Beyond Institutions: Patronage and Informal Participation in Bangladesh’s Hybrid Regime

ABSTRACT

Why do ordinary citizens embrace informal participation in hybrid regimes? Existing literature suggests that informal politics emerges in the absence of formal participatory avenues. But in many hybrid regimes, citizens participate in informal avenues alongside formal participatory spaces. This paper examines informal participation among urban middle-class citizens in Bangladesh – a hybrid regime – between 2009 and 2011. It draws on 60 semi-structured, open-ended, and expert interviews involving middle-class residents in Ward 27 of Dhaka city. It argues that in Bangladesh, informal participation is tied to the particular institutional configuration of the country’s hybrid regime. As ruling parties exercise patronage across government institutions, ordinary citizens adopt informal activities to meet their survival needs. Findings suggest that informal participation can transform the social order through the emergence of new grassroots-level institutions that embody ordinary peoples’ interests.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Thomas Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” Journal of Democracy 13:1 (2002), pp. 5–21; Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Larry Diamond, “Thinking about Hybrid Regimes,” Journal of Democracy 13:2 (2002), pp. 21–35; Andreas Schedler, “The Logic of Electoral Authoritarianism,” in Andreas Schedler (ed.), Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition (Lynne Rienner, 2006).

² Joakim Ekman, “Political Participation and Regime Stability: A Framework for Analyzing Hybrid Regimes,” International Political Science Review 30:1 (January 2009), p. 7.

³ Thierry Desrues, “Mobilizations in a Hybrid Regime: The 20th February Movement and the Moroccan Regime,” Current Sociology 61:4 (2013), pp. 409–23; Edmund W. Cheng, “Street Politics in a Hybrid Regime: The Diffusion of Political Activism in Post-Colonial Hong Kong,” The China Quarterly 226 (2016), pp. 383–406; Catherine Owen and Eleanor Bindman, “Civic Participation in a Hybrid Regime: Limited Pluralism in Policy-Making and Delivery in Contemporary Russia,” Government & Opposition 54:1 (2017), pp. 98–120.

⁴ James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985); Asif Bayat, Street Politics: Poor People’s Movements in Iran (Columbia University Press, 1997); Diane Singerman, Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); Benedict J. Kerkvliet, The Power of Everyday Politics: How Vietnamese Peasants Transformed National Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).

⁵ Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War.

⁶ Singerman, Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo, p. 3.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ Diamond, “Thinking about Hybrid Regimes,” p. 24; Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” p. 6.

¹⁰ Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm.”

¹¹ Guillermo O’Donnell and Phillippe C Schmitter, “Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Transitions” (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); T. L. Karl, “The Hybrid Regimes of Central America,” Journal of Democracy 6 (1995), p. 72; Guillermo O’Donnell, Phillippe C Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives, vol. 3 (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).

¹² Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm”; Diamond, “Thinking about Hybrid Regimes.”

¹³ Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” Foreign Affairs 76:6 (1997), pp. 22–43; David Collier and Steven Levitsky, “Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research,” World Politics 49:3 (1997), pp. 430–51; Matthijs Bogaards, “How to Classify Hybrid Regimes? Defective Democracy and Electoral Authoritarianism,” Democratization 16:2 (April 6, 2009), pp. 399–423; Guillermo O’Donnell, “Delegative Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 5:1 (1994), pp. 55–69.

¹⁴ Schedler, “The Logic of Electoral Authoritarianism”; Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War.

¹⁵ Mariam Mufti, “What Do We Know about Hybrid Regimes after Two Decades of Scholarship?” Politics and Governance 6:2 (2018), pp. 112–19; Leah Gilbert and Payam Mohseni, “Beyond Authoritarianism: The Conceptualization of Hybrid Regimes,” Studies in Comparative International Development 46:3 (September 2011), pp. 270–97; Katharine Adeney, “How to Understand Pakistan’s Hybrid Regime: The Importance of a Multidimensional Continuum,” Democratization 24:1 (January 2, 2017), pp. 119–37.

¹⁶ Mufti, “What Do We Know about Hybrid Regimes after Two Decades of Scholarship?”; Schedler, “The Logic of Electoral Authoritarianism”; Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War; Karl, “The Hybrid Regimes of Central America”; Richard Snyder, “Beyond Electoral Authoritarianism: The Spectrum of Nondemocratic Regimes,” in Andreas Schedler (ed.), Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2006).

