Governmentality and corruption in Bangladesh: An analysis of strategic power

Until now corruption studies have been dominated by structuralism and Marxism, which define corruption as the 'abuse of public power' for private gain. This form of analysis is primarily concerned with the causal factors, that is, how public officials abuse law and public power to achieve a private gain in the form of bribery or kickbacks. While an analysis of abuse of public power is crucial in understanding how corruption is produced, the conventional analysis of corruption overlooks two important points. First, it does not view power as a contested concept and that there is no single version of power. Second, production of corruption is seen as proportional to the abuse of public power or breaking of law. In contrast, this thesis argues that corruption could crop up through the legitimate means of power. This form of power, which is conceptualised as a strategic form of power in Foucauldian literature is implicated in governmentality. The term corruption is used here in a broader sense than the conventional studies. It refers to activities that grossly violate the public gain objective of the government.

Foucault's concept of governmentality, which provides the theoretical framework of this study, signifies governance that is the ways a government govern things. It involves a combination of various institutions, authorities, knowledge, and expertise to problematise and address a situation of governance by constructing policies, plans and laws. Drawing on Foucault's concept of strategic power that identifies power as productive, ascending, intentional and non -subjective in relation to governmentality, this study shows that it is possible for a government to provide protection, security, financial benefits to some privileged private citizens by ignoring the public gain objective of the government.

Accordingly two cases of governmentality with reference to two particular legislations in Bangladesh known as the Indemnity Ordinance/ Act of 1975/1979 and the Father of Nation's Family Members Security Act of 2001 provide the empirical and discursive evidence of corruption for this study. Two Foucauldian methodologies, archaeology and genealogy, are used while genealogical analysis plays the prominent role.An analysis of governmentality demonstrates how strategic power has been used to construct laws for governing purpose in Bangladesh at least twice over the last twenty six years (1975-2001) implicating private gains for some citizens. From the evidences of the above two laws, this thesis shows that laws as governmentality in Bangladesh can also be seen as possible breeding grounds of corruption.

The study concludes that although the Indemnity Ordinance/Act 1975/1979 and the Father of Nation's Family Members Security Act 2001 do not show any bribery or kickbacks type of private gain, they do exhibit a subtle form of corruption within the legal boundaries of societies. That is, these two laws were constructed to achieve private gain for some private citizens of Bangladesh by undermining the vision of the Constitution of Bangladesh, which underscores and guarantees equity and social justice for all citizens of Bangladesh.