Bangladesh’s Democractic Challenge

Bangladesh is currently in the midst of a deadly political crisis. When Bangladesh was born forty-plus years ago, it was generally thought that the Achilles heel of this newly minted country will be its economy. History has, however, proved it wrong. Though the proximate cause of this current political crisis is the controversial parliamentary election of 2014 and the legitimacy of the incumbent government, its history dates back to the birth of the country. Designing a neutral institutional mechanism for holding elections, ensuring smooth transfer of power and establishing intra-party democracy—these are the obvious first steps for a procedural democracy . They will extinguish the immediate fire, but do not address the root cause of the recurrent democratic crises in the country.