The great security debate and the securitisation approach

The debate around the concept of security and what it should mean took centre-stage in IR at the end of the Cold War. The key argument has been that for too long the field has been dominated by a traditional, state and military-centric understanding of security. Consequently, a number of conceptualisations have emerged around the need to ‘broaden’ and ‘deepen’ the meaning of security to include other referent objects (ranging from the individual, communities and societies to the environment and economy) from military as well as non-military threats.Footnote ⁵

In recent years, the securitisation approach has emerged as one of the most systemic and comprehensive attempts to unpack the logic of security and to reveal its constitutive function. As mentioned earlier, the Copenhagen School is best represented by Buzan and Wæver, who are together the prime developers of the concept of societal security and the securitisation framework.Footnote ⁶ The Copenhagen School insists that security must be viewed in its dual form, for instance, state security and societal security.Footnote ⁷ While the former is concerned with sovereignty, the latter is ‘about identity, the self-conception of communities and of individuals identifying themselves as members of a community’.Footnote ⁸ The authors argue that while ‘[international] security is about survival […] “social security” concerns questions of “entitlement and social justice”’.Footnote ⁹ Therefore, societal security ‘refers to the level of collective identities and action taken to defend such ‘we identities’.Footnote ¹⁰ For the Copenhagen school, threats to societal security are those which threaten society as a collective, rather than ‘threats primarily to individuals (threats in society); only if they threaten the breakdown of society do they become societal security issues’Footnote ¹¹ Embedded within these conceptualisations is the idea that security is ‘not only about survival, it is, as a general rule, about collective survival …’Footnote ¹²

The securitisation framework developed alongside this notion of societal security. The Copenhagen School proposes that ‘securitisation studies aims to gain an increasingly precise understanding of who securitises, on what issues (threats), for whom … why, with what results, and, not least, under what conditions […]’Footnote ¹³ The authors adopt a sectoral approach by breaking the analysis down into military, political, economic, societal and environmental sectors. They contend that:

While the speech act is central to the securitisation framework, its authors clarify that the discursive act of presenting something as an existential threat to a referent object does not in itself constitute a securitisation. This is simply a ‘securitising move’, and actual securitisation requires the acceptanceFootnote ¹⁵ of this move, and thereby the status of a threat as existential to a referent object, by an audience. The ‘securitising actor’ is the one who actually carries out the speech act. Although this may be an individual, he or she usually represents a larger collective which ultimately decides on the action which needs to be taken.Footnote ¹⁶ The securitisation framework in principle accepts non-state referent objects, though it suggests that ‘middle scale limited collectives’ such as states, nations and civilizations are more open to securitisation.Footnote ¹⁷

Key critiques

Before investigating the securitisation framework's ability to perceive securitising moves made by non-state actors in a context such as Bangladesh, it is useful to briefly consider its key critiques. The Copenhagen School has been criticized mainly on its theorizing around the subjectivity versus objectivity of threats,Footnote ¹⁸ its treatment of ‘society’ and ‘identity’,Footnote ¹⁹ and the concept of audience and the analyst's roleFootnote ²⁰ from within the ‘critical’ group of theorists as well as from traditional security analysts.

Knudsen has pointed out the Copenhagen School only considers threats as fears expressed by actors, ‘or from what happens when the fears of individuals turn to paranoid political action’, thereby abandoning the idea of a real threat existing ‘out there’ in favour of threats as socio-politically constructed entities.Footnote ²¹ He argues that with this move, the authors eliminate the possibility of being able to identify a threat which may exist independently outside the securitisation process, posing a real and imminent danger to the survival of a referent object.Footnote ²² Balzacq supports this argument, and suggests that ‘language does not construct reality; at best, it shapes our perception of it’.Footnote ²³