¹⁷ Ekman, “Political Participation and Regime Stability: A Framework for Analyzing Hybrid Regimes,” p. 9.

¹⁸ Gilbert and Mohseni, “Beyond Authoritarianism: The Conceptualization of Hybrid Regimes,” p. 276.

¹⁹ Lee Morgenbesser, “Elections in Hybrid Regimes: Conceptual Stretching Revived,” Political Studies 62:1 (March 2014), pp. 21–36.

²⁰ Bogaards, “How to Classify Hybrid Regimes? Defective Democracy and Electoral Authoritarianism”; Gilbert and Mohseni, “Beyond Authoritarianism: The Conceptualization of Hybrid Regimes”; Ali Riaz, “Legislature as a Tool of the Hybrid Regime: Bangladesh Experience,” PS: Political Science and Politics 52:2 (2019), pp. 275–76; Ekman, “Political Participation and Regime Stability: A Framework for Analyzing Hybrid Regimes”; Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War.

²¹ Andreas Schedler, “Elections without Democracy: The Menu of Manipulation,” Journal of Democracy 13:2 (2002), p. 42; Steven Levitsky and Lucan A Way, “Elections Without Democracy: The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy 13:2 (2002), p. 54.

²² Ekman, “Political Participation and Regime Stability: A Framework for Analyzing Hybrid Regimes”; Snyder, “Beyond Electoral Authoritarianism: The Spectrum of Nondemocratic Regimes”; Morgenbesser, “Elections in Hybrid Regimes: Conceptual Stretching Revived.”

²³ Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy 13:2 (2002), p. 52.

²⁴ Kheang Un, “Patronage Politics and Hybrid Democracy: Political Change in Cambodia, 1993–2003,” Asian Perspective (2005), pp. 203–30.

²⁵ G Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis, 2005, pp. 30–38; in Diamond, “Thinking about Hybrid Regimes,” p. 25.

²⁶ Kanishka Jayasuriya and Garry Rodan, “Beyond Hybrid Regimes: More Participation, Less Contestation in Southeast Asia,” Democratization 14:5 (December 2007), pp. 773–94; Ekman, “Political Participation and Regime Stability: A Framework for Analyzing Hybrid Regimes”; Graeme B. Robertson, “Strikes and Labor Organization in Hybrid Regimes,” American Political Science Review 101:4 (2007), pp. 781–98.

²⁷ Ekman, “Political Participation and Regime Stability: A Framework for Analyzing Hybrid Regimes.”

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ Jayasuriya and Rodan, “Beyond Hybrid Regimes: More Participation, Less Contestation in Southeast Asia”; Garry Rodan and Kanishka Jayasuriya, “The Technocratic Politics of Administrative Participation: Case Studies of Singapore and Vietnam,” Democratization 14:5 (December 2007), pp. 795–815; Robertson, “Strikes and Labor Organization in Hybrid Regimes.”

³⁰ Robertson, “Strikes and Labor Organization in Hybrid Regimes.”

³¹ Jayasuriya and Rodan, “Beyond Hybrid Regimes: More Participation, Less Contestation in Southeast Asia.”

³² Ibid.

³³ Jane Hutchison, “The ‘Disallowed’ Political Participation of Manila’s Urban Poor,” Democratization 14:5 (December 2007), pp. 853–72.

³⁴ Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance; Bayat, Street Politics: Poor People’s Movements in Iran; Singerman, Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo; Leila Alhamad, “Formal and Informal Venues of Engagement,” in E. Lust-Okar and S. Zerhouni (eds), Political Participation in the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2008).

³⁵ Tianjian Shi, Political Participation in Beijing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 21.

³⁶ Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance.

³⁷ Asef Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).

³⁸ Singerman, Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo, p. 3.

³⁹ Henry Dietz, Urban Poverty, Political Participation, and the State: Lima, 1970–1990 (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 1998), p. 7.

⁴⁰ Samantha Majic, “Participation Despite the Odds: Examining Sex Workers’ Political Engagement,” New Political Science 36:1 (January 2, 2014), pp. 76–95.

