Ali Riaz is a nonresident senior fellow on Bangladesh at the Atlantic Council. He is a political scientist and scholar of democracy, governance, and South Asian politics. He is a distinguished professor at Illinois State University and president of the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies. His research and policy work focus on democratization, political institutions, governance, violent extremism, political Islam, and democratic transitions in South Asia, with particular expertise on Bangladesh.
Riaz has held several senior public service roles in Bangladesh, including special assistant to chief adviser Muhammad Yunus in the interim government of Bangladesh. Previously, he served as vice-chair of the National Consensus Commission and chaired the Constitution Reform Commission, where he led a nine-member panel responsible for developing recommendations for constitutional reform during the country’s democratic transition.
In addition to his academic career, Riaz has served as a visiting researcher at the Varieties of Democracy Institute at the University of Gothenburg and as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Earlier in his career, he taught at universities in Bangladesh, the United Kingdom, and the United States and worked as a broadcast journalist for the BBC in London. He has also served as a consultant to international organizations and testified before the US Congress as an expert on South Asian politics and governance.
A prolific author in English and Bengali, Riaz has written and edited numerous books and scholarly publications on democracy, authoritarianism, and South Asian politics, including A Fractured Path: Challenges of Democratic Transition in Bangladesh (2025), How Autocrats Rise (2024), and Pathways of Autocratization: The Tumultuous Journey of Bangladeshi Politics (2023). He is a frequent commentator in international media on democratic governance and political developments in South Asia.