Global Research Professor of Development Studies at SOAS University of London.
Is tinkering with the formal rules of the game the triumph of hope over experience (this time politics will be different)? Or a more technocratic faith in the power of institutional architecture to push back against the potent political imperatives of rents and control (we can design our way to democracy)? Either way, fixing the rules seems a misplaced focus when history has shown that the amassing of political power rapidly renders such niceties ornamental.
Are there signs that the old elite consensus that governed Bangladesh for five decades is breaking down, and, if so, what will replace it?