Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism in Bangladesh Shafi M. D. Mostofa and D. B. Subedi School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS), University of New England Abstract: In this paper, we examine the changing nature of an authoritarian regime, which is emerging from the social and political conditions shaped by the unconsolidated democracy in Bangladesh. Drawing on desk-based research combined with interviews from the field, we argue that the current form of the authoritarian regime in Bangladesh represents the characteristics of competitive authoritarianism. We find that authoritarianism in Bangladesh combines “election manipulation” with three additional social and political mechanisms: “marginalization of political oppositions” leading to the oppositional void, “institutionalization of authoritarian policies,” and “co-option of religious leaders.” By adding these new mechanisms of authoritarian politics and tracing the links between politics and religion, we aim to expand the theory of competitive authoritarianism and unpack the puzzle of democratic consolidation in Bangladesh. INTRODUCTION Since Bangladesh became independent in 1971, its democracy has remained unconsolidated, characterized by dictatorial and authoritarian power through politically manipulated elections (Riaz 2019b). This is symptomatic of, what is called, competitive authoritarianism (see Diamond 2002b). Yet, the knowledge on how unconsolidated democracy has led to the rise of competitive authoritarianism in Bangladesh is limited. Our paper aims to address this puzzle by investigating the mech- anisms that facilitated the shift from unconsolidated democracy to the competitive authoritarianism. Address correspondence and reprint requests to: D. B. Subedi, School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS), University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia. E-mail: dsubedi2@une.edu.au 1 Politics and Religion, page 1 of 29, 2020. © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. doi:10.1017/S1755048320000401 1755-0483/20 terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755048320000401 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 110.174.130.168, on 13 Jul 2020 at 09:02:09, subject to the Cambridge Core