'Political Settlement' and Social Movements in Bangladesh


Omar Faruque, University of New Brunswick Fredericton

In recent years, the Bangladeshi government has adopted several long-term economic plans to make Bangladesh a middle-income country by 2021 and a high-income country by 2041. Rapid and diverse industrialization was identified as a key driver of the accelerated economic growth required to meet these ambitious targets. Since the inception of this development agenda, social movements have emerged, contesting its neoliberal desires. Local- and national-level popular mobilizations against an open pit coal mine in a densely populated agricultural area ( Phulbari Protirodh Andolon, PPA ) and a coal-fired power plant and other industrial infrastructure near an ecologically vulnerable mangrove forest ( Sundarbans Raksa Andolon, SRA ) were the most contentious cases confronting Bangladesh’s growth-oriented neoliberal development agenda. Slow violence (dispossession and injustice due to delayed destruction of livelihood resources resulting from environmental dangers), evasion of environmental laws and policies, and lack of consultation and deliberation with local communities, who will bear the brunt of environmental injustice, were their key grievances. Both movements demanded the cancellation of these two ‘development’ projects. Notwithstanding their broad popular support, these mobilizations ended with a mixed outcome. In the case of the PPA, grassroots mobilization forced the government to accept their key demands. On the other hand, the government did not pay any heed to the SRA’s grievances. Using a comparative analysis of movement dynamics, this paper assesses the divergent outcomes of these two social movements. Sociological research on economic development and social movements focuses on how specific modes or epochs of development in the Global South generate social movements challenging the state’s policy choices vis-à-vis economic development. In the contemporary era of economic development dominated by neoliberal rationality, social movements confront the state’s policy agenda, which, more often than not, gives primacy to the role of transnational capital. Social movement scholars consider the effects of both internal (organizational characteristics) and external (political opportunity or threat) factors to analyze movement outcomes. Building on these conceptual insights from sociology of development and social movement studies and using empirical findings extracted from a set of in-depth interviews with movement activists involved with PPA and SRA and other civil society actors, this paper examines the outcomes of both Bangladeshi protest movements in the context of the political environment in which they emerged and developed. A critical feature of such a political environment is its hybrid political regime, characterized by authoritarianism and extractive political institutions. This paper argues that such characteristics of the Bangladeshi political environment influenced social movement dynamics in such a way that their outcomes remained far short of victory. Adding further insights from the ‘political settlement’ framework, which considers the distribution of power among social organizations in a polity, particularly in the Global South, this paper problematizes the interplay of internal and external contexts of social movements to develop a nuanced understanding of movement outcomes in Bangladesh. In doing so, it theorizes the challenges of social movements in a hybrid political context in an era of democratic backsliding and assesses the prospects of deepening the political participation of a wider population to influence policy choices and development outcomes. It demonstrates that although social movements, which grew out of grievances caused by the perceived impacts of development interventions, can overcome internal challenges to achieve their collective goals and thereby influence development outcomes in their desired ways, this is a challenging task for social movements in a hybrid political context where specific political settlement (a combination of horizontal and vertical power) determines their opportunities and threats. As a result, the prospects of deepening democratic participation to shape development outcomes in such a political context remain a critical task for oppositional collective actions. Notwithstanding these challenges, there are positive signs. Social movements can achieve gains; cumulative gains will lead to broader success in reforming or reversing development agenda.

This paper will be presented at the following session: