Bangladesh has completed one of the most consequential elections in its recent history, the first national vote since Sheikh Hasina was removed from power by the 2024 student-led uprising. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has emerged with a commanding parliamentary majority, returning to government after years in which the Awami League dominated national politics. The election formally ends the interim period led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, whose administration was tasked with stabilising the country, beginning institutional reforms and preparing a credible transfer back to elected government. Yet the election was conducted without Hasina’s Awami League, whose political activities were banned after the uprising and whose former leadership faces serious allegations concerning repression and the deaths of protesters. The result therefore achieves something Bangladesh urgently needed — a return to elected civilian government — while leaving a deeper democratic question unresolved: can an election produce genuine democratic legitimacy when one of the country’s historically dominant political movements has been removed from the competitive field, even if that movement itself seriously weakened democracy while it governed?
This is precisely where democracy becomes more complicated than majority rule. The Awami League’s record under Hasina included increasingly authoritarian government, restrictions on opposition and elections widely criticised for lacking meaningful competition. The violence surrounding the 2024 uprising created a legitimate demand for accountability. But democracy also depends upon the principle that political organisations should generally be defeated through political competition rather than eliminated administratively. There are exceptions: parties directly organising political violence or attempting to destroy constitutional democracy can lose ordinary protections. The difficulty lies in determining who possesses legitimate authority to decide when that threshold has been crossed. If every new government can ban the movement it accuses of previously abusing power, elections gradually become mechanisms through which winners determine who is permitted to challenge them next time.
Bangladesh therefore faces the classic problem of transitional justice. A political system emerging from authoritarian rule needs to punish serious abuses without turning accountability into collective political exclusion. Individuals responsible for unlawful killings, torture or corruption should face credible investigation and, where evidence supports it, prosecution. But individual responsibility and partisan identity should not automatically become identical. Millions of Bangladeshis historically supported the Awami League for reasons ranging from secular politics and economic policy to family tradition and the party’s role in the country’s independence. Treating all of those voters as politically illegitimate would reproduce the exclusionary logic the democratic transition is supposed to overcome. A durable democracy needs a way for citizens previously represented by the Awami League eventually to participate politically without requiring the restoration of impunity for former leaders.
The BNP’s overwhelming parliamentary position therefore creates both opportunity and danger. Strong governments can implement reforms that fragmented coalitions struggle to pass. Bangladesh needs institutional repair across the police, judiciary, electoral administration and civil service, and a government with a stable majority may possess enough authority to undertake it. Yet the weakness of parliamentary opposition reduces one of democracy’s most important safeguards: the expectation that today’s government may realistically become tomorrow’s opposition. Political restraint is easier to sustain when rulers know institutions they strengthen or weaken will soon be controlled by their rivals. A government expecting prolonged dominance can begin treating temporary electoral authority as ownership of the state.
This is particularly important because Bangladesh’s modern political history has repeatedly been shaped by intense competition between the Awami League and BNP, with each side often viewing the other not simply as an opponent but as a threat to the legitimacy of the political order. That form of mutual delegitimation gradually changes democratic incentives. If losing an election means prosecution, exclusion or political extinction, parties become less willing to lose peacefully. Democracy requires something psychologically difficult: political actors must believe that losing power is tolerable because the institutions protecting them remain legitimate after they lose. The greatest achievement of the new government would therefore not be preventing the Awami League or another rival from ever returning. It would be creating institutions strong enough that the BNP could itself lose a future election without fearing destruction.
The student movement that helped remove Hasina now faces a different challenge. Protest movements can unite around rejection much more easily than they can govern. Students could agree that authoritarianism and corruption had become unacceptable while disagreeing profoundly over taxation, Islam, secularism, labour policy, India, China and the role of the state. Some activists have attempted to translate the uprising into new political organisations, but established parties retain enormous advantages in local networks, financing and candidate organisation. This illustrates the institutionalisation problem of revolutionary politics. Streets can overthrow a government quickly; building a party capable of governing thousands of constituencies requires years of mundane organisational work.
