Absence of polling agents from the polling booths creates an unsafe atmosphere for the party supporters, which eventually keeps them away from voting. Another recent trend has been the arrest of opposition party supporters by the police immediately before the election day. The police might initiate an anticrime drive a few days before the election and indiscriminately arrest supporters of opposition parties based on information given by the ruling party channels.
The supporters may be forcibly taken from a political rally or campaign meeting in the name of public safety; once arrested, there may be arbitrary accusations filed against them even if they are innocent.
This policy was extensively used in the Khulna City Corporation elections in In this way, a large number of supporters and voters are prevented from voting, which leads to unfair representation. A very widespread electoral corruption in Bangladesh is bogus and phantom votes. The obsession to win and to deny the opposition a vote is a political attitude that makes no compromise. The major parties and their activists never consider elections as a win or lose game; rather, they are obsessed with the attitude that elections are to win, and not to lose.
As such, elections are for absolute gain. To secure that, the parties and their activists always want to make sure that they get more and, if possible, all the votes. An easy way to ensure winning is to stuff the ballot box with false votes. False votes are casted in two major ways. In this case, the party supporters are also allowed to enter the polling booths multiple times to caste on behalf of other voters.
Individual voters who go to the polling stations may find that their votes have already been casted. In this case, the casted votes are always in support of the candidates whose supporters control the polling booths. Secondly, stuffing the ballot boxes with false votes: in this case, either the polling agents who control the polling booths stuff the boxes with ballot papers in favor of their party, or they allow party activists to enter the polling booths as a group and do the same.
The obvious results of such electoral corruption are two; one, the ruling party candidates win, with a large margin of vote difference; and two, the total vote cast sometimes ends up with a bigger number than the total number of voters in the constituency or at a particular polling station. The ultimate electoral corruption in Bangladesh takes place through hijacking the ballot boxes when it becomes clear that the ruling party candidates are likely to lose. Hijacking of ballot boxes involves armed violence and often, the law enforcing authorities are found to be inactive in preventing the crime.
The purpose of hijacking is to destroy the casted ballot papers so that in vote counting, the opposition does not win, or the voting process is canceled. Often, the EC and the police do not recognize such irregularities, and no legal challenge is entertained.
Sometimes, the EC takes into consideration certain complaints but, in its investigation, the accusations are conveniently found to be baseless.
The foregoing section demonstrates the various types of means and ways of electoral malpractices and corruptions. It is clear from the discussion that elections are recognized as a means of political legitimacy; however, elections are highly manipulated in favor of the ruling regimes, and against opposition parties.
An intimidating electoral atmosphere is deliberately created for the opposition parties so that they cannot take part in elections in the first place. Hence, only one political party represents the people in government, albeit through elections. So elections serve dual purposes—to ensure that the ruling party continues in power, and that the opposition is systematically prevented from representing the people. Theoretically, elections perform the job of selection and de-selection, and no ruling party wants to be removed from power through elections.
However, these normal functions of elections are only partially applied in Bangladesh. Why is it so, and what are its implications? Perhaps the answers to these questions are to be found in the peculiar nature of its political history, party politics, and political culture.
Here, we attempt to offer some interpretation of these factors. The political history, party politics, and political culture are highly interrelated in Bangladesh. The most important of the three is its political history, which officially starts with its independence—a highly charged political issue, which was both highly uniting and dividing at the same time.
Independence was achieved after a long civil war in which the AL party led the independence movement and pro-independence civil war in association with some other left-oriented minor parties. However, a group of other political parties who were Islamic-oriented and local born, set out to establish a legacy of Pakistan movement prior to the partition of India, supported the united Pakistan and fought against the independence movement.
This pro- and anti-independence divide later became permanently entrenched in Bangladesh politics postindependence. The divide is now so huge, sharp and politically lethal that it divides the entire nation into two camps.
The AL, as the leading independence party, capitalized on the entire credit of independence and considers itself the only agent, proprietor, and protector. The party believes only in its own narratives of independence politics, which it then imposes on others.
Those who disagree are regarded as anti-independence and, thus, deserve no role and share in politics. This political history reflects on party politics of the country. Through a multiparty system, the parties are ideologically aligned with secular, religious, and socialist ideologies who maintain a peculiar love-hate relationship.
However, neither of the two parties commands enough support and popularity to win majority seats in the parliament; hence, they form alliances with like-minded parties. This led to the emergence of alliance-based party politics from around the mids. The AL is leftist-oriented in that it is composed of secular and socialist-communist parties; while BNP is considered rightist, with its alliance members mostly concerned with religious national identity at the core of their political beliefs.
Despite maintaining an alliance structure, most of the parties, with the exception of a tiny few, have internal factionalism and splinter groups.
Some of the parties maintain the same name, but with different leadership. Individually, most of these parties are simply paper based, have no support-base among the people, and are never get elected. Nevertheless, many of them are significant in alliance politics.
Their political relevance depends on their close relationship with the mother party, whether AL or BNP. Since , the ruling governments have all been coalition-based.
The system can largely be called a two-party or two-plus party system. Again, the two parties are largely seen as pro-independence versus anti-independence. Ideological differences remain, alongside some of their roles during the independence conflict, compelling the various political parties to side with a particular alliance against another.
The last factor is political culture, which is also highly subjective to the first factor: political history. In effect, Bangladesh shares a common political history with India and Pakistan prior to independence. From to , it shares a common political history with the British-united India, and from to , it shares common political history with a united Pakistan.
