The image that lingers from the winter of 2010 in the Arab world, is not a speech or a slogan. It is a young man standing alone in a provincial Tunisian town, pushed to the edge by humiliation so ordinary it barely registered in official reports. The man, Mohamed Bouazizi, was not a politician. He was a street vendor. On December 17, 2010, after repeated confrontations with local authorities over permits and harassment, he set himself on fire. His act did not topple a government overnight. But it pierced something deeper: the idea that indignity could be absorbed forever without consequence.

More than a decade later, another image circulates in a different geography. Abu Sayed, a young student in Bangladesh, stands amid protest and confrontation during the 2024 quota reform movement. His death in Rangpur became a flashpoint in a country already debating fairness, access, and the corrupt restrictions that govern opportunity. The contexts are not identical. The systems are not comparable in a simple way. Yet the emotional grammar of the two images is strikingly similar: a sense that the powers that be, must answer, not only administratively, but also morally.

Bouazizi’s act in Tunisia was born of a sense that everyday dignity had been denied. Abu Sayed’s image in Bangladesh resonated because it suggested a similar demand: systems be accountable to the lives they shape. The Arab Spring’s long aftermath shows that moments of confrontation are only prologues. The real story unfolds in committee rooms, court rulings, hiring practices, budget allocations, and the quiet routines of statecraft.

It is tempting to draw dramatic parallels between the Arab Spring and contemporary South Asia, especially as Bangladesh is, at the time of writing, holding the much-anticipated parliamentary elections. That temptation should be resisted. Bangladesh is not Tunisia, nor any of the other states that experienced upheaval after 2011. Its history, its bureaucratic continuity, its social fabric, and its development trajectory differ in important ways. Comparison is useful, but need not be a prophecy. It can instead be a cautionary tale, and lessons to learn. The Arab Spring is pertinent not because it predicts Bangladesh’s future, but because it clarifies what happens when reform is postponed until pressure becomes rupture.

The most misunderstood lesson of the Arab Springs is that uprisings were decisive moments. They are not. They are openings. What determines the trajectory of a country is what follows: how institutions respond, how elites negotiate, how power is redistributed or re-concentrated, and whether economic expectations are met or deferred yet again.

In several Arab countries, long-serving leaders fell quickly. Yet institutional reform lagged behind political change. Electoral systems were redesigned, then contested. Political parties multiplied, then fragmented. Courts were invoked, then questioned. Security institutions recalibrated their loyalties. In some cases, new leadership emerged, promising stability after chaos. In others, fragmentation deepened into prolonged conflict. The common thread was not ideology. It was institutional fragility. Bangladesh’s lesson begins here. 

Political transition — whether through election, reform, or generational change — cannot be reduced to who occupies the executive office. The deeper question is whether the rules of governance are strengthened or hollowed out. Judicial independence, bureaucratic professionalism, electoral credibility, and parliamentary function are not abstract virtues. They are shock absorbers. Without them, even minor political tremors become existential crises.

Another lesson from the Arab Spring is economic, not merely political. The uprisings were frequently narrated as democratic awakenings. But it’s important to note that the protests were against unemployment, rising food prices, stalled mobility, and corruption that felt both systemic and intimate. Young people with degrees found doors closed. Small business owners faced arbitrary enforcement. Aspirations outpaced opportunity. 

Bangladesh’s development story over the past decades has been one of genuine achievement, but also of widespread corruption. The nation faces youth underemployment, brain drain, credential inflation, concentrated export dependency, and the perception that access to opportunity is uneven. The Arab Spring reminds us that economic frustration does not remain neatly contained within economic categories. It becomes political energy.

The state can respond to such energy in different ways. It can widen opportunity, clarify rules, and make mobility feel attainable. Or it can rely primarily on administrative control and security logic. The comparative record suggests that the former builds resilience; the latter may restore order on the surface level, while deepening underlying grievances.

There is also a subtler lesson, one that speaks directly to any incoming government in Bangladesh. The moment of victory carries its own risks. When a political force wins after a period of polarisation or protest, it often interprets that victory as a mandate for consolidation. Consolidation is natural. But it can quietly mutate into insulation.

In the years following the fall of long-standing leaders in parts of the Arab world, governance in some cases narrowed rather than widened. Decision-making moved into smaller circles. Loyalty can become a prized currency. Independent voices — whether in media, civil society, or bureaucracy — were seen less as feedback mechanisms and more as potential threats. This was not always only the product of malice. Often it was the product of fear: fear of instability, fear of reversal, fear of betrayal and ultimately, the fear of losing power. Yet the outcome was similar. Institutions that might have corrected policy, for the better, instead became echo chambers.

The risk for Bangladesh is not that it will replicate any particular foreign trajectory or its past trajectory either. It is that any new governing party, flush with electoral momentum, might mistake applause for consent and loyalty for competence. Governing through a shrinking circle can feel efficient. It reduces friction. It produces coherence. But it also reduces information, and it increases the chances of corruption by promoting loyalty over governance. When information narrows, error compounds.

The Arab Spring’s aftermath demonstrates that systems become brittle not only because they repress dissent, but because they stop hearing it. Polarisation, too, proved corrosive. In several post-2011 contexts, politics hardened into existential rivalry. Compromise was framed as betrayal. Opposition was framed as sabotage. Winner-take-all logic turned elections into survival contests. In such an environment, losing parties had little incentive to trust institutions, and winning parties had little incentive to restrain themselves from reverting to past ways of governing.

Bangladesh is no stranger to adversarial politics. Its democratic culture has long been intense and competitive. The lesson from elsewhere is not to dilute competition, but to structure it. A stable system allows opposing voices and criticism space without equating it with disloyalty. It recognises that today’s majority may be tomorrow’s minority, and builds rules accordingly. 

Another dimension often overlooked in dramatic retellings of the Arab Spring is external leverage. Where internal cohesion weakened, outside actors found openings. Geopolitical rivalries layered themselves onto domestic divisions. Bangladesh’s strategic context is different, but it occupies a region of growing global interest. Internal legitimacy strengthens external autonomy. Weak institutions invite pressure from outside. 

What, then, should the next governing party in Bangladesh keep in mind?

First, legitimacy must be cultivated beyond the ballot. Transparent procedures, credible oversight, and visible fairness in appointments and administration create confidence that outlives electoral cycles. Second, institutions should be strengthened even when they constrain the executive. It is tempting to defer reform in favour of short-term control. Yet durable power rests on predictable rules, not discretionary authority. Third, economic reform must be treated as political reform. Expanding youth employment pathways, clarifying recruitment systems, and reducing perceptions of favouritism and nepotism are not merely developmental goals. They are stablising mechanisms. Fourth, dissent should be understood as diagnostic rather than purely disruptive. Societies that absorb criticism without collapsing are societies that adapt.

Finally, governance should resist the allure of the closed circle. Diverse counsel is not a threat to authority; it is insurance against political miscalculation and ruptured governance. Bangladesh does not need another upheaval to learn these lessons. The people of the nation, and the next party in power can study them at a distance. The Arab Spring is no longer breaking news. It is a case study — one that demonstrates both the power of collective action and the peril of unprepared transition.

In the end, the choice facing any incoming government is not whether to be strong. It is what kind of strength to cultivate. Strength rooted in fear is brittle. Strength rooted in institutions and fair economic practices is durable.The square makes history visible. Institutions decide whether that history becomes renewal or repetition.

Sarzah Yeasmin is a policy analyst working on the intersections of education and development economics. She is an alumna of Harvard University.

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