The Worst of All Worlds

We now have a state that is weak in protecting citizens but strong in taking away their rights.

If that is the “strong state” the BNP leadership wanted to create -- and is now establishing -- we are doomed.

At this moment, we can hear the footsteps of authoritarianism.

And for some reason, the top leadership of the government -- and the party -- is either unwilling to acknowledge that or simply embracing it, while being cheered on by the party’s so-called defenders.

But here is something all of them are failing to acknowledge: The party is extremely incompetent at establishing an authoritarian rule. What they are doing is simply a recipe for disaster.

Contrary to popular belief, an authoritarian government is not simply about having the intention to become authoritarian. Authoritarianism has its own logic, its own strategy for designing a winning coalition, and its own institutional mechanisms.

BNP cannot design that framework.

Here is why.

Let’s start with the distinction between positive liberty and negative liberty.

Positive liberty refers to things that the state should provide like health care, education, or other public services, while negative liberty refers to things that the state cannot and should not take away, such as freedom of speech and freedom of association.

A democratic government has to provide both.

An authoritarian, or would-be authoritarian, government can instead pursue a trade-off.

Usually, citizens can be expected to tolerate restrictions on negative liberty if the state delivers outcomes that facilitate positive liberty.

And this is where the problem for the BNP government starts.

Within the current reality, it is not possible to make that trade-off because the state is not sufficiently capacitated to provide positive liberty.

In a state where the government fails to ensure positive liberty, while simultaneously focusing on taking away negative liberty and failing to provide basic security, a would-be authoritarian regime would struggle to survive.

It will not work unless the regime relies increasingly on coercion as its primary strategy.

Secondly, BNP can clearly try to rely on coercion to survive. But here is the problem: For that, you need a winning coalition whose loyalty has to be bought.

If you cannot generate enough resources or rents to distribute among the members of that potential winning coalition, you cannot secure their loyalty -- and they will defect.

Therefore, as the cost of repression and coercion rises, the ability to maintain the winning coalition declines. Members will defect, and eventually the regime will become increasingly unstable.

The BNP needs to understand that it cannot easily maintain such a winning coalition. Without being able to provide positive liberty and/or maintain a winning coalition, the intention to transform the state into an authoritarian regime will not work.

The government may try, but it will fail miserably. An authoritarian government needs to be competent at authoritarianism, and the current government does not appear to possess that competence.

Without that competence, authoritarian survival will remain a pipe dream, and the government will eventually pay the price.

Contrary to what regime defenders believe, this government is not safe.

People who are encouraging it to become more coercive are doing it a serious disservice.

The sooner the leadership realizes this, the better.

BNP has only one option left: Change the political course drastically. Forget about the supporters and listen to the honest critics.

If it fails to change course, we are waiting for a disaster.

A state that learns to silence everyone before it learns to govern eventually discovers that, when the crisis comes, there is no one left willing to speak the truth.

Asif M Shahan is Professor in the Department of Development Studies at University of Dhaka.