The Making of an Autocratic Regime: Democratic Backsliding in Bangladesh

Le résumé fourni par la source

In the past decade and a half Bangladesh has witnessed an incremental, yet consequential, decline of democracy. Repeated rigged elections since 2014, adoption of legal measures to restrict freedom of expression, increasing occurrences of extrajudicial killings and allegations of infringing on the judiciary bear testimony to the democratic backsliding. This chapter traces the pathway of this backsliding. As Bangladesh’s democratic journey began two decades after its independence, this chapter focuses on the post-1990 development with special reference to the rapid debilitation of the democratic institutions and practices after the Bangladesh Awami League (AL) came to power in 2009. This chapter argues that the country has transformed from an electoral democracy into an autocracy. Drawing on the stages of democratic backsliding offered by Steven Levitsky and Danile Ziblatt, this chapter shows that the process of backsliding in Bangladesh began with the constitutional amendment in 2011, followed by severe persecution of the opposition, critics of the incumbent, and media through legal and extralegal measures and taming the judiciary. The chapter also examines the non-institutional measures, such as the construction of an ideology by the incumbent to legitimize the autocratic transformation.

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