Bangladesh: Who vote? How do they vote?

This book has been published in ekushey boi mela- 2018 and available on stall no 433-434 (AHDPH).

FOREWORD OF THE BOOK
By Sidney Verba

This book, Bangladesh: Who vote? How do they vote? By M. Salimullah Khan is significant in several ways. It is an important work mainly on the vote activity, and also on the development and evolution of Bangladesh. It is also a work relevant to other nations in the process of nation building that face similar issues of governmental and cultural cohesion, and the difficulties they face. Most important, it is a book on the methodology by which research is conducted on such a broad task as that of national development.

Social science research, and in particular political science research is divided into two schools: traditional qualitative research and newer quantitative research. The former would deal with a subject such as the evolution and functioning of a nation by descriptions and analyses of the history of the nation, the persons involved the cultural and belief systems, religions, and other characteristics. Quantitative research approaches the same set of characteristics by creating variables based on such features as: the number of people involved the number with particular beliefs or institutional identities, and etc. The relations among these variables are then subjected to systematic statistical analyses which the author did in a very impressive way in the book. Of course, I would be more pleased if the author could raise some more theoretical questions in some parts side by side his empirical generalizations.

Political Science literature – on the nature of systems of government or their formation or the relation of economic systems to political systems – is usually in one mode of the other. But both are valuable and needed.

I have focused on this methodological distinction, rather than on the substance of the book’s content, for two reasons. The first is that this book uses both approaches. It contains one of the most complete and effective quantitative analyses of the nature of a political system, especially of a system undergoing a complex and uncertain governmental development, with a heterogeneous public in terms of culture and beliefs. The second is that the substance of the quantitative and qualitative stories told is so rich that it needs to be read in the text of the book. The quantitative material is powerful and impressive; but it is understood better if one reads about the family relations of the opponents to the political regime that may emerge, as in the words of the author, “… the influence of the two political personalities is dominant in politics which lay significant bearing in the vote activity of the citizens. Electorates are almost divided along the lines of the two major parties headed by close family members of these two personalities. Such trend is their emotion, their psychological attachment to the two charismatic leaders – Mujib and Zia. The reason may be historic and indigenous socio-political character of this part of the world. Such tradition goes down to the grass root level which gives rise to intense bickering in politics. Thus personal animosities and hatred are so deep rooted among the followers of these two personalities that it is very difficult for the polity to remain aloof from such culture.” Such generalization by the author, I guess, symbolizes the characteristics of many developing polities of the world especially that of South Asia.

The book is very impressive and the handling of text and data excellent. Good luck with it.

Professor Emeritus
Department of Government
Harvard University, USA

About the author:

M. Salimullah Khan is a professor (rtd.) of the Department of Government and Politics, Jahangirnagar University. He was former chairman of the Department. Also former General Secretary, Bangladesh Political Science Association. He studied at the Universities of Dhaka, Brock and Alberta. He has a number of publications in professional journals, home and abroad. His current research: “Political Belief and Political Participation: Bangladesh”.

About the Book:

This book, Bangladesh: Who vote? How do they vote?, concentrates on voting. While the act of voting in Bangladesh in some respects symbolizes the features of other political cultures, significant contrasts are also seen in some other cases too. Analysis of our data indicates that the vote activity vis-a-vis SERL in Bangladesh has not been a symmetrical one which contrasts Western liberal democracies. Rather it indicates the features of complex conglomeration of all graphical forms portraying the characteristics of a quavering democracy here.
The study is a part of my on-going research, “Political Belief and Political Participation: Bangladesh”. The research is based on an original survey of more than twenty five hundred individuals randomly selected from the whole of Bangladesh which covers regional, cultural and ethnic variations. The study intends to delineate causal relations between demographic variables, and some psychological and activism variables, i.e., political belief, vote activity, governmental performance and voters’ satisfaction, conflict resolution in politics etc., and in the process, an attempt will be made to build a model of participation in the context of Bangladesh.