⁴¹ Jayasuriya and Rodan, “Beyond Hybrid Regimes: More Participation, Less Contestation in Southeast Asia.” The authors draw on the work of Lasswell, Harold Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (New York, NY: MacGraw Hill, 1936).

⁴² Javier Auyero, Poor People’s Politics: Peronist Survival Networks and the Legacy of Evita (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001); Singerman, Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo; Dietz, Urban Poverty, Political Participation, and the State: Lima, 1970–1990; Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance.

⁴³ Singerman, Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo; Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance; Hutchison, “The ‘Disallowed’ Political Participation of Manila’s Urban Poor.”

⁴⁴ Singerman, Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo, p. 7.

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Quamrul Alam and Julian Teicher, “The State of Governance in Bangladesh: The Capture of State Institutions,” South Asia: Journal of South Asia Studies 35:4 (December 1, 2012), pp. 858–84.

⁴⁷ Ali Riaz, Voting in a Hybrid Regime: Explaining the 2018 Bangladeshi Election (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

⁴⁸ Bangladesh Institute of Governance Studies, “The State of Governance in Bangladesh 2006: Knowledge, Perceptions, Reality” (Dhaka, Bangladesh: BRAC, 2006), p. 3.

⁴⁹ “Elections,” Election Guide: Democracy Assistance and Election News, available online at: http://www.electionguide.org/elections/, accessed 7/9/2017.

⁵⁰ R. Inglehart, et al., “World Values Survey: Round Four – Country-Pooled Datafile 2000–2004” (Madrid: JD Systems Institute, 2014).

⁵¹ Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War.

⁵² Ali Riaz, “Bangladesh in 2004: The Politics of Vengeance and the Erosion of Democracy,” Asian Survey 45:1 (2005), pp. 112–18; Elora Shehabuddin, “Bangladesh in 1999: Desperately Seeking a Responsible Opposition,” Asian Survey 40:1 (2000), pp. 181–88; Iraz Ahmed and Golam Mortoza, “The Anatomy of Hartal: How to Stage a Hartal,” in Cecilie Brokner et al. (eds), Beyond Hartals: Toward Democratic Dialogue in Bangladesh (Dhaka: United Nations Development Program, 2005); Mohammad Moniruzzaman, “Party Politics and Political Violence in Bangladesh,” South Asian Survey 16:1 (2009), pp. 81–99; Muhammad Yeahia Akhter, Electoral Corruption in Bangladesh, Routledge (New York: Routledge, 2018).

⁵³ During these strikes (hartal), instigators typically demand the shutdown of all activities, such as offices, businesses, and public transportation. Violent clashes frequently occur between the police and opposition activists.

⁵⁴ Bangladesh Institute of Governance Studies, “The State of Governance in Bangladesh 2006: Knowledge, Perceptions, Reality,” p. 3.

⁵⁵ Alam and Teicher, “The State of Governance in Bangladesh: The Capture of State Institutions.”

⁵⁶ Nicolas Van de Walle, “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss? The Evolution of Political Clientelism in Africa,” in Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson (eds), Patrons, Clients and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 50–51.

⁵⁷ Bo Rothstein and Eric M Uslaner, “All for All: Equality, Corruption, and Social Trust,” World Politics 58:1 (2005), p. 53.

⁵⁸ Ward 27 includes nine neighborhoods: north, south, middle and east Bashabo, Chhayabithi, north and south Madartek, Dokkhinpara and Baganbari. I use Ward 27 and Bashabo interchangeably.

⁵⁹ John Gerring and Jason Seawright, “Case Selection Techniques in Case Study Research: A Menu of Qualitative and Quantitative Options,” Political Research Quarterly 61:2 (2008), pp. 294–308.

⁶⁰ Gerring and Seawright, “Case Selection Techniques in Case Study Research.”

⁶¹ Seymour Martin Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,” The American Political Science Review 53:1 (1959), pp. 69–105; Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

⁶² The middle class now lives dangerously close to poverty, making income-based definitions uncertain, especially under conditions of inequality. This definition draws on the work of Banerjee and Duflo, who find that the average middle-class person may run businesses, but they are more likely to hold a steady job, and have fewer, healthier, and better educated children. Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, “What Is Middle Class about the Middle Classes around the World?” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 22:2 (2008), pp. 3–41A.

