From drift to delivery: Reading Bangladesh’s political reordering
The regime’s fall exposed the fragility of institutions hollowed out by years of patronage and coercion
Was 5 August the beginning of institutional drift or a genuine shift? Are we witnessing elite reshuffling or systemic recalibration? These questions lie at the heart of Bangladesh's post-2024 moment. To make sense of this ambiguity, we turn to the conceptual lens of institutional change – particularly Acemoglu and Robinson's distinction between extractive and inclusive institutions, and the 2025 Nobel laureates' insights on creative destruction and innovation-driven reform.
These frameworks help us interpret the current transition not merely as a change in leadership, but as a contested struggle over the rules of the game: who sets them, who benefits, and whether they can evolve. This essay traces that struggle – from the July Charter to electoral strategy and emerging voter behaviour – towards a clearer understanding of where the polity may be headed.
Drift, shift, or creative destruction?
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
Institutional drift occurs when formal rules persist but lose relevance as informal practices erode their purpose. Institutional shift, by contrast, is a deliberate redesign of those rules. Bangladesh's current moment appears to be a hybrid: a rupture triggered by the collapse of the Awami League's over decade and a half rule, catalysed by mass outrage, elite defections, and economic malaise.
The student-led movement that precipitated this rupture lacked a central figurehead, yet its decentralised energy proved resilient – echoing the kind of bottom-up creative destruction that Aghion and Howitt argue is essential for institutional renewal. Like the shifting currents of the Meghna, the movement found its own path – restless, uncontained, and impossible to dam.
The regime's fall exposed the fragility of institutions hollowed out by years of patronage and coercion. The descent into disorder – marked by factional infighting, disinformation, and institutional breaches – was not accidental. It was the predictable outcome of drift: a long gestation of extractive practices that left the polity vulnerable to shock. While exports and remittances buoyed the economy, investment, employment, and real wages stalled under the weight of energy shortages, bankrupt banks, and administrative dysfunction.
The Charter and the challenge
The July Charter, signed by legacy parties on 17 October 2025, is an ambitious attempt to confer constitutional recognition upon the events of 36 July – a moment that redefined the republic's trajectory. For parties convened by the National Consensus Commission (NCC), endorsing this recognition is not optional. It is a strategic imperative. Even if rivals abstain, unilateral recognition remains a dominant strategy. As Acemoglu and Robinson would argue, political actors are responding to incentives: legitimacy flows from aligning with the forces that dismantled the old extractive order.
The NCC has brokered consensus on some core reform proposals. These include loosening party control over MPs, strengthening parliamentary oversight, decentralising judicial and electoral institutions, and introducing term limits for the prime minister, among others. These reforms echo Joel Mokyr's emphasis on institutional openness as a precondition for innovation.
Yet the architecture remains provisional. No agreement has been reached on foundational redesigns that require precommitment: the contours of a caretaker government, the structure of a bicameral legislature, modalities for electing reserved seats for women, the scope of presidential powers, and the state's constitutional grammar remain unresolved. It's as if we have opened the windows wide, but left the foundation untouched – air flows freely, but the house still rests on cracked stilts.
Strategic ambiguity
The choreography of key players suggests ambiguity, not incoherence. NCP has threatened to boycott unless the Election Commission demonstrates legal constraints on its discretion in adjudicating the shapla symbol dispute. Jamaat demands a referendum on proportional representation (PR) before polls. BNP wants the referendum held on election day and has urged the interim government to transition into a caretaker mode. These look more like calculated postures than genuine red lines.
Despite the noise, it remains in the self-interest of BNP, Jamaat, and NCP to contest the February 2026 elections – even if the political ownership of the July Charter remains unresolved. Participation offers legitimacy, leverage, and visibility, abstention risks marginalisation. History shows boycotts rarely yield reform. Engagement, even under imperfect terms, allows parties to shape outcomes from within.
Still, the decision to contest is not without ambiguity. Participation may be interpreted as tacit acceptance of the status quo. Yet, abstention carries its own risks: political irrelevance, loss of institutional leverage, and diminished visibility. The more likely pathway, given historical precedent and current incentives, is strategic engagement – entering the race while maintaining a posture of dissent.
Preferences in transition
The stances of key parties over proportional representation (PR) reveal how each reads its electoral prospects. BNP's strong opposition reflects its dominant position in constituency-level support (41.3%) and a desire to preserve first-past-the-post advantages. Jamaat, with 30.3% national support but limited territorial concentration, sees PR as a mechanism to convert votes into seats. NCP, polling at 4.1%, supports PR selectively for the Upper House – signalling a hybrid strategy aimed at institutional entry without disrupting majoritarian control. The Awami League registered 18.8% support. Innovision's September 2025 poll shows PR awareness is low (56% unfamiliar), but support among the informed is higher than opposition – especially among urban, educated, and younger voters.
In the same poll's no-Awami League scenario, BNP's support rises to 45.6%, Jamaat's to 33.5%, and a new 8.3% abstention bloc emerges. (NCP) registers 4.9% support. These shifts reflect strategic recalibration. Some AL loyalists may view BNP as the most feasible vehicle for re-entering the political game – an act of instrumental repositioning. Jamaat's gains may include voters opting for it as a tactical counterweight. What binds BNP, Jamaat, and AL is their status as legacy parties embedded in the familiar grammar of Bangladeshi politics. In contrast, NCP's outsider posture may provoke skepticism. AL diehards don't see NCP as a fresh batsman – they see it as a pitch invader with a "meticulously" hidden agenda and a suspiciously good cover drive!
From campuses to constituencies
The recent sweep by Shibir in university elections at Dhaka, Jahangirnagar, Rajshahi, and Chattogram adds a new dimension. These campuses – long regarded as bellwethers of political sentiment – delivered a verdict that was less about ideology and more about operational credibility. Shibir candidates campaigned on tangible issues: better food in dormitories, cleaner toilets for female students, safer campuses, improved transport. Students prioritised competence and delivery over partisan identity, signaling a shift in how political trust is earned.
This outcome complicates conventional assumptions. Jamaat's gains in both national polling and campus elections may not reflect a broad ideological resurgence, but rather a situational trust in its organisational capacity – especially where other parties failed to demonstrate responsiveness. For BNP, this may reinforce its caution toward PR, wary of Jamaat's expanding footprint. For NCP, the results underscore a credibility gap: despite its reformist messaging and youthful energy, it struggled to convince voters – ironically younger ones – that it could translate vision into results.
Reading the pulse right
The emergence of service-oriented voting, particularly among students, marks a notable transformation in informal political norms. This shift – from traditional allegiances toward demonstrable competence – suggests a recalibration of how political trust is earned. While such behavioral changes may not directly validate or refute formal reforms like PR, they do imply that any new framework will be judged by its capacity to deliver tangible outcomes.
Douglass North reminds us that informal institutions – voter expectations, trust, and norms – often evolve faster than formal structures. For mechanisms like PR to gain legitimacy, they must align with these emerging behavioral patterns, not just theoretical appeals to fairness and representation.
Some critics may dismiss university elections as unrepresentative, preferring national polls that highlight BNP's dominance. But this risks a critical misreading. As Pascal argued in his wager, belief in God is rational because the upside is infinite and the downside minimal. Similarly, engaging with early signals of voter recalibration – however localised – requires minimal strategic investment but offers significant potential returns. Ignoring them, in the context of a possible generational shift, could carry existential costs.
Zahid Hussain is a former lead economist of the World Bank, Dhaka Office.