Bangladesh’s economic position makes political stabilisation particularly urgent. The country transformed itself over several decades from extreme poverty into one of South Asia’s major manufacturing economies, driven especially by the ready-made garment industry, which employs millions of workers and supplies global clothing brands. That achievement complicates any simple judgement of the Hasina era. Economic development occurred alongside increasing political repression. This demonstrates why economic performance and political legitimacy cannot simply substitute for one another. A government can improve incomes and infrastructure while weakening democratic institutions, and citizens may tolerate the trade-off temporarily without granting permanent permission for authoritarian rule.
The garment model now faces its own structural challenge. Bangladesh became competitive partly through relatively low labour costs, but sustainable development requires workers eventually becoming more productive and better paid. The country therefore needs to move from cost-based competitiveness towards productivity-based competitiveness, investing in logistics, electricity, education, automation and higher-value manufacturing. Political instability raises the cost of that transition because multinational companies can relocate orders relatively easily to Vietnam, India or other producers if strikes, violence or regulatory uncertainty become persistent.
This gives the new government a powerful economic reason to protect institutional stability. Rule of law is not merely a liberal political principle; it changes investment calculations. A company deciding whether to build a factory asks whether contracts will be enforced, whether regulations will change arbitrarily and whether political connections are required to operate. Corruption and partisan administration therefore act like an implicit tax on productive investment. Reforming institutions can increase growth without requiring enormous new government expenditure simply by lowering uncertainty.
Relations with India will be one of the most sensitive foreign-policy tests. Hasina maintained an unusually close relationship with New Delhi, cooperating on security and connectivity while critics in Bangladesh sometimes argued that India received excessive influence. Her presence in India after the 2024 uprising intensified those suspicions. A BNP government is likely to seek greater distance from the relationship associated with Hasina, while China will remain an important infrastructure and economic partner. Yet geography places limits on how far Bangladesh can move. India surrounds much of the country, shares rivers and borders with it and remains central to regional trade and energy connectivity. Anti-Indian nationalism may generate domestic political returns, but geography cannot be voted out of foreign policy.
India therefore should resist treating the return of the BNP as the loss of a friendly government. A relationship built principally around one party becomes vulnerable whenever that party loses power. The stronger Indian strategy is institutional: trade, electricity connections, transport, education and border cooperation should produce benefits visible enough that whichever party governs Bangladesh finds continued cooperation rational. Influence created through mutual dependence is more durable than influence created through personal relationships with political leaders.
Bangladesh itself should apply the same principle to India and China. Strategic autonomy does not require equal relationships with both; it requires avoiding dependence severe enough that either can determine domestic choices. Chinese infrastructure can complement Indian connectivity. Western markets remain essential for garment exports. Gulf economies employ Bangladeshi workers. A diversified foreign policy therefore reflects Bangladesh’s economic structure better than membership in any geopolitical bloc.
The Yunus interim government will ultimately be judged partly by whether this transfer survives after it leaves office. Interim governments are inherently paradoxical because they exercise political power while claiming their legitimacy comes from preparing conditions under which somebody else will exercise it. Their success therefore lies partly in making themselves unnecessary. The return to an elected government is an important achievement, but it should not be confused with completion of the democratic transition. Democracy is consolidated only when the next transfer of power becomes ordinary rather than revolutionary.
That is the standard Bangladesh should now pursue. The country does not need another political order in which one party becomes synonymous with the state until mass mobilisation removes it. It needs a system where governments can govern strongly, opposition parties can organise legally, serious crimes are prosecuted individually and citizens can replace leaders without requiring another uprising.
The BNP has won the election. The more consequential question is whether it can help build institutions under which winning an election no longer feels like capturing the state and losing one no longer feels like losing the right to participate in politics. If Bangladesh achieves that, the 2024 uprising will have produced something more durable than a change of ruling party. It will have changed the rules governing what ruling parties are allowed to become.
