David Easton's Political System Model to Understand Policy Process: An Analysis of VGD Programme in Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper tends to analyse the Vulnerable Group Development (VGD) programme, a material policy of the Government of Bangladesh that exclusively targets the poorest rural women, in terms of David Easton's political system model. This paper focuses on the environments that created demands for the origin and development of the VGD programme – a targeted social safety net policy and its support for sustaining the programme for about 40 years based on review of literatures. The analysis reveals that the political parties, the donor community and partner non-governmental organisations NGOs have been found to be the influential actors. Vulnerability of women after the Liberation of War of 1971 and famine of 1974, the motive to gain political legitimacy by the incumbent government, donor's pressure for economic reform, food insecurity, emergence of ‘women-in-development'concept in the development discourse and social ideology and norms are the major influential factors for raising the demands and supports for the programme. VGD programme has modifying effects on society, and the feedback played an important role in creating suitable environment for future policy decisions and sustainability of the programme. This paper, however, ignores the conversion part of the system that translates input into output.