Politicians and Bureaucrats in Upazila Administration: A Study on Conflict-Relationships

This paper attempts to analyze the conflict relationships between the local elected politicians and bureaucrats in the new commence upazila administration in Bangladesh. Finding of this study shows that, as a post-colonial structure of local government, bureaucracy is an essential and integral part of the local government in Bangladesh, especially in the Upazila administration. It is a tremendous institutional framework for central control over the local government.In many respect, local bureaucrats or officials are found to play more dominant role than elected politicians in the local council in the policy making and governance process. As a result, the ascendancy of the bureaucracy in local government policy process is often considered to be one of the important factors leading to conflicts and the marginalization of local elected politician's role. So, the imbalance that characterized conflictual relations between the politicians and bureaucrats at the national level could also be noticeable at the local level. This study has investigated the reasons and dimensions of conflict between upazila Chairman and UNO as a local elected politicians and bureaucrats. The findings of the study reveal that reasons of conflict are many. Perhaps the most important thing is that the two actors not only differ in background, training and motivation but also in their interest, role orientation and desire. On the whole, the perceptions of local government elected politicians and bureaucrats about their roles and responsibilities vis-à-vis each other are not very healthy and conducive to cooperative relations between the two.