Electoral Corruption in Bangladesh


Book Description

This title was first published in 2001. Rigging elections in favour of those in power has become a common practice in Bangladesh. Muhammad Yeahia Akhter focuses on the significance of elections in this ostensibly democratic state and portrays how electoral corruption has damaged the process of democratic consolidation. The author reveals the failure of both civilian and military governments to obtain democratic legitimacy and/or credibility through free and fair elections. The study examines the relatively democratic, but largely non-transparent nature of electioneering under non-partisan caretaker governments. The study provides a source of understanding of fair electoral process for the politicians and electoral officials in Bangladesh and other democratizing polities. It provides valuable information to the policy makers and practitioners in order to reform the electoral process in Bangladesh and in other similar countries.




Electoral Corruption in Bangladesh


Book Description

This title was first published in 2001. Rigging elections in favour of those in power has become a common practice in Bangladesh. Muhammad Yeahia Akhter focuses on the significance of elections in this ostensibly democratic state and portrays how electoral corruption has damaged the process of democratic consolidation. The author reveals the failure of both civilian and military governments to obtain democratic legitimacy and/or credibility through free and fair elections. The study examines the relatively democratic, but largely non-transparent nature of electioneering under non-partisan caretaker governments. The study provides a source of understanding of fair electoral process for the politicians and electoral officials in Bangladesh and other democratizing polities. It provides valuable information to the policy makers and practitioners in order to reform the electoral process in Bangladesh and in other similar countries.




Money, Corruption, and Political Competition in Established and Emerging Democracies


Book Description

Mendilow's collection clarifies outcomes that are critical to an assessment of the ramifications for modern democracy. In a politically divisive climate, the contributors to this essential collection provide thoughtful insight into some of the most important public and economic policy questions facing our world today. Book jacket.




The Politics and Law of Democratic Transition


Book Description

Peaceful legal and political ‘changing of the guards’ is taken for granted in developed democracies, but is not evident everywhere. As a relatively new democracy, marred by long periods of military rule, Bangladesh has been encountering serious problems because of a prevailing culture of mistrust, weak governance institutions, constant election manipulation and a peculiar socio-political history, which between 1990 and 2011 led to a unique form of transitional remedy in the form of an unelected neutral ‘caretaker covernment’ (CTG) during electoral transitions. This book provides a contextual analysis of the CTG mechanism including its inception, operation, manipulation by the government of the day and abrupt demise. It queries whether this constitutional provision, even if presently abolished after overseeing four acceptable general elections, actually remains a crucial tool to safeguard free and fair elections in Bangladesh. Given the backdrop of the culture of mistrust, the author examines whether holding national elections without a CTG, or an umpire of some kind, can settle the issue of credibility of a given government. The book portrays that even the management of elections is a matter of applying pluralist approaches. Considering the historical legacy and contemporary political trajectory of Bangladesh, the cause of deep-rooted mistrust is examined to better understand the rationale for the requirement, emergence and workings of the CTG structure. The book unveils that it is not only the lack of nation-building measures and governments’ wish to remain in power at any cost which lay behind the problems that Bangladesh faces today. Part of the problem is also the flawed logic of nation-building on the foundation of Western democratic norms which may be unsuitable in a South Asian cultural environment. Although democratic transitions, on the crutch of the CTG, have been useful in moments of crisis, its abolition creates the need for a new or revised transitional modality – perhaps akin to the CTG ethos – to oversee electoral governance, which will have to be renegotiated by the polity based on the people’s will. The book provides a valuable resource for researchers and academics working in the area of constitutional law, democratic transition, legal pluralism and election law.




Paradoxes of the Popular


Book Description

Few places are as politically precarious as Bangladesh, even fewer as crowded. Its 57,000 or so square miles are some of the world's most inhabited. Often described as a definitive case of the bankruptcy of postcolonial governance, it is also one of the poorest among the most densely populated nations. In spite of an overriding anxiety of exhaustion, there are a few important caveats to the familiar feelings of despair—a growing economy, and an uneven, yet robust, nationalist sentiment—which, together, generate revealing paradoxes. In this book, Nusrat Sabina Chowdhury offers insight into what she calls "the paradoxes of the popular," or the constitutive contradictions of popular politics. The focus here is on mass protests, long considered the primary medium of meaningful change in this part of the world. Chowdhury writes provocatively about political life in Bangladesh in a rich ethnography that studies some of the most consequential protests of the last decade, spanning both rural and urban Bangladesh. By making the crowd its starting point and analytical locus, this book tacks between multiple sites of public political gatherings and pays attention to the ephemeral and often accidental configurations of the crowd. Ultimately, Chowdhury makes an original case for the crowd as a defining feature and a foundational force of democratic practices in South Asia and beyond.




