Would you rather stay in a chaotic situation where you do not know what will happen the next day, or would you rather opt for a system which, while suboptimal, is relatively “more stable”?
For a large number of people in Bangladesh, excluding myself, the latter is increasingly seeming like a more rational option. While the currently reigning interim government has previously promised great changes, it has largely failed to deliver, and the current system at the root level is haphazard and structureless.
People often have no idea how to navigate the system effectively. Many of the old power brokers have fled or have changed parties. New entrants from different parties are claiming to be more efficient. Therefore, the people at the root are unsure about who truly holds power and who to bribe to get their job done.
Therefore, it seems that a large number of Bangladeshi people are eager for the elections to take place. This is not because they think that elections will make things better or that they want a return to parliamentary democracy, or that they believe that an elected government would be more legitimate. Quite the opposite. They know that things will not get better, but that badness will be a known evil rather than the haphazard system that the current system is running under.
While the government, and especially the young members of it, have repeatedly promised some sort of a new settlement, we are yet to see the translation of those promises in practice. Extortionists are still operating freely, government services still require bribes, and the law-and-order situation has worsened instead of improving. Bangladesh has seemingly entered a period of a lot of unknowns.
Usually, the people know who to bribe, who to call to get their drunk kid out of jail and who to coax to get special benefits -- it is a system of patronage and the whole system is built upon the idea that special manoeuvring of the system can get things done. The crisis after August 5, especially for the common people, has become that the people can no longer trust that (unholy) system. People are still paying bribes, but at multiple levels and without any assurance that the job will even get done.
The Dysfunctional Equilibrium Theory of Mancur Olson posits that societies can settle into stable yet suboptimal institutional arrangements -- equilibriums which are resistant to change not because they are efficient or beneficial to the majority, but because they serve the interests of entrenched elites who have learned to operate and thrive within them. In such systems, corruption, patronage, inefficiency, and even repression are not temporary failures to be corrected but become embedded features of governance.
These dysfunctions are tolerated, and even normalized, by the population because they represent a predictable status quo. Attempts to reform such systems often fail or are co-opted because too many actors -- both elites and ordinary citizens -- have adapted their survival strategies to the prevailing dysfunctions. Many Bangladeshis, especially older generations, have struggled with the system so much for so long that they have given up on lasting, deep changes and would rather try to get into the elite that can manipulate the system rather than making the system fairer for everyone.
It is not that they want to end corruption, they just want it to benefit them.
Therefore, despite episodes of protest and a revolutionary moment, many people appear to be preparing themselves not for change, but for a return to a familiar dysfunction. After the deadly repression of the July 2024 student uprising, the air is thick not with revolutionary anticipation but with a grim pragmatism. For many, the hope is not for justice or transformation, but simply for the next predictable configuration of power -- so they can resume bribing the right people, coaxing the correct bureaucrats and politicians, and negotiating their lives under the same rules of informal governance.
Against this backdrop, the popular attitude toward elections is not one of democratic hope, but one of strategic resignation. People are not looking just to cast votes to change the system; they are waiting to see which group of elites will consolidate control, so they can adjust their lives accordingly. The elections, when they do happen, are not regarded as vehicles for accountability but as the necessary ritual that resets the game board.
This is the heart of the dysfunctional equilibrium: When citizens begin to treat elections not as moments of choice, but as moments of revelation, learning who to appease, who to pay, and who to avoid. Bribery resumes more efficiently once the political weather clears. Coaxing local MPs, police officers, or party cadres becomes easier when their loyalties are confirmed by electoral outcomes. The election will not do much but to notify the people who the official power brokers are.
In rural areas, this phenomenon is even more pronounced. Political loyalty is often transactional, driven by the promise of access to public goods -- like electricity, road maintenance, or inclusion in social safety net programs. A change in regime risks cutting off these life-sustaining flows, but if the ruling party is expected to stay, people quickly reaffirm their loyalty, regardless of what ideologies or slogans they previously supported. In this sense, elections in Bangladesh serve not to challenge dysfunction, but to temporarily formalize it, allowing both the state and its citizens to go back to playing their well-rehearsed roles.
This return to a known dysfunction is not just practical -- it is psychological. After repeated cycles of repression, broken promises, and failed movements, many Bangladeshis have lost faith in the very idea of structural change. The July Uprising offered a brief moment of rupture, but its brutal suppression, and the lack of follow-through by political oppositions, has created a sense of futility. In that void, the desire for predictability -- even a corrupt and repressive one -- has returned.
People are weary. They want to know who they must please to survive. And elections, stripped of democratic meaning, are the quickest way to find out.
The role of this article is not prescriptive, but descriptive. I do not know how to get out of this. I do not pretend to know. I would hope if the ethos of the people would totally be transformed towards a democratic conscience, things could change. However, the transformation of the July Uprising was not nearly total enough to usher in such a situation. If it were, people would not wait for the known devil but would rely on virtuous humans to bring about stability, efficiency, and prosperity to this land. That has not happened and all of the stakeholders are to blame.
We are slowly transitioning back into the hands of our known devils, who uphold unjust structures, lopsided processes and corrupt practices. But, pragmatically, to a large number of people, that is better than the current chaos. Therefore, it seems inevitable that, come election, we will be back to the old system, maybe with some new faces, but maybe not even that since, at the local level, many people would simply switch parties to keep their power intact. Therefore, it is the devil that we await.
Anupam Debashis Roy is the Editor-in-Chief of Muktipotro and a doctoral candidate in Sociology at the University of Oxford. He can be reached at: anupam.roy@sociology.ox.ac.uk.