Why a benevolent dictatorship will not succeed in Bangladesh

The fact that former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s backers, before her eventual ouster in August 2024, would position her as the only person capable of serving as an effective head of government carried with it an implied argument: that the Awami League supremo should be permitted to govern sans a sound electoral mandate because she was perceived to be uniquely possessing the competencies, strength, and brand recognition deemed indispensable to the republic.

Two arguments tended to be invoked, albeit tacitly. First, economic development was assumed to require the unspoken postponement, dilution, or subordination of democratic competition. Second, political stability was portrayed as a precondition for securing that development. Authoritarian practices were, thus, treated as a necessary evil in the name of preserving stability. These arguments served to justify both the institutionalisation and social normalisation of authoritarianism. Unfortunately, that impulse has not yet disappeared.

The tendency to argue that Bangladesh needs an authoritarian leader—provided that leader is benevolent—remains a middle ground to which many retreat, especially when they believe voters lack sufficient literacy to make informed choices and when they identify additional limitations in Westminster-style liberal democracy: a multi-party parliamentary order in which one side may hold ideological leanings that the other regards as intolerable, but which nevertheless remains a system in which competing visions of society can coexist through norms of mutual restraint.

The possibility that an Islamist government could eventually come to power in Bangladesh, not necessarily by brute force but by leveraging the democratic system to first win office and then use that mandate to refashion the government into a form of theocratic state apparatus, may cause some concerns among secularists and liberals. Urban elites and progressives, in particular, may therefore be tempted to conclude that the ruling party should be allowed to govern for as long as necessary to keep theocrats out of power, even if that means treating the ballot box in local and national elections—and, more broadly, the mechanisms that enable representative government to function—as secondary. That line of thinking would place the country on a slippery slope.

A benevolent dictatorship is a system in which one ruler retains all political and policymaking power, but is portrayed as using that power in pursuit of the common good rather than for personal gains. Embedded in that definition is the assumption that such a ruler would act as a strongman while still keeping the country’s overarching needs and interests in view.

Allegedly, some BNP activists have already begun indulging in the kind of rhetoric that once helped place Hasina above the democratic system, suggesting that Tarique Rahman should govern for life or remain in office for three or four terms. This kind of talk should be shut down now, especially by a prime minister who, to his credit, has so far largely avoided presenting himself in those terms. But Bangladesh is all too familiar with this pattern of sycophancy. Similar chatter began in the early years of Hasina’s post-2009 rule, and the country should not go down that road again.

For a benevolent dictatorship to work, two prerequisites would have to be met. First, the ruler would have to be exceptionally selfless and able to withstand the corrupting effects of power. Second, they have to use coercion cautiously, only after careful judgement, and only when force is truly justified. No society can safely assume that either condition will hold.

There are four reasons why a benevolent dictatorship would not work in Bangladesh.

First, the country’s political history is rooted in a long record of resistance to all forms of authoritarianism. During the partition of the subcontinent, the overwhelming majority of Bangalee political establishment backed the creation of an independent Muslim state and, by extension, the Pakistan Movement. The central objective was political representation and the protection of fundamental rights for Bangalees in any new post-partition settlement.

From 1947 to 1971, the politics of erstwhile East Pakistan remained intertwined with repeated struggles in pursuit of democratic aspirations. The 1952 Language Movement, the mass mobilisations against Gen Ayub Khan, the Six-Point Movement, the 1969 uprising, the 1970 general election, and the 1971 Liberation War cumulatively reflected a single continuum in the quest to establish democracy: a struggle that remains unfinished even today.

A commitment to preaching and practising democracy was embedded in the Proclamation of Independence and it later became one of the four core state principles associated with the post-independence constitutional vision. The birth of Bangladesh is inseparable from democracy and from the search for a liberal, pluralistic, and secular state architecture. To place the country’s fate in the hands of a so-called benevolent dictator, whether secular, right-wing, or centrist in character, would move it in precisely the opposite direction from the one envisioned at its founding.

Second, Bangladeshi culture does not readily lend itself to one-party rule. It is an intensely opinionated society, and those opinions must be allowed to be voiced without fear of persecution under an authoritarian regime. From dinner-table conversations to streetside exchanges, people hold strong and often divergent views on political issues.

One reason why so many Bangladeshis have taken to the streets at various times since independence—including during the 1990 and 2024 mass uprisings—once the status quo became unmistakably authoritarian is the country’s outspoken and dissenting civic culture. That kind of society cannot be constrained by a benevolent dictatorship. The more one tries to control Bangladeshis, the angrier and more unpredictable the nation is likely to become.

Bangladesh is also not politically homogeneous. It contains left-wing and progressive currents, ultra-right streams, and a substantial centrist constituency. A country of nearly 18 crore people is far too large and too diverse to be reduced to a single political label. The question, then, is how those tendencies are meant to coexist within a single state. Representative democracy is the optimal means of managing that coexistence. A dictatorship, even a benevolent one, would require a unitary governing philosophy or political ideology. Bangladeshis cannot be expected to follow any one creed blindly.

The bottom line is, Bangladesh’s political culture is not suited to a Chinese-style authoritarian system or to other communist or military dictatorships of the late 20th century.

Third, there is little evidence that benevolent dictatorship is a model that can be replicated. Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew is often invoked, but it is a city-state of roughly 60 lakh people, whereas Bangladesh is about 30 times more populous. Bangladesh, a post-colonial society that has repeatedly had to shed blood to rekindle the flames of democracy, exists on an entirely different demographic and political scale, making any like-for-like comparison untenable. That something may have appeared to work politically in Singapore does not mean it could work in Bangladesh.

The very few cases cited as successful examples of benevolent dictatorships are outliers; they do not amount to a persuasive body of evidence on which a country can build its future.

Which brings us to the fourth reason: Bangladesh has spent much of its history placing excessive faith in individual leaders and, in turn, has failed to allow public institutions to develop and mature in ways that would enable them to outlast any one head of government. Consider the leaders of post-independence Bangladesh. Each came from varying ideological traditions and contexts. But politics has repeatedly been bookended by figures around whom entire systems are made to revolve. The state has a long track record of bending around the individual rather than requiring the individual to work within a well-oiled system.

Nation-building should not take place on the assumption that one leader will remain virtuous. Bangladesh today cannot afford to bank on one leader to solve all of its problems through force of personality, discipline, and work ethic alone. The country needs a capable team around the leader, an opposition able to function as a government in waiting, and a civil service that works in a non-partisan manner.

The period from 1991 to 2006, for all its flaws, at least preserved a competitive parliamentary landscape with two major parties and other smaller but electorally significant parties. That period does point in the direction the country needs to move as a basic first step. The most transformational political contribution the prime minister can now make is to ensure that his administration upholds the basics of good governance and parliamentarianism so that, when the time comes for him to step aside, the system does not collapse with his departure.

This would require ensuring that, much like his mother, Khaleda Zia, the prime minister presents himself not as indispensable to the republic but as a statesman who governs through consensus-building, subject-matter expertise, negotiation, and good faith. That, in itself, would stand as a consequential achievement following the 2024 mass uprising.

Mir Aftabuddin Ahmed is a public policy columnist. He can be reached at mir.ahmed@mail.mcgill.ca.
Views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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