Electoral Violence in Bangladesh: A Comparative Analysis of 2001 and 2008 Parliamentary Elections

Abstract

This research deals with electoral violence in Bangladesh particularly its causes, nature and effects which is detrimental to the process of democratization of the country. Electoral violence attenuates participation in the process of democratization. In addition, electoral violence causes human insecurity, deepen confrontational politics. Since 1973, parliamentary elections have suffered from electoral violence of varying degrees. This study has specifically focused on comparisons of electoral violence between 2001 and 2008 elections. The data, for this purpose, have been collected from primary and secondary sources. Primary data were collected from a total of 50 interviewees. Secondary data have been collected from newspapers. Content analysis has been done to analyse secondary data. Thus the finds of the study suggest that, although electoral violence fall place due to the reason of winning in the election, but certain grey areas remain in the process of occurring electoral violence. The difference in the scale of violence between 2001 and 2008 elections lies in the overall performance of the election management bodies. The better management in 2008 elections led to the low scale of violence. However, the findings of Bangladesh case may be evident in other contexts of transitional democracies.