Gromes and Bonacker point out that the Copenhagen School may respond to this criticism by claiming ‘their approach is about how political units construct and process threats. Whether people try to protect themselves against [a real-world threat] … depends on their perception or non-perception of it’.Footnote ²⁴ It remains however that Knudsen's argument for threats to be considered ‘both in terms of perceptions and in terms of the phenomena which are perceived to be threatening’Footnote ²⁵ is compelling, particularly when it comes to analysing what may constitute a security threat in developing states. Communities living in these countries continue to suffer from existential threats which have been or are being dealt with successfully in developed countries, such as ethnic discrimination, gender-based violence, ill-planned developmental projects and so on.Footnote ²⁶ Moreover, the instance of political violence is extremely high in developing societies, leading often to severe damage to or loss of life and livelihood. It poses a real threat to certain communities, and the exclusion of this phenomenon as a threat restricts the securitisation framework from identifying a key security issue in such a context.

McSweeney has extensively critiqued the Copenhagen school's conceptualisation of society and identity. He argues that the analysts reify the two as objective entities, take for granted the existence of ‘collective identity as a social fact’ and ignore the normative nature of identities.Footnote ²⁷ For him, identity cannot exist independent of discourse, and in order to grapple with identity issues objectively, one must first acknowledge the need to interpret perceptions and claims around identity. Huysmans has also pointed out that defining societal security in terms of identity, ‘risks concretizing identity, radicalizing the issue, and legitimizing violence against migrants’.Footnote ²⁸ Buzan and Wæver have responded that McSweeney's call for the Copenhagen school to be more objective in determining identity claims while criticizing them for being too objective in their approach to collective identity is self-contradictory.Footnote ²⁹ They ultimately defend their approach by arguing that over time social practices can ‘petrify and become relatively constant elements to be reckoned with’.Footnote ³⁰ In the context of this study, the Copenhagen school's view on societal security and identity is key as the investigation focuses on the threat of misgovernance to the security of the people of Bangladesh, that is, Bangladeshi society at large. While the Copenhagen school dislikes the idea of the security of an entire population of a country as societal security,Footnote ³¹ it nonetheless argues that societal security is about collective identities. It is true that within the wider Bangladeshi society there are many communities or ‘societal units’. However, if these communities share perceptions of a threat to their collective identity as the Bangladeshi people, arising from the failings of the state itself in fulfilling its social contract with its citizens, then the limited definition of what constitutes ‘societal’ especially in relation to identity claims needs to be reconsidered.

The Copenhagen School’s reliance on the speech act has also come under critical scrutiny. Lene Hansen argues that problems of ‘security by silence’ and ‘subsuming security’ bar the framework from considering gender-based threats.Footnote ³² By the first, she means that the securitisation approach’s heavy reliance on the speech act theory presumes that it is possible to speak about a problem. Thus, it automatically overlooks incidences where it is not, and where doing so may actually have the opposite effect of further aggravating the threat in question. ‘Subsuming security’ issues are those which appear ‘when gendered security problems often involve an intimate inter-linkage between the subject’s gendered identity and other aspects of the subject’s identity, for example national and religious’.Footnote ³³ In this case, the gendered identity is subsumed by the other identities, and fails to produce ‘the kind of collective, self-contained referent object required by the Copenhagen School, and to the extent that gender is included it is mostly as an individual – and less important – security problem’.Footnote ³⁴

Michael Williams has also critiqued the Copenhagen School's reliance on the speech act as the sole means to securitise.Footnote ³⁵ According to Williams, words, images and actions are all key considerations when analysing security discourses in any socio-political context. He argues that political communication today uses a far wider platform to communicate than is allowed by mere words, and increasingly uses media images to convey key messages.Footnote ³⁶ Moreover, he questions the extent to which focusing on the speech act is helpful in analysing security in countries where not everyone has a voice in terms of representation in politics and society, and where the print medium may not be accessible to all. In the context of developing countries, these issues are particularly relevant.

