How do parliamentarians contribute to poverty alleviation in Bangladesh, is the topic examined in this article. Ahmed argues that under the existing party-dominated parliamentary system, MPs have little to do at the national level and so they try to get involved in politics at the local level. The government often remains receptive to demands of the MPs for greater local level involvement for two reasons: first, it can be seen as a strategy to compensate them for their lack of genuine involvement in national policy-making; second, it is used to exert centralised political control over the locality and discourage the emergence of local autonomy. Ahmed concludes that using MPs to deepen central control has negative implications for the development of local level representative institutions and democracy deepening.
