CAT: A Study on Bangladesh Compliance intensity democracy’, often expressed through electoral rituals, paved the way for the acquisition of political powers by the political, military and business elites, among others, at the very cost of democracy itself. In this context, we propose that a right-based approach to democratic governance would uplift the relevance of democracy and democratic governance in Bangladesh to a much higher legal and philosophical level by relating individual human rights of citizens to the legitimacy of the governance under a given regime. This right-based legitimacy discourse on democratic governance has the potential to rearticulate the whole understanding of democratic governance in the country and thereby pave new ways to implement this long-standing agenda. However, this will need a well-defined and well-researched legal framework within which a right-based approach can be accommodated. 65