BANGLADESH INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AND STRATEGIC STUDIES

CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS IN DEMOCRACY: BANGLADESH PERSPECTIVE

Author: Chowdhury Hasan Sarwardy, Mahmud Hussain

DOI Link: https://www.doi.org/10.56888/BIISSj2016v37n1a1

ABSTRACT

Civil-Military relations are an age-old phenomenon. It involves a multiplicity of relationship between civilian authorities and military institutions of a country. Since the 20th century, civil-military relations have been developing as an important area of study to understand the interactions between the two entities. Many scholars like Samuel P. Huntington and Morris Janowitz have tried to analyse civil-military relations in the context of political approaches and social fabrics of a country. The theoretical developments to understand civil-military relations are also noteworthy. The Post-Modernist Theory as well as the Democratic Peace Theory is relevant to understand civil-military relations in the context of contemporary developments. In modern democratic societies, civil-military relations are considered as a sine qua non for proper functioning of democratic institutions where military establishment remains under the full control of civilian authority and contributes in aid to civilian administration when necessary. However, the experiences of civil-military relations are not same in all the countries. Developing an effective civil-military relation still remains a challenge for many countries. Since independence in 1971, Bangladesh has experienced a lot of challenges to develop an effective framework in this regard. In this backdrop, the present paper is an endeavour to understand civil-military relations in the context of democracy as well as to make an assessment regarding the civil-military relations in Bangladesh. The findings of the paper are that the idea of civil-military relations is still evolving and to maintain a democratic order, a country needs to develop cohesive relations between civilian authority and military administration. Bangladesh has achieved a lot in the civil-military relations, but still faces a number of challenges in this regard. The country needs to address such challenges to ensure effective democratic functioning of the country.