Electoral Violence, Corruption, and Political Order


Book Description

A comprehensive look at how violence has been used to manipulate competitive electoral processes around the world since World War II Throughout their history, political elections have been threatened by conflict, and the use of force has in the past several decades been an integral part of electoral processes in a significant number of contemporary states. However, the study of elections has yet to produce a comprehensive account of electoral violence. Drawing on cross-national data sets together with fourteen detailed case studies from around the world, Electoral Violence, Corruption, and Political Order offers a global comparative analysis of violent electoral practices since the Second World War. Sarah Birch shows that the way power is structured in society largely explains why elections are at risk of violence in some contexts but not in others. Countries with high levels of corruption and weak democratic institutions are especially vulnerable to disruptions of electoral peace. She examines how corrupt actors use violence to back up other forms of electoral manipulation, including vote buying and ballot stuffing. In addition to investigating why electoral violence takes place, Birch considers what can be done to prevent it in the future, arguing that electoral authority and the quality of electoral governance are more important than the formal design of electoral institutions. Delving into a deeply influential aspect of political malpractice, Electoral Violence, Corruption, and Political Order explores the circumstances in which individuals choose to employ violence as an electoral strategy.




Strengthening Electoral Integrity


Book Description

Today a general mood of pessimism surrounds Western efforts to strengthen elections and democracy abroad. If elections are often deeply flawed or even broken in many countries around the world, can anything be done to fix them? To counter the prevailing ethos, Pippa Norris presents new evidence for why programs of international electoral assistance work. She evaluates the effectiveness of several practical remedies, including efforts designed to reform electoral laws, strengthen women's representation, build effective electoral management bodies, promote balanced campaign communications, regulate political money, and improve voter registration. Pippa Norris argues that it would be a tragedy to undermine progress by withdrawing from international engagement. Instead, the international community needs to learn the lessons of what works best to strengthen electoral integrity, to focus activities and resources upon the most effective programs, and to innovate after a quarter century of efforts to strengthen electoral integrity.




Routledge Handbook of Corruption in Asia


Book Description

Corruption in Asia ranges from the venal rent-seeking of local officials to the million-dollar bribes received by corrupt politicians; from excessive position-related consumption to future job offers in the private sector for compliant public servants; from money-laundering to ‘white elephant’ projects that do little more than line the pockets of developers and their political partners. The Routledge Handbook of Corruption in Asia addresses the theories, issues and trends in corruption and anticorruption reform that have emerged from this diverse experience. The book is divided into four major parts: corruption and the state; corruption and economic development; corruption and society; and controlling corruption: strategies, successes and failures. Chapters compare and contrast corruption in different social and institutional contexts, examine both successful and unsuccessful attempts to control it, and consider what lessons can be drawn from these Asian experiences. This academically rigorous and insightful book will be of interest to a wide range of students and scholars, particularly those of Asian studies, politics and sociology.




Electoral Corruption in Bangladesh


Book Description

Muhammad Yeahia Akter presents an analysis of electoral corruption in Bangladesh, providing a comprehensive source of information for politicians, electoral officials and academics of politics and development.




Elections


Book Description

Among the most prized and revered democratic institutions are elections. Few other actions typify what it means to participate in the democratic process in the same way that turning up, casting a ballot, and then having that ballot be part of determining who will control power has. Indeed, elections are at the center of what we view as democracy and much ink has been spilled in attempting to explain just how essential the electoral action is to democracy. In this volume our authors explore elections both from an understanding of the systems that govern elections across both the developed and developing world, and from the perspective of the individual voter who participates in that system. Taken together these analyses provide an intriguing look into this core aspect of democracy.




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