Establishing political impact assessment: revisiting contemporary approaches with Bangladesh cases

Abstract

Despite the enormous significance of differentiated interests and power relations among the stakeholders in development interventions, political impact does not receive adequate attention and space in existing environmental impact assessment and social impact assessment frameworks. The goal of political impact assessment is to ensure democratization, participation, equity; human rights and understand the marginalization process, conflict and cooperation. Inadequate focus on political impacts like participation, marginalization and democratization could have severe impacts like increasing vulnerability and inequality. Using qualitative approaches, this study demonstrates that political impacts like lack of participation, democratization, access to service delivery and violation of human rights created and is predicted to create marginalization in case of Jamuna Bridge and Padma Bridge in Bangladesh. The paper argues that political impacts needs to be emphasized and assessed separately for facilitating more equitable distribution of benefits of infrastructure project and mitigating marginalization of individuals and communities.