Ali Riaz is a distinguished professor of political science at Illinois State University in the USA, a non-resident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, and the President of the American Institute of Bangladesh (AIBS). He has served as the chair of Bangladesh’s Constitution Reform Commission and currently is serving as the vice chair of the National Consensus Commission. His recent publications include the acclaimed book, More Than Meets the Eye, published by the UPL, Pathways of Autocratization: The Tumultuous Journey of Bangladeshi Politics (2023) and a co-authored book, How Autocrats Rise: Sequences of Democratic Backsliding (2023).