Pakistan’s major security-oriented and diplomatic gains, post the May ace performance of its forces, in stature and engagement at the regional and global level have been impressive.
Its role, spreading from Turkey across Iran, Azerbaijan and towards South Asia, with China’s abiding strategic and special ties and expanding engagement with the US, slots Pakistan as a potentially significant power on the transitional global stage.
All this notwithstanding, abiding challenges on Pakistan’s home ground remain. The recent passage of the 27th Amendment to Pakistan’s constitution is unsurprising, given the events triggered, especially since 2017, but generally in tune with Pakistan's decades-long musical chairs of power politics. Pakistan's constitution, judiciary, garrison, bureaucratic-administration systems and parliament have all been tweaked and torn apart throughout its history, depending on contextual and individual compulsions and preferences.
While Pakistan remains in a high gear in engaging on the external front, on the home front, the compelling question is how effectively our currently engineered internal structures can address governance, economic, political and security issues. Pakistan's democratic credentials have considerably weakened, the country sliding towards a constitutionally underwritten authoritarianism.
Pakistan's drift towards a homegrown quasi-viceregal system has largely run in tandem with the country's democracy. The quasi-viceregal system has been authored and leveraged by both the garrison and, to a lesser extent, also by the political class. It has greatly weakened the agency of citizens previously exercised through the ballot, with tampering by both the establishment and the politicians. Its characteristics remain centralised control, unaccountable exercise of authority, diminishing judicial independence and shrinking ballot power.
Today, the garrison command wields authority, with controversially elected governments as junior partners. The story of how Pakistan arrived at this point is, in many ways, the story of its state-building journey in which institutional orientations and individual preferences, often with some external facilitation, have played a central role.
At its birth, Pakistan faced daunting challenges — survival, unity, identity and the construction of a state across two wings divided by a hostile India. From day one, security threats from India defined the new nation’s strategic mindset. But alongside these external fears, an internal contest began to shape Pakistan's power-political DNA: who truly understood Pakistan’s interests — the political class, with its populist impulses, or the bureaucratic-military elite, with its claim to order and discipline?
This contest and subsequently partnership too – between viceregal institutions and democratic forces — became a defining feature of Pakistan’s political life. East Pakistan, more united and ideologically cohesive, pressed for representation and autonomy. Leaders such as Maulana Bhashani and others stood firm for democracy and social justice. Their struggle, met with repression and condescension from the western wing, culminated in separation — aided by India’s intervention — and the creation of Bangladesh.
Since then, Pakistan’s democratic roller coaster trajectory has included moments of hope followed by sharp descent into martial law and quasi-authoritarianism. The refusal to transfer power after the 1970 elections, the judicial murder of an elected prime minister and the repeated dismissal of civilian governments — often with the complicity of politicians — mark the milestones of this long derailment.
Today, with the emergence of a new power architecture, we confront the following enduring realities that explain why Pakistan’s democracy continues to lose ground: one, the failure of institutional building, except in the armed forces. For politicians and the garrison, institution-building has rarely been a priority. Historical power contests and personal ambition have consistently transformed governance into a game of survival driven by fear, patronage, and self-preservation. Instead of building state capacity, elected and self-installed men have undermined institutions.
Two, the civil-military relationship has oscillated between accommodation and confrontation. At no point has there been genuine institutional harmony or democratic supremacy. Suspicion has remained the default mode and Pakistan’s political system has survived by striking temporary truces rather than building enduring norms. Three, decades of political sniping have hollowed out the state’s administrative capacity. Bureaucrats, once considered the steel frame of the state, appear to have grown risk-averse and demotivated — caught between loyalty to political patrons and obedience to uniformed directives. Despite the individual keenness of individual politicians like the current prime minister, governance innovation appears to have largely been stifled in a world that now demands speed, specialisation and technological competence.
Four, as political leadership became consumed by survival, governance as a compelling priority is missing. When both the bureaucratic steel frame and the political resolve to reform weaken simultaneously, the state loses coherence — and people pay the price. Fifth, the crisis of breakdown of negotiation and transparency between the state and society. In a plural society, competing interests — ethnic, economic or regional – must be negotiated transparently and wisely. Yet Pakistan’s politics often operates through ‘calculations’ and backdoor deal and intrigue. The absence of institutional mechanisms for conflict resolution has made confrontation a permanent feature of political life. The result is a deeply centralised and brittle system where decisions are managed, not made; dissent is policed, not addressed.
Six, despite a strong intent to reverse the trend, economic drift and elite capture abides. The PM repeatedly sets up committees and issues consultation calls. In the 1960s, Pakistani technocrats and entrepreneurs were helping build institutions across Asia — from Malaysia’s development banks to South Korea’s planning commissions. Today, that era of competence feels distant. Crony capitalism and elite capture now dominate the landscape. Many genuine entrepreneurs, innovators and small business owners operate at the margins or leave the country altogether. Even some multinationals are exiting. US promises and Saudi MOUs abound. Only minimal practical action is underway.
The economy’s ecosystem is inhospitable: taxation skewed, policymaking inconsistent, weak dispute resolution mechanisms and clique patronage. Pakistan’s rich potential, its youthful population, its creativity and its geographic advantage have still to be capitalised.
Seven, search for political stability and competitive yet civilised political coexistence continues. In a fiercely contested political context, there is a compelling need for a renewed Charter of Democracy. Autonomous and enlightened thinking that embraces challenges of governance, development, population explosion and climate appears missing. Instead, the political class increasingly seeks security in the garrison connection.
Meanwhile, the power establishment gains levers — legal, administrative, parliamentary and media — ensuring that the political chessboard remains tightly managed and engineered. Pakistan now edges closer to a barracks-led model of governance, with parliament largely following rather than leading. The new emerging power structure resembles systems seen in Singapore, China, Saudi Arabia or perhaps in Egypt — centralised and controlled…yet largely without administrative efficiency, meritocracy or long-term vision visible in China and Singapore.
Finally, the question of the road ahead for Pakistan looms large in the Pakistani mind: can this path — of managed politics and military dominance — deliver progress, prosperity and stability? Can systems built on centralised control, on linear non-complex considerations, with minimal buy-in from society’s multiple interest groups, including the business community, the youth and the workforce?
Pakistan’s past proves the limits of authoritarian efficiency. Pakistan has steadily drifted from the essence of democracy, which must ensure that the people’s mandate shapes governance. Over the decades, Pakistan has experimented with engineered, guided and now hybrid democracies. Each version has strengthened the unelected while national challenges have multiplied.
The challenge is to restore the sanctity of people’s welfare, their representation, rebuild institutional balance, instil accountability, revive the confidence of local and foreign investors and revive genuine federalism. Without this, Pakistan will remain locked in its cyclical power games with the core challenge of governance largely unattended and unresolved. And ‘the place in the sun’ that Pakistan now clearly enjoys will be hard to translate into abiding gain for Pakistan's standing as a major power at home and abroad.
The writer is a senior journalist. She tweets nasimzehra and can be reached at: nasimzehragmail.com
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