Why Bangladesh’s next election is a test of the political order
As Bangladesh approaches its 13th parliamentary election, the national discourse is markedly different from that of previous electoral seasons. This time, the question at the centre of it is not merely who will win, but whether the election can itself right this country’s wobbly political future. It is in that pivot of focus that we find something more profound—the worry about authority, legitimacy, and the very rules at the root of political competition.
Recent polls and analyses have focused on familiar measurements: the mood of the electorate, turnout projections, and party favourability. Though these signals are critical, we can only understand so much. What they don’t get at is a deeper question: can an election be a stabilising element when institutional trust, elite consensus and political legitimacy are all under assault?
Political scientists call these periods of critical volatility — threshold situations in which political systems are susceptible to shocks. In such moments, institutions that previously absorbed conflict do not stabilise as they once did. Small actions can have huge – even irreversible – effects. Today, we see many of these same conditions in Bangladesh.
The political turmoil of 2024 revealed an apparent break in the chain. The exit of a long-entrenched government and the advent of an interim administration altered not only leadership but also the political settlement itself. The questions that generally serve as a process in the world of a presidential transition have once more been thrust to the centre stage: Who has the authority to manage the transition? What defines a legitimate election? What institutions can be trusted to resolve political conflicts?
Further muddying the picture, the upcoming election is swirling around deep constitutional and institutional questions. Indeed, we are not only practising electoral governance, judicial power and executive authority but also disputing them. In elections that occur while the very lines of political competition are being renegotiated, they become referendums on the political order itself rather than routine exercises in representation.
And elite fragmentation has only exacerbated this volatility. Existing alignments have fractured, new actors have entered the fray, and traditional parties must make tough decisions about whether to participate in or boycott elections. In these circumstances, political time speeds up. Haste makes the decisions, compromise is unattainable, and errors are more costly. In those quarrels that had coexisted, it has suddenly introduced a new dimension capable of turning previously tolerable fights into possible conflicts.
There is also pressure on institutional buffers. In that competition, bodies responsible for overseeing elections or enforcing rules or settling disputes struggle to discern whose claim to legitimacy should prevail. And where institutions do work on paper, their authority is contested by competing political story lines. Constitutional legality, popular mandate, and moral authority are ever more at odds, with questions abound as to which claim will ultimately triumph.
For the people, such volatility elicits both hope and fear. Those kinds of moments can create openings for long overdue reform and democratic renewal — particularly when existing arrangements have lost credibility. Yet the risks are substantial. Vague or contested rules can drive competition toward winner-takes-all logic, exclusion, and extra-institutional confrontation — tendencies that Bangladesh knows all too well. The same volatility that drives change can become entrenched instability if not effectively managed.
“It has implications for policymakers, for political leaders and international partners”. Logistical improvements, monitoring missions, and legal adjustments — those are technical fixes, and they’re not enough when legitimacy is itself at issue. Just as significant are credible procedures, the exercise of restraint by powerful actors and the reconstruction of a minimal consensus around political rules even between rivals.
Ultimately, the challenge Bangladesh faces is not just to hold an election but to steer a transition out of dangerous volatility. It’s a delicate, path-dependent moment; the mistakes are expensive. Whether the elections set to be held in a few weeks stabilise or further shatter this newly emergent political order will depend less on an individual event and much more on whether Greece’s myriad political actors can muster the ability to agree, however minimally, on the rules of engagement. Without an agreement of that kind, the elections would run the danger of converting uncertainty into a post-election phenomenon instead of removing it. In such moments, democracy is tested not only by outcomes but also by the ability to navigate disagreement without eroding a framework that makes competition meaningful.