This investigation focuses on the hurdles the securitisation framework faces in providing a comprehensive picture of security, particularly in developing socio-political settings such as in weak democracies or non-democratic systems of governance. These mainly revolve around the Copenhagen school's understanding of the state and society through a Western lens (which takes for granted freedom of speech and democratic institutions of governance), its lack of consideration of threats existing outside their social construction, its overemphasis on the speech act and an ambiguous approach towards the nature of the audience of a securitising move.

Because Buzan and Wæver do not tackle the nature of security itself, they are unable to make causal linkages between why certain issues raise security concerns as opposed to others, and how they come to be framed as security issues. The Copenhagen school is only interested in analysing how these concerns are raised and framed using certain rhetoric. Therefore, in their framework there is no consideration given to how the socio-political structures within which these practices take place, are created and sustained. The questions which need to be raised here are – why do certain issues raise security concerns, while others do not?Footnote ³⁷ What motivates the actors who raise these concerns? The absence of such questions focuses the analyst's attention on following a pattern of behaviour of those with social capital and political authority, and on explaining how their actions unfold within the given socio-political framework.

Buzan and Wæver's work is implicit in its assumptions that the security analysis revolves around states which are democratic in nature. It assumes that western liberal values which are the hallmark of western states and societies exist unhindered in other parts of the world without considering local socio-political contexts. For example, when writing about how to analyse the practice of security, the authors argue that ‘In a democracy, at some point it must be argued in the public sphere why a situation constitutes security and therefore can legitimately be handled differently’.Footnote ³⁸ As Riefqi Muna argues in the context of securitisation in Indonesia, when applying the securitisation framework analysts need to consider the socio-political environment within which it is taking place, that is, whether the state is democratic or not, as this has an impact on what gets securitised and what does not.Footnote ³⁹ Claire Wilkinson points out that in non-Western countries where freedom of speech is not guaranteed, authoritarian rule presides and political opposition to the regime in power is discouraged and even punished, and yet the securitisation framework overlooks these factors. In such contexts, large sections of the population may not be able to articulate ‘societal security concerns actively (censorship, imprisonment, threats) or passively (political/social disenfranchisement)’ and where existential threat perceptions may be expressed and countered by communities via migration or protest.Footnote ⁴⁰

The Copenhagen School admits that their analysis of social relations contributes ‘to the reproduction of things are they are … to the taking for granted’ of existing socio-political structures.Footnote ⁴¹ Consequently, when applied to developing countries and regions, the analysis produced is a picture of securitisations which may well have been ‘vetted’ by the power that be, and one which may not have any resonance to what some analysts claim are the ‘real situations of urgency’ in these parts of the world today. In developing countries like Bangladesh, the regimes in power often focus their securitisations on threats to their own security rather than societal security. Societies in such countries often lack the freedom of speech and scope for political opposition to the regime in power, which means they are often unable to articulate their fears without endangering their own lives.

The Copenhagen School insists that in order for a successful securitisation to take place, an audience must accept the relevant securitising move. This means a successful securitisation can take place without the actual mobilisation of emergency measures. This logic in the framework is problematic on several counts. Firstly, it places significant emphasis on the speech act of the securitising actor, focusing on what is being said, rather than on what is being done. For example, a state agency or a non-state disaster-relief organisation may argue that the threat of an approaching cyclone is a matter of security for the state or a particular community, yet neither may take any specific measures to provide the referent groups in question the necessary protection from the threat of devastation as a direct consequence of the cyclone. It therefore poses the question – should the study of security not include an analysis of how practices of security are played out in the socio-political realm? As mentioned previously, the Copenhagen School argues that securitisation studies is concerned with ‘who securitizes, on what issues (threats), for whom […] why, with what results, and, not least, under what conditions […]’Footnote ⁴² However, if it does not go beyond the speech act to consider whether or not the act led to the mobilisation of emergency measures, then this analysis is incomplete as it cannot delve into why a particular securitising move in a given context effectively led to such measures being implemented, while another did not.