During these two periods, the popular politics in Bangladesh was essentially the anti-government movement, because politics and government were neither represented nor controlled by the Bangladeshi people. Since , these political parties were primarily anti-government movements. The essential elements of such movements were characterized by sheer distrust, political violence, non-cooperation, disobedience to laws and orders, and public agitation.
These became the fundamental characteristics of political and party political culture in Bangladesh [ 28 ]. The significance of preventive representation politics in Bangladesh can be found in these three major factors. Since the AL has always persistently and consistently claimed that it is the sole agent, proprietor and defender of independence, it strongly believes that only it has the legitimate claim and right to be in political power.
By definition, this implies that other parties have no legitimate right, not only to political power, but also the right to be involved in politics in the first place. These attitudes are clearly reflected in its political behavior when it is in power, as well as when it is outside of that power.
The AL took power during the first 5 years of independence, during when it banned many Islamic and rightist political parties, and toward the end of its regime, it introduced a one-party system in the country.
This was one way of claiming ownership of the country along party lines. Between and , the party returned to power, but before it could consolidate its power base, it was ousted. It returned to power in , and has been in power ever since. Since then, it has successfully institutionalized its political claims with legal backup. Any violation is subject to criminal prosecution. Additionally, the current AL government is bent on decimating two political parties—namely, BNP and BJI—either by banning them altogether or by attempts to introduce a formal one-party system like it did in AL believes that these two parties have no legitimate rights to be involved in politics.
Their rationale: BNP is a party established by an army General who is thought be part of a conspiracy that killed Sheikh Mujib and his entire family, save for two daughters, in Furthermore, BNP maintains a close relationship with Pakistan, the perpetrator of genocide of Bangladeshis in As for BJI, it directly opposed the independence movement and war, and collaborated with the military regime of Pakistan in So for, family and political reasons, these two parties have become arch enemies of AL.
Hence, since , the AL government has taken a number of initiatives to corner the two parties [ 29 ]. Firstly, AL put on trial the three individuals accused of killing Sheikh Mujib and his family; the three were hanged in Secondly, in , under the AL government, it reopened and re-tried an infamous murder of an army Colonel named Abu Taher in The court concluded that it was a cold-blooded murder orchestrated by the BNP leader General Ziaur Rahman, implicating him as a criminal.
The military had sold the residence to her for a token sum after her husband Ziaur Rahman, then President, was killed in The AL government, during its earlier — term, had made an abortive attempt to evict her. The eviction clearly involves both personal vengeance and political reason. Personally, Sheikh Hasina, as prime minister, AL leader and one of two surviving daughters of Sheikh Mujib, could never accept that her nemesis, Khaleda Zia, was allowed to enjoy owning a property within the cantonment vicinity.
And, politically, in a coup-prone country [ 30 ], Hasina could not compromise political security by letting her political opponent and opposition party leader continue to live within the cantonment area.
Fourthly, the AL government revived and proceeded to prosecute all cases that were filed against Khaleda Zia by the army-backed Caretaker Government in During that time, both Hasina and Khaleda had been arrested and scores of corruption cases were filed against each of them.
When Hasina assumed premiership following the elections, her government withdrew all cases against her, but not those against her opponent. Ever since, Khaleda Zia has been fighting court battles over those and other cases filed against her following her anti-government movement during the general elections. After a prolonged court battle, Khaleda lost and was imprisoned in February Her attempts to obtain bail were delayed through official manipulation of time and hearing sessions; at other times, bail applications were blocked by arrest orders in other pending cases.
In practice, however, both phenomena are usually studied together. The debate has tended to focus on the latter point, with different stances on the interpretation of these trends dangerous disaffection or the positive rise of critical citizens as well as on the reform proposals envisaged to counter them.
Problems of democratic legitimacy in the European Union have been widely investigated. Three main areas of research can be identified. A strand of the literature has analysed the empirical level of legitimacy of and support for the EU. Generic support for European integration is usually high, but its motives identity, cost-benefit analysis, elite cues, idealism and underlying vision a federal Europe, stronger integration, the status-quo, less integration are varied.
Specific EU principles and policies, finally, are often controversial. For these reasons, elites have traditionally been weary to politicise European integration "permissive consensus" , and popular consultations have sometimes led to dramatic "incidents" such as the Norwegian, the French, or the UK referendum.
Another strand has discussed the multiple and potentially conflicting foundations of EU legitimacy : direct and indirect, input democratic consent and output policy effectiveness , popular and constitutional, as well as 'throughput' efficacy, transparency, and openness , 'telos' ultimate goals and 'myth'. Proponents of this thesis argue that the institutional framework and the policy-making process of the European Union is insufficiently democratic; this, in turn, undermines its legitimacy and public support.
Some critics have replied by stressing the indirect democratic legitimation of EU institutions through national governments and by defending the appropriateness of keeping them at arm's length from direct political competition to avoid grindlocks and to improve the reliability and effectiveness of policy outcomes. Finally, various strands have discussed the impact of the EU on democracy in Europe , with important consequences for an assessment of the legitimacy of both the EU and its Member States.
The European Union is widely seen as a vital promoter of democratic transition and consolidation in its close neigbourhood and beyond, through enlargement and external policies. International encyclopedia of the social sciences. New York: MacMillan, , pp. Available at: WorldCat. The American Political Science Review , , vol.
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They are a mechanism to peacefully resolve the transfer of political power. Genuine elections contribute to longer-term development goals, laying the foundation for responsive governance. But in the absence of credible elections, citizens have no recourse to peaceful political change.
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