Traditions and Bureaucracy in Bangladesh

State Bureaucracy and the Management of Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh

“…In this context, Zafarullah and Siddiquee (, p. 478) note that regarding the relationship between bureaucracy and the political executive, “the superiority of senior bureaucrats in terms of education, training and experience and their monopoly in technical knowledge enables them to have considerable influence on ministers and also at times to be cynical of ministerial control.” State bureaucracy displays a mixture of both authoritarian and democratic elements. The latter manifests itself in ongoing tensions between democratic versus dynastic rule, merit versus patronage, and competency versus “tadbir” (personal lobbying) (see Huque, ; Huque & Rahman, ; Jamil & Haque, ).…”

“…With regard to the four dimensions outlined by Biesbroek and others (), the state bureaucracy in Bangladesh can be categorized as follows: Law and management : The state bureaucracy of Bangladesh follows codified rules and procedures regarding the allocation of tasks among bureaucrats concerned with policy implementation (Zafarullah, ). Linkage between state and social actors : The scope for non‐state actors such as interest groups and civil society organizations to contribute to policy making and implementation has increased in the last few years, but it remains limited (K. Alam et al, ; Zafarullah, ). Uniformity in the creation and implementation of policy : Members of the administrative cadre develop, implement, and administer policies and are in charge of carrying out policy evaluation and impact assessments (Zafarullah, ). Organization of scientific advice : Policy advice, in general, comes from the upper echelons of state bureaucracy: the generalists. The generalists, however, lack technical expertise (Huque, )—we will return to this point in the subsequent paragraphs. …”

“…As hinted above, there is an imbalance in the political power these two groups exercise: the specialists/professionals are sidelined by the generalist administrators (Haque et al, , p. 172; Huque & Rahman, ). Turning to the stage of policy implementation, when a generalist is appointed director of a project, this person is very likely to have knowledge in procedural matters, but will probably lack technical or specialized knowledge (Huque, ). Yet effective policy implementation—that is, the attainment of the intended policy outcomes and/or impacts—crucially depends on technical or specialist knowledge (see e.g., Ahmed et al, ).…”

“…As explained in the previous section, the state bureaucracy in Bangladesh is remarkably autonomous (see e.g., Q. Alam & Teicher, ; Ahmed et al, ; Huque, ; Huque & Rahman, ; Jamil & Haque, ; Zafarullah, ). Following Biesbroek and others (), autonomous bureaucracies tend to keep social actors more at an arm’s length and find hierarchical styles of policy making and implementation preferable.…”

“…It possesses centralized and rigid administrative structures, and is marked by a general administrative elitism in the upper echelons of bureaucracy and political patronage at multiple states of affairs. The system favors core civil service and generalist administrators over line ministries and departments with specialist/professional administrators (Ahmed, Greenleaf, & Sacks, ; Q. Alam & Teicher, ; Huque, ; Huque & Rahman, ; Jamil & Haque, ; Zafarullah, ). Most attempts to reform state bureaucracy in Bangladesh have failed (Zafarullah, ).…”