ā2010.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman began as the hugely popular father of his country (Bangabondhu or Friend of Bengal, the title bequeathed on him posthumously) but then turned authoritarian after a couple of years and was assassinated in August 1975. Ziaur Rahman opened his rule with a military coup in late 1975 but within a couple of years transformed himself into a genuinely popular elected leader, as is reflected in the Freedom House scores for the latter part of his era. He was assassinated in 1981, however, and within a year H.M. Ershad seized power in another military coup. He attempted to replicate Ziaās self-reinvention as a popular elected leader, but succeeded only partially, as can be seen in Figure 1.1.
Over the course of the Ershad years, the two opposition parties recovered themselves to form a formidable opposition to his government. Both parties were legacies of previous leaders, the Awami League (AL) headed by Mujibās daughter Sheikh Hasina Wajid, and the Bangladesh National Party (BNP), led by Ziaās widow Khalida Zia. By the end of the 1980s, the two parties had crafted a āpolitics of the streetā consisting of mass rallies, marches and, most effectively, hartals (strikes) that could essentially bring economic and administrative activity in the major cities to a halt for days at a time ā all tactics that set the tone for political life during the next two decades.
Responding to the orchestrated protests with a mixture of guile and repression, governance under the Ershad regime began to deteriorate,5 reaching a low point at the end of 1990, when finally the army responded to a presidential command to impose martial law by instead directing Ershad to resign office immediately, which he did.
A āfree and fairā national election in early 1991 set into place what might be called a ātwo-party-plusā system, with the AL and the BNP as the major players, dividing between them the overwhelming majority of votes and seats, as shown in Table 1.1. Minor parties were drawn into electoral alliances but after the first two elections were not needed to form majorities in the Jatiyo Sangsad (parliament). Thus the main political drama has been played out between the two major parties, with the lesser groups being largely shoved to the sidelines over time.
Table 1.1 Vote and seat share, 1991ā2008 (percentages)
After an initial burst of democratic enthusiasm at the beginning of the 1990s, the system settled into kind of routine momentum, which appears clearly in Figure 1.1. Civil Liberties continued from year to year at a steady score of 4 on the Freedom House scale, while Political Rights ranked somewhat better at a 2 during most of the 1990s and then gradually worsening to a 4 in the following decade. During most of this time, however, the country was consumed by what seemed to be a highly dysfunctional politics of instability verging on chaos, in which neither the party in power nor the opposition observed the basic conventions of a Westminster parliamentary system. The ruling party totally excluded the opposition from any meaningful role, routinely using state power ā especially the police ā to harass and intimidate it, while the opposition appeared to take every opportunity to disrupt normal life and cause sufficient turmoil that the army would find it necessary to intervene once again and eventually give it a chance to come to power through new elections.
The polity suffered a near-death experience in 1996 when the ruling party engineered a blatantly rigged election, which the opposition boycotted, but a combination of public repugnance, international outrage and donor pressure forced an electoral rerun under a nonparty Caretaker Government (CTG), during which a non-partisan administration managed the country for a 90-day period running through the national election. The system had been subjected to the first serious attempt to break out of the Rules of the Game, but it righted itself and used the CTG system again successfully for the 2001 election.
During what I have labeled the āDemocratic Eraā in Figure 1.1, Bangladesh did pass the Huntington ātwo turnover testā ā that the ruling party be turned over through elections at least twice6 ā but otherwise the dysfunctional polity went on, continually seeming to approach the edge of a total breakdown. Opposition-led hartals closed down the urban areas for days on end; gangs of mastaans (small-time thugs under the direction mafia-style patrons) disrupted normal life, often with police connivance; institutions like universities, professional associations and even NGOs were colonized by the parties and became divided into āpanelsā affiliated with them; the lower judiciary was used as an enforcer for the ruling party; and the list goes on.
Rules of the dysfunctional game
But despite the appearance of breakdown and chaos, a quite well-defined set of Rules of the Game for public politics emerged during the 1990s, understood and observed by the parties, their leaders, the bureaucracy including the police, and most of the general populace. This set of Rules was never publicly articulated as such, but it was followed almost all the time. A seemingly dysfunctional system had become institutionalized.
These were the essential elements of the Rules:
ā¢ Electoral democracy: āFree and fairā elections are held on time with a Caretaker Government in charge for a 90-day period.
ā¢ All power to election winners: The ruling party shuts out the opposition from any meaningful rule in parliament and takes over the state bureaucracy, operating a patronage-fueled, rent seeking regime.
ā¢ Local governance as patronage mechanism: Union parishads are subordinated to ruling party control, constitutional requirements for elected upazila and district councils are ignored.
ā¢ Opposition to the barricades: The past election is denounced as fraudulent, parliament is boycotted, hartals (general strikes aiming to shut down urban life) become the norm but violence is bounded, not insurrectionary.
ā¢ Gangsterism in public life: Party-based mastaan networks with police collusion intimidate opposition, operate extortion rackets, enjoy virtual impunity.
ā¢ Organized life commandeered: āPanelsā allied to particular parties infest institutions everywhere, forcing students, professionals, even non-governmental organizations to choose sides.
ā¢ Relative print media freedom: Marcusean ārepressive toleranceā is permitted for elites,7 though some self-censorship is exercised, and journalists are subjected to significant harassment. Broadcast media are more closely monitored and pressured.
ā¢ Two-track judiciary: High Court and Supreme Court enjoy autonomy, while the lower court system is controlled by the Executive and used to support the ruling party.
ā¢ Electoral renewal: A new cycle begins with each election.
ā¢ A safety mechanism: Should a party in power try to break out of these Rules by fixing an election, some combination of national and international outrage, donor pressure and possible military intervention will ensure that the dysfunctional homeostasis continues in place.
The single most important word in the list just above is ābutā within the fourth bullet point. The opposition party postures and fulminates, organizes huge processions (generally with truckloads of paid demonstrators brought into Dhaka for the purpose, buttressed by the opposition partyās student wings), compels businesses to shut down for the duration of its hartals, forces public transport off the roads (thus closing government operations), and in general threatens to create such chaos that organized life will break down altogether. But after 12 or 24 (or 36 or 48 or more) hours, the hartal winds down, demonstrators return to their everyday activities, work resumes and life comes back to normal. Some less well disciplined demonstrators may have provoked the police into a firing (or the police may have created an incident that fomented the provocation), and a small number of people have been injured or even killed. But there is never any actual threat of insurrection or even serious damage to public or private property.
The real purpose of the hartal is not to overthrow the state or even to force the imposition of martial law that will lead to a new election, but rather to provide a strong reminder that the opposition is alive and well, and stands ready to take power after the next election, whenever it comes. In a true Westminster system, a āLoyal Oppositionā takes a full part in the cut and thrust of debate, subjects government proposals to strong scrutiny, acts as a watchdog to detect government malfeasance and abuse, offers alternatives to policies in place and in general endeavors to present itself in parliament through these methods as a viable alternative to the party in power. But by denying any meaningful role for the opposition, the ruling party in Bangladesh prevents the opposition from employing any of these avenues to making itself heard. Through its constant boycotts, of course, the opposition cuts itself off from the opportunity to become a Loyal Opposition, but it is I think fair to say that the basic hostility begins when the winning party assumes state power after an election and a new parliament begins business.
This system survived several jolts, including assassinations of several leading AL politicians and numerous murders of lower-level party functionaries on both sides, a brief reign of terror in part of the country led by a fundamentalist Islamist group, a set of simultaneous bombings in 63 of the countryās 64 districts, and a short wave of suicide attack...
