The plan mirage?
Six months into its parliamentary term, Bangladesh’s newly elected administration finds itself at a familiar, precarious crossroads. The honeymoon period has evaporated, leaving behind a public locked in fierce debate over the nation’s trajectory.
A flurry of opinion polls has flooded the press, though seasoned observers would do well to treat them with skepticism; without transparent methodologies or clear disclosures of who funded them, such data offer more noise than signal.
Meanwhile, the main opposition, led by Jamaat-e-Islami, has issued a sweeping indictment of the government’s performance as a complete failure, capping its offensive by announcing a shadow cabinet.
Whether this shadow cabinet represents a serious step forward remains open to question. In British Parliamentary parlance, the institution is a standard Westminster device—a prospective government-in-waiting designed to mirror ministers and offer a tangible alternative. In the Bangladeshi context, however, it is an exotic political import. If seasoned political analysts find its strategic utility opaque, ordinary citizens can hardly be expected to parse its significance.
Jamaat would have served the public better by explaining its intentions clearly. More broadly, the opposition has displayed a frustrating passivity on major national policy. It offered no coherent stance on the proposed trade agreement with the United States, nor did it mobilize public opinion when a wave of interim-era ordinances was summarily dismantled in parliament.
Yet, in the final analysis, it is the party holding the levers of state power, not the opposition, that demands the most rigorous scrutiny.
Prime Minister Tarique Rahman has cultivated a deliberate image of restraint. By eschewing the imperial trappings traditionally favored by Bangladeshi heads of government, he has projected the persona of an ordinary citizen at work. Predictably, this self-styled modesty has resonated with the public, yielding favorable ratings in recent surveys.
Yet history suggests that humility in high office warrants vigilance rather than uncritical applause. In Spin Dictators, political scientists Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman illustrate how twenty-first-century autocrats consolidate power not through raw coercion, but through calculated popularity, media management, and relatable public personas.
The pattern is uncomfortably familiar. Bangladesh’s previous prime minister was once routinely lauded in the press as the "Mother of Humanity," an "Iron Lady," and one of the world's most powerful leaders. The public was fed carefully curated anecdotes of her fishing at the state residence, cooking for her grandchildren, and maintaining her daily prayers. Yet that same leader ultimately fled the country after her regime unraveled into naked authoritarianism and violence.
As Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way observed in their work on competitive authoritarianism, formal democratic structures—elections, courts, and parliaments—frequently remain intact while incumbents quietly hollow them out from within.
This is not to assert that Tarique Rahman is bound for autocracy. Rather, the deeper issue is structural. As political scientist Ali Riaz has long argued, Bangladesh’s state architecture is inherently centralist and authoritarian, repeatedly dragging the country from fragile democracy into hybrid rule regardless of who holds office. Unless the incumbent actively dismantles these entrenched structures, the gravitational pull toward executive overreach remains powerful.
The Prime Minister’s declared vision of creating a welfare state—anchored by initiatives such as family cards, farmer support schemes, and agricultural subsidies—targets real distress. But Bangladesh’s core administrative deficit has rarely been a lack of noble intentions; it is execution.
Scholars Lant Pritchett, Michael Woolcock, and Matt Andrews have categorized this phenomenon as a "capability trap," wherein states adopt sophisticated policies on paper but lack the institutional capacity to implement them cleanly.
Without rigorous oversight, targeted welfare programs risk being hijacked by partisan patronage networks. Under the previous administration's "Ekti Bari Ekti Khamar" initiative, meant to assist the rural poor, eligible beneficiaries were routinely extorted for kickbacks, while state funds flowed directly to party loyalists.
Comprehensive research by the Centre for Policy Dialogue revealed that up to 40% of social safety net allocations historically suffer from leakage, with nearly a third of elderly allowance benefits going to unqualified recipients.
Disquieting reports that field surveys for current welfare schemes are being diverted to party workers rather than civil servants suggest that old habits die hard.
Beyond structural reform, the government faces an immediate test of administrative competence in managing essential commodities, gas, and electricity. While blaming inherited structural rot and global economic headwinds provides a temporary defense, public patience is finite. If material conditions do not show clear improvement within months, public discourse will inevitably sour.
Historically, when basic services falter, citizens begin expressing nostalgia for past autocratic regimes simply because they delivered functional utilities, ignoring the democratic costs. The government must understand that for most citizens, abstract political debates matter far less than reliable electricity and stable food prices.
This reality underscores a glaring operational flaw: the administration's ineffective communication strategy. Governance requires constant, transparent dialogue with the public. When a nation faces economic strain, leadership must explain the reality clearly to build shared resilience. As Pippa Norris detailed in Democratic Deficit, stable governance relies entirely on the conviction that state institutions are transparent, representative, and accountable.
Regrettably, public trust remains deeply eroded. Early administrative missteps have compounded the problem. The ambiguity surrounding the reform mandate, coupled with opaque appointments in key state institutions—most notably at Bangladesh Bank—has drawn sharp criticism from civil society organizations.
Similarly, the continued reliance on dual citizens in sensitive advisory positions without clarifying constitutional qualifications under Article 66 has created unnecessary legal uncertainty.
Earning democratic legitimacy is an active, continuous endeavor. It cannot be achieved through executive decree or carefully managed public relations. If the current administration wishes to avoid the authoritarian trap that has snared so many of its predecessors, it must make rebuilding public trust its paramount objective. That process begins with absolute administrative transparency, rigorous institutional integrity, and a willingness to confront structural flaws directly before time runs out.
—
Shamsul Arefin is currently an Assistant Professor on education leave at Gopalganj Science and Technology University, Bangladesh, and a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. He can be reached at sarefin@umass.edu