Economic Diplomacy of Bangladesh: Serving the Ruling Elite’s Interest

This article revisits the evolutionary trajectory of economic diplomacy practices in Bangladesh, arranged into three distinct periods. Strengthening economic diplomacy has emerged as an important means for Bangladesh to tackle the upcoming challenges stemming from its graduation from the least developed countries (LDCs) and to smooth its process of transition from an LDC to a developing country. Existing literature demonstrates the role of state and non-state actors in a country’s economic diplomacy decision-making process. For many scholars, economic diplomacy is primarily directed at boosting inter-state economic relations practised by elite government officials; on the other hand, many scholars recognise the increasing participation of non-state actors (i.e., multinational firms, NGOs, think tanks, business groups, etc.) in fostering economic diplomacy practices of a country. However, the article argues that neither the statist analysis nor the non-state-centric approach is adequate to illustrate Bangladesh’s economic diplomacy practices. Rather, in Bangladesh, economic diplomacy has always served as the regime survival strategy for Bangladesh’s ruling elites. Whereas the period of foreign aid dependence demonstrates how the ruling elites of Bangladesh were forced to pursue economic diplomacy with the Western donors through agreeing to the creation of a Paris-based consortium named Bangladesh Aid Group to keep themselves in power, the period of the dominance of international financial institutions shows how the radical change of the ruling elites in 1975 transformed the nature of economic diplomacy of Bangladesh, in which the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund became the mentors of the economic diplomacy regime of Bangladesh by promoting their concepts of privatisation, trade liberalisation and others.