⁶³ Price Waterhouse Coopers, “The Long View: How Will the Global Economic Order Change by 2050,” The World in 2050 Summary Report, 2017, available online at: https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/world-2050/assets/pwc-world-in-2050-summary-report-feb-2017.pdf; The World Bank, “Worldwide Governance Indicators,” 2016, available online at: http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/worldwide-governance-indicators.

⁶⁴ Akbar Ali Khan, Discovery of Bangladesh: Explorations into the Dynamics of a Hidden Nation (Dhaka: University Press Limited, 1996), pp. 129–32.

⁶⁵ Rehman Sobhan, “Structural Dimensions of Malgovernance in Bangladesh,” Economic and Political Weekly 39:36 (n.d.), p. 4105.

⁶⁶ Arild Engelsen Ruud, “The Political Bully in Bangladesh,” in Anastasia Piliavsky (ed.), Patronage as Politics in South Asia (Delhi, India: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

⁶⁷ Source: Local ward commissioner’s office.

⁶⁸ Julian Kuttig, “Urban Political Machines and Student Politics in ‘Middle’ Bangladesh: Violent Party Labor in Rajshahi City,” Critical Asian Studies 51:3 (July 3, 2019), pp. 403–18.

⁶⁹ Load-shedding refers to frequent power outages which help meet power demands during periods of national power crisis. In Bangladesh load-shedding is frequent during summer months, though during the period of data collection (2009 and 2010) respondents claimed the crisis to have significantly deepened in the past years.

⁷⁰ Helemul Alam, “Dhaka gone crazy,” in The Daily Star, (April 27 2009), available online at: http://www.thedailystar.net/news-detail-85811, accessed 7/13/2017.

⁷¹ “Bangladesh: People Pay More to the Police than to the Government”, Asian Human Rights Commission, (2012), available online at: http://www.humanrights.asia/news/ahrc-news/AHRC-STM-160-2012, accessed July 29, 2013.

⁷² Bangladesh Institute of Governance Studies, “The State of Governance in Bangladesh 2008: Confrontation, Competition, Accountability” (Dhaka, Bangladesh: BRAC, 2009), p. 12.

⁷³ Ibid., p. 16.

⁷⁴ Alam and Teicher, “The State of Governance in Bangladesh: The Capture of State Institutions.”

⁷⁵ Ibid.

⁷⁶ Michael Johnston, “The Political Consequences of Corruption: A Reassessment,” Comparative Politics 18:4 (1986), p. 460.

⁷⁷ Singerman, Avenues of Participation, pp. 50–51.

⁷⁸ Jayasuriya and Rodan, “Beyond Hybrid Regimes: More Participation, Less Contestation in Southeast Asia.”

⁷⁹ Singerman, Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo, p. 7.

⁸⁰ James L. Gibson, “Social Networks, Civil Society, and the Prospects for Consolidating Russia’s Democratic Transition,” American Journal of Political Science 45:1 (2001), p. 51–68.

⁸¹ Asef Bayat, “From ‘Dangerous Classes’ to ‘Quiet Rebels’: Politics of the Urban Subaltern in the Global South,” International Sociology 15:3 (2000), p. 545.

⁸² Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance.

⁸³ Lisa Wedeen, “The Politics of Deliberation: Qa ¯t Chews as Public Spheres in Yemen,” Public Culture 19:1 (2007), p. 59–84.

⁸⁴ For example, see Javier Auyero, Poor People’s Politics: Peronist survival networks and the legacy of Evita (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001); Elora Shehabuddin, Reshaping the Holy: Democracy, Development, and Muslim Women in Bangladesh (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008); Diane Singerman, Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the City University of New York Doctoral Student Research Grant Competition #5 in the 2009–2010 academic year.

Notes on contributors

Nayma Qayum

Nayma Qayum is an associate professor of Asian Studies at Manhattanville College. Her research interests include institutions, participation, poverty and development, gender, and South Asia. Dr. Qayum has held research positions at BRAC Bangladesh and UNDP NY.