Collective Resistance against Authoritarian Government in Bangladesh: Why do the left, center-left, and far-right student political wings integrate and form a coalition in the July uprising movement?

Bangladesh’s July 2024 mass, student-led uprising marked a watershed moment in the country’s political history, with students protesting the Awami League government. What rendered this uprising theoretically remarkable was not merely its scale, but its ideological composition: student political wings rooted in left, center-left, and Islamist far-right traditions, ordinarily antagonistic, converged into a unified coalition to challenge state repression. This cross-ideological solidarity raises fundamental questions about the conditions under which ideologically divergent actors suspend their differences to pursue collective resistance, a phenomenon that existing literature on authoritarian politics and social movements has only partially addressed. This study examines the political dynamics that enabled the formation of this cross-ideological student coalition during the July uprising. To that, we address the following research questions: (1) What structural and conjunctural conditions enabled the integration of left, center-left, and far-right student political wings into a unified resistance front? (2) How did shared grievances override deep-seated ideological cleavages? (3) What organizational and discursive mechanisms facilitated coalition cohesion during the movement? Methodologically, this study employs data source triangulation grounded in interpretive political analysis. Primary data are generated through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with student activists affiliated with left, center-left, and far-right student political wings. These interviews are complemented by qualitative content analysis of secondary sources. Using political sociology and socio-legal theory, cross-ideological student coalitions can be theorized through political opportunity, hegemony, and discursive articulation. As Sidney Tarrow argues, contentious action intensifies when “political opportunities” expand or close, particularly under repression (Tarrow, 2011). Charles Tilly similarly links regime constraints to shifts in repertoires of contention (Tilly, 2006). Moreover, Ernesto Laclau explains temporary unity through “chains of equivalence,” whereby heterogeneous demands converge against a common adversary (Laclau, 2005). In Gramsci’s terms, crises of authority produce unstable hegemonic formations enabling provisional “historic blocs” (Gramsci, 1971). Comparative research on anti-austerity and anti-authoritarian mobilizations demonstrates similar cross-ideological tactical alignments (Della Porta, 2015; Roberts, 2014). The paper argues that the convergence of disparate student factions was principally driven by three intersecting forces: the perceived closure of legitimate political opportunity structures under authoritarianism, a unifying “anti-fascist” discursive frame that neutralized ideological boundaries, and decentralized, leaderless coordination enabled by digital platforms that prevented any single faction from dominating the coalition’s identity. This research contributes to comparative authoritarian politics and social movement studies by offering a grounded, empirical account of cross-ideological coalition formation in the context of collective resistance in the Global South.