From patronage to crisis: Welfare politics and the breakdown of rule of law in Bangladesh’s political transformation

Md Nazirul Islam Sarker, School of Public Administration, an University of Finance and Economics, Miyan Research Institute, International University of Business Agriculture and Technology

Party Politics: The International Journal for the Study of Political Parties and Political Organizations

Published online on April 16, 2026

Abstract

Party Politics, Ahead of Print.
This article theorizes and traces a mechanism in which welfare provision, once routed through partisan brokers, morphs into patronage that corrodes the rule of law, culminating in crisis and an interim political settlement. Using a qualitative, theory-...