Secondly, there is no clear delineation of how the analyst determines whether or not a securitising move has been accepted by an audience in the first place. The authors use the term ‘a sufficient audience’, which by itself is ambiguous.Footnote ⁴³ What are the parameters of ‘sufficient’ here, and how are they to be measured? Moreover, who constitutes this audience? Is it anyone who listens, or is it the group towards which the securitisation is targeted in order to generate a particular response from them? To take this idea further, is it in fact the group which is in control of the emergency measures? This would seem to be a logical assumption, except Buzan and Wæver propose that a securitisation is successful even without the mobilization of emergency measures, as long as it is accepted by a sufficient audience. In such a scenario, where an appeal or a series of appeals is made to treat an issue as an existential threat to a referent group but results in no concrete action in terms of measures adopted to deal with the issue, it becomes very difficult to ascertain whether or not a successful securitisation has occurred. It may be argued here that instead of looking for a formal acceptance by a target audience, the success of a securitising move could be judged by whether it as led to a general cognisance of the threat in question and acceptance of the security discourse around it. It remains however that it would still be equally difficult to establish whether a securitising move has earned cognisance without knowing who the audience in question is, and from what efforts this awareness has come about. It may well be that a community, for example, has accepted discourse around an issue as an existential threat not because of one or a series of securitising moves by one or more securitising actors, but rather based on their own experience of devastation as a consequence of the phenomenon. Moreover, the argument does little to answer the question of security ‘by whom’ and ‘with what results’.

Securitising misgovernance in Bangladesh – can the Copenhagen School perceive securitising moves by non-state actors?

Misgovernance or ‘bad’ governanceFootnote ⁴⁴ has been at the forefront of the development debate in South Asia in recent decades. The idea of misgovernance relates to, among other things, a breakdown and decay in oversights functions of the government, a weak power-participation interface, lack of institutional capacity, corruption and lack of transparency within government institutions. More recently, it has become a key concern of security analysts in the region and elsewhere.Footnote ⁴⁵ Their observations and conclusions around misgovernance as a threat to security draw upon the work of a wide variety of actors in the region, from NGOs and civil society groups to political groups, journalists, academics and local communities and societies. It is argued that misgovernance is a threat to a range of referent groups (for example, states, societies, nations, ethnic and gendered communities, as well as individuals) in regions such as South Asia, and manifests itself at all levels (that is, local, national and regional), cutting across state boundaries in its impact.

With an increasing number of voices arguing for misgovernance to be considered as a threat to societal security in Bangladesh,Footnote ⁴⁶ the question arises – is the securitisation framework able to capture attempts to securitise misgovernance by different actors in Bangladesh? This section explores briefly the meaning of misgovernance and places it in the context of being perceived as a societal threat in Bangladesh. It then analyses whether the securitisation framework can perceive attempts to raise misgovernance as a security issue by The Daily Star, New Age and The Bangladesh Today as securitising moves. It explores whether an expansion of the framework to include non-state actors as security actors and the threat of political violence as a ‘real’ concern, would make the framework more efficient in capturing the security dynamics which exist on the ground.

Contextualising misgovernance in Bangladesh

Given the lack of consensus over a single definition of governance, an ‘ideal type’Footnote ⁴⁷ model of governance is adopted for the purpose of this analysis.Footnote ⁴⁸ In the broad South Asian scenario, the ideal type model of governance considers the following issues:Footnote ⁴⁹

• Public institutions through which a government exercises its powers and functions (accountability, legitimacy and transparency)

• The authority and functioning of the judiciary

• The administrative system and culture

• The role of civil society and its relationship with the government

• Underlying socio-political dynamics which influence the functioning of the above.

According to Rehman Sobhan, ‘the character of the Bangladesh state is a society which is not so much over or misgoverned but is barely governed at all’.Footnote ⁵⁰ Since the end of colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent, the country has been struggling with endemic political instability.Footnote ⁵¹ Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan in 1971. With only four years as a young parliamentary democracy, it succumbed to military rule via a coup in 1975, which brought General Ziaur Rahman to power. Thus, principles of democratic governance were cast aside well before they had any real chance of flourishing and becoming entrenched in Bangladesh’s state institutions and agencies, and within its political culture.

Military rule lasted 15 years in Bangladesh, and ended in December 1990 following a mass political campaign backed by the public. The campaign was a manifestation of Bangladeshi society’s anger and resentment of the corrupt military regime, and was characterised by general strikes, public rallies, student protests and a breakdown in the law and order situation in the country.Footnote ⁵²

The turn of events signified the power of the two main political parties of Bangladesh, the Awami League (led by Sheikh Hasina) and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP, led by Begum Khaleda Zia) who were crucial in spearheading the campaign. By this time however, the culture of corrupt governance and criminal politics had become too far entrenched in Bangladeshi politics, and it is under consecutive regimes led by these two parties in turn since 1990 that Bangladesh fell even deeper into the abyss of misgovernance. The huge mistrust between the two parties and its leaders has led to Parliament being suspended on many occasions as the opposition party staged walkouts. Bangladesh's unique caretaker administration system is a reflection of the deep rifts and levels of mistrust which exist amongst the country's main political parties and towards them within the public. The system, adopted in 1996, allows the incumbent government to hand over power to a non-party caretaker government (CTG) while elections take place.Footnote ⁵³ While the system worked during elections in 1996 and again in 2001, it failed to succeed a third time as Bangladesh succumbed to political upheaval at the heels of violent demonstrations and protests by opposition parties accusing the incumbent government of corruption and demanding reforms for elections due in January 2007.Footnote ⁵⁴ The army was deployed onto the streets,Footnote ⁵⁵and the CTG declared a state of emergency in the country.Footnote ⁵⁶ It was not until almost two years later in December 2008 that the CTG lifted the state of emergency to allow elections to take place at the end of the month.Footnote ⁵⁷ The verdict was a landslide victory for an alliance led by Hasina, making her the Prime Minister for a second time.Footnote ⁵⁸ Typical to Bangladeshi electoral politics, the losing alliance led by the BNP's Zia rejected the results immediately, and filed a complaint with the Election Commission accusing the winners of ballot-rigging and forgery at 220 ballot stations.Footnote ⁵⁹ By early January 2009 however, the opposition had agreed to give the new Hasina administration a chance to govern the country and pledged its support to the government.Footnote ⁶⁰ It remains to be seen how long this uneasy truce lasts in a deeply divided electorate where corruption and violence have proved to be lasting political legacies.

Key problems of misgovernance in Bangladesh

A growing number of voices in Bangladesh and the wider region are now focusing on misgovernance particularly in the form of weak government institutions, corruption and a politicised judiciary as the core causes of insecurity (see Table. 1).Footnote ⁶¹ According to Mohsin, Bangladesh today is ‘one of the most violent and polarised societies in South Asia’ as a direct consequence of the state's failure to provide its people with basic services, endemic corruption and ‘appropriation of State resources by the regimes in power and the opposition, weak political institutions, lack of democratic spirit in the party in power and in the Opposition’.Footnote ⁶²

Table. 1.

Threats and referent groups in relation to misgovernance

The Islamisation of politics in Bangladesh began soon after the country adopted its constitution after independence in 1972.Footnote ⁶³ ‘A highly nationalist and undemocratic document’, the constitution emphasised ‘Bangali nationalism’ which was premised on the priority of the Bangali language and culture over all others within the borders of the newly-found state.Footnote ⁶⁴ This was done at the cost of leaving no space whatsoever for other ethnic nations – numbering around 40 groups – which exist within these boundaries, thus laying the ground for institutional ethnic discrimination.

In 1977, General Ziaur Rahman amended the constitution to emphasise and promote the Islamic identity of the majority of Bangladeshis.Footnote ⁶⁵ He removed the word ‘secularism’ as well as an article which banned communal politics, and inserted Islamic references at the beginning of the constitution.Footnote ⁶⁶ While this appealed to the Muslim majority, around 85 per cent of the Bangladeshi population,Footnote ⁶⁷ it effectively made the Bangali Hindus, the Chakmas and other ethnic groups into minorities in the country.Footnote ⁶⁸ Historically, these ethnic minorities have been widely discriminated against through practices such as prejudiced land laws, lack of representation in Parliament, not being allowed to vote or having their names taken off electoral lists. The insurgency in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in the south-west of the country since the 1970s is a key example where such ‘ethnocultural factors [and] … faulty nation-building’ combined with ‘strategies undertaken by past and present governments, and inappropriate development projects’ resulted in a violent crisis.Footnote ⁶⁹ Although the insurgency ended when a peace treaty was signed between the government and the insurgents in 1997, the local hill people of CHT continue to be largely administered by the army, which is accused of widespread human rights violations. Refugees returning to CHT have been unable to reclaim land which was theirs, and the indigenous people continue to suffer discrimination and physical attacks from the Bangali community which has been systematically settled into the area over the decades.Footnote ⁷⁰

Despite having around 100 political parties, politics in Bangladesh has been dominated by its two main political parties, the BNP and the Awami League. Over the years, domestic politics became increasingly polarised around the leaders of these parties rather than ideologies, fuelled by the intense contempt and dislike each had for the other.Footnote ⁷¹ Forming government soon became a ‘winner takes all’ situation, and as one party would come to power, the other would take its place in opposition with the sole purpose of bringing the government down.Footnote ⁷² Money and muscle power became increasingly the tools to winning elections, yielding a corrupt and power-obsessed political and governance climate. Consequently, political violence has become a common form not only for those in power to flex their muscles and for the opposition to create trouble for the government, but also for the public to express grievances and demand attention from those who rule.

According to Subhash Kashyap, a key problem of governance in Bangladesh has been ‘the inability to develop sustainable representative institutions that can provide a democratic and yet reasonable stable government’. With every government has come the breaking down of institutions to rebuild them to suit the political needs of the new regime.Footnote ⁷³ Additionally, recurring governments have done little to change the corrupt nature of these institutions as it has provided them with means to further their own interests and agendas. The judiciary in Bangladesh has historically been exceptionally weak and unable to function as a non-partisan institution,Footnote ⁷⁴ and years of corrupt governance have led to it being highly politicised.Footnote ⁷⁵

In its 2005 report, German watchdog Transparency International ranked Bangladesh as the world's most corrupt country for the firth consecutive year.Footnote ⁷⁶ Within Bangladesh, it is widely acknowledged that corruption is rife and ‘its roots lie deep in bureaucratic, business and political institutions’.Footnote ⁷⁷ Bangladesh receives large amounts of international aid towards development and poverty-eradicating programmes annually. However, 30 per cent of this aid is skimmed off by ‘the country's politicians, bureaucrats, commission agents, consultants and construction contractors … The poor, who are the main target group of the aid, get only 25 per cent of the funds’.Footnote ⁷⁸ The electoral process in Bangladesh is also riddled with corruption, influenced ‘not by the free will of the people, but by the manipulation of elections through money and muscle’.Footnote ⁷⁹ Over half the seats in Parliament are occupied by business peopleFootnote ⁸⁰ in a country where half the population lives below the poverty line, creating a glaring case of lack of representation. Moreover, although ethnic and religious minorities have faced added challenges to the right to cast their votes, those who were critics and opponents of the ruling parties also faced harassment and impediments to exercising their franchise.Footnote ⁸¹ While corruption in Bangladesh affects the most vulnerable, that is, those individuals and groups who are poor and do not have adequate political representation in the government,Footnote ⁸² it is cited as a national problem and is not limited to the individual level.Footnote ⁸³

The Daily Star, New Age and The Bangladesh Today as securitising actors

Despite having suffered from the phenomenon of misgovernance for decades, Bangladesh has had an active media which has flourished over the last few decades. It has been key in offering an outlet for civil society to express its grievances and challenge the state in its actions. It played a significant part in the mass movement of the people and the opposition in 1990 which brought down Bangladesh's last military ruler, General Ershad. Today, it continues to be bold and vigorous in its attempts to create public awareness and act as a forum for important debates around the country’s future.Footnote ⁸⁴

Before examining the role of The Daily Star, New Age and The Bangladesh Today as securitising actors around the issue of misgovernance, it is important to establish what kind of power a non-state actor such as a newspaper may hold in Bangladeshi society. This is because the securitisation framework argues that a key facilitating condition for a successful securitisation is the ‘social capital of the enunciator … who must be in a position of authority, although this should not be defined as official authority’.Footnote ⁸⁵

Colin Hay has suggested that power should be understood as both direct and indirect power.Footnote ⁸⁶ In this formulation, direct power refers to power as ‘conduct-shaping’, which is ‘immediate, visible and behavioural, and is manifest in such practices as physical and psychological coercion, persuasion or blackmail’. Alternatively, indirect power refers to power which is ‘context-shaping’, and where power is ‘mediated by, and instantiated in, structures … Indirect power is evidenced in the capacity of a government, say, to pass legislation’.Footnote ⁸⁷ Political communication analysts insist it is this form of power which the media can be most identified with.Footnote ⁸⁸ For newspapers, a key means to influence public opinion is through ‘editorials’ which are projections of their own political identity and perspectives on current affairs. Editorials also ‘[seek] to articulate what the newspaper's editors believe to be the collective voice of its readers’. Thus, ‘newspapers use their power as information disseminators to influence the policy-making environment; to move their readers in certain directions if they can, and to put pressure on decision-makers in government’.Footnote ⁸⁹

This context is useful in ascertaining the power a newspaper may have in Bangladesh's socio-political setting. The Daily Star, New Age, and The Bangladesh Today are three of the most popular and influential English-language daily newspaper in Bangladesh. According to a number of Bangladeshi journalists, academics and policy analysts both at home and abroad, they are also among the best-informed. The Daily Star's sister publication in Bangla, called Prothom Alo (meaning ‘first light’) is also the number one vernacular daily in the country. The editorials in The Daily Star are therefore considered a useful source of information and analyses with insights into the current socio-political mood in Bangladesh.Footnote ⁹⁰ Over the last few years, the newspaper has consistently reported on activities in the academic and civil-society spheres around the notion of good governance and human security.Footnote ⁹¹ Similarly, New Age and The Bangladesh Today are known as newspapers with their fingers firmly on the pulse of Bangladeshi politics and society, and are reputed as well-informed and influential press.

The ideas embedded within the concepts of misgovernance, state, societal and human security, and the links between them have been underlying themes in editorials published in all these three publications in recent years. Beginning with an examination of recent editorials in The Daily Star, the newspaper's assistant editor Zafar Sobhan has written a series of editorials in the last few years which carry a consistent underlying message of misgovernance (with all its aspects of corruption, a weak judiciary and government institutions, and criminal and violent politics) being a key cause of insecurity for Bangladeshi society.

On 25 February 2005, for example, Sobhan's column ‘Straight Talk’ focused on the socio-political situation in the currently in light of the events of preceding months.Footnote ⁹² In the editorial, he argues:

Sobhan makes a direct links between recent terrorist attacks in Bangladesh and an unravelling of the democratic process in the country. He suggests that the collapse of ‘meaningful participatory democracy’ in Bangladesh has become a key threat to the security of the Bangladeshi state and society:

Thus, Sobhan clearly frames the deteriorating state of governance and democracy in the country as a threat to society as well as the state, as exemplified by the bomb blasts which rocked the country in August 2004.Footnote ⁹⁵ He cites a lack of freedom from fear as both a cause as well as a fall-out of this breakdown in meaningful participatory democracy in Bangladesh.

More recently, Sobhan wrote an editorial titled ‘Freedom from Fear’ in the same column in The Daily Star.Footnote ⁹⁶ At the time the article was published, the most recent state of emergency was four months old, and a CTG was in place. The editorial focused specifically on the state of governance in Bangladesh in previous decades and what kind of security Bangladeshis should expect and demand from their government in the coming times. In his own answer to the question, he related:

Here, Sobhan once again implies a direct link between governance institutions and the way they operate and the physical (and psychological) security of the people. He continues further to argue that ‘freedom from fear’ is the most crucial freedoms a society can have. He frames his argument around the importance of freedom from fear not just in terms of fear of physical harm or death from violent conflict, but also in terms of fear from the threat of being persecuted unjustly, from the threat of a corrupt policing institution and from the threat of criminal politics. Sobhan's editorials have evoked strong responses from readers, some of which translated into letters to the editor, while the rest were received in other communications to Sobhan directly and indirectly.Footnote ⁹⁸

Aspects of misgovernance or the phenomenon itself as a security challenge facing the Bangladeshi state and society also crop up frequently in recent editorials in the New Age.Footnote ⁹⁹ In a January 2005 editorial, for example, on ‘People's freedoms and development in Bangladesh’, Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad highlights that ‘Governance in Bangladesh remains extremely poor, characterized by pervasive corruption, wastefulness, bureaucratic procrastination, lack of coordination, favouritism, and politically motivated decisions’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ This has led to little or no transparency and accountability, and ‘ … the country is being run by a system which may be best described as ‘democratic autocracy’ or ‘autocratic democracy’… excluding the people at large’. Ahmad concludes by asking ‘how to ensure that freedoms are actually enjoyed by the people of Bangladesh, whose unfreedoms and adversities are overwhelming … ’Footnote ¹⁰¹ While Ahmed does not make an explicit link between security and misgovernance, he indicated that his editorial is inspired by Amartya Sen, co-Chair of the Commission on Human Security, and his linking of human security with freedoms such as freedom from want and freedom from fear.Footnote ¹⁰²

Another example is ‘Democracy and state security’, an uncredited editorial on 28 January 2007 commenting on a report on human development in South Asia.Footnote ¹⁰³ The writer argues that in the context of Bangladesh (as in other developing countries), ‘injustice and disempowerment are the cause of conflict as much as its effect’.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ The author urges that Bangladeshi society and state need to take the cited report, which points to aspects of misgovernance as key causes of conflict and economic and political instability in South Asian states, as a warning. The editorial insists that in the context of Bangladesh, ‘democracy with its electivity must be restored within the shortest possible time preparatory to making democracy more mature, inclusive and sensitised’. This key task is described as a ‘human need, security need as well’.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

Thus, writing only days after a state of emergency was imposed in Bangladesh in January 2007, the author urgently calls for dealing with misgovernance issues such as lack of representation, corruption and criminal politics through a democratic system which is inclusive, representative and corruption-free for the security of Bangladeshi state as well as society.

On the first anniversary of this state of emergency, The Bangladesh Today published an editorial titled ‘Where is the emergency leading us?’Footnote ¹⁰⁶ In the article, the writer accuses the interim CTG of plunging the country further into socio-political chaos since its inception. He argues that key elements within Bangladesh society, including the majority of the ‘media, educationists, economists and the common citizenry’ are of the opinion that the CTG has not only failed to deliver a safe and conducive environment for holding free and fair elections, ‘it has in fact aggravated and accelerated the breakdown of our already fragile economic and social systems’. In dramatic language, he creates a link between the CTG's failings and the danger of socio-political tensions in the country exploding into political violence:

Thus, the author warns that unless the CTG improves its performance to provide the Bangladeshi people the level and quality of governance they so desperately require, the country and society at large face the stark threat of political violence erupting on its streets, with the potential to destroy lives and property on a wide scale.