Electoral Violence in Bangladesh

Since the introduction of democracy and multiparty politics in the early 1990s, most developing and third world countries have witnessed a high level of electoral violence. Most countries are trying to eradicate this violence by finding the reasons behind it. The Republic of Bangladesh has been able to conduct and manage at least ten parliamentary elections. These elections have been often considered electoral violent and are generally not measured as being free and fair. Though electoral violence has now become a very common topic in Bangladeshi politics, it is interesting to note that the 2008 parliamentary election was indeed free of the outliers of violence. This article tries to find the reason behind 2008¿s national election as being violent free. In order to provide a broad explanation of the presence of electoral violence, we therefore compared two national elections in 2001 and 2008. It was reported that the 2001 election was not free from violence and while the 2008 election was considered as violence free.