95 – Governance and Politics in Bangladesh: Navigating Transformation, Challenges, and Opportunities

October 1, 2025
1:45 pm
H08
This interdisciplinary panel offers both a balanced mapping of governance challenges in Bangladesh and an argument-driven exploration of the tensions that define its political transformation. Across diverse cases, the discussions highlight how struggles over authority and accountability as well as state control and citizen agency shape the evolving landscape of governance. The contest over judicial independence reflects the legacy of confrontational party politics, where attempts to reform a partisan judiciary expose the fragility of institutional autonomy. Environmental governance is illuminated through the Halda River, a globally unique breeding ground for carp, where corruption, bureaucratic inertia, and grassroots activism collide around ecological survival. Economic transformation is revisited through the garment industry, showing how policy learning and ideational shifts within the state, rather than external donor pressure, have steered Bangladesh’s globalization. The rapid rise of mobile journalism illustrates both the empowerment of citizen voices and the constraints of infrastructural and ethical deficiencies in digital communication. Youth politics takes center stage in the 2024 quota reform movement, whose escalation into a nationwide uprising was articulated through wall writings blending nationalist memory with global generational consciousness. International dimensions add further complexity: European discourses situate Bangladesh within Indo-Pacific geopolitics, while transnational practices such as shipbreaking reveal the environmental injustices of hazardous waste transfers. Finally, debates around public policy in international arbitration underscore how domestic political priorities intersect with global legal regimes. Collectively, these contributions show how law, policy, ecology, media, and youth mobilization converge in Bangladesh’s contested transformation, where struggles over authority, accountability, control, and agency are at the core.

Convenor

Dr. ASM Mostafizur Rahman

Presentations

The European discourses on socio-political dynamics in Bangladesh since 2024: German, French and Polish perspectives
Kuszewska-Bohnert Agnieszka - Jagiellonian University, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
The interpretation of public policy as an exception to the recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards in South Asia
Yonzon Prakritee - The University of Hong Kong, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Transnational Environmental Injustices and the Bloody Loaf Argument (BLA)
Rubaia Refat E - University of Sheffield, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
Drawing the Sense of Nationalism on Deyal Likhon: Who is Generation Z in Bangladesh?
Minamide Kazuyo - Department of Global Studies, Kobe College, Nishinomiya, Japan
Policy Learning in an Emerging Economy: Globalization and Transformation in Bangladesh
Mostafizur Rahman ASM - South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany