The challenge of governance

Underlying the crises of economy and internal security, is the crisis of governance.


Dr Akmal Hussain January 23, 2011

Underlying the crises of economy and internal security, is the crisis of governance. It may be helpful to examine the nature of Pakistan’s governance model in a historical perspective to clarify the challenges it faces today.

Power has historically been constituted within the framework of patron-client relationships: During the late 18th century, in the period preceding the Raj, there was a widespread peasant revolt in Punjab, in which the traditional Mughal elite was overthrown and a new class of ‘rich peasants’ established an extensive, though fragile, hold over large tracts of the province. By the 19th century, when the British faced the challenge of governance, they attempted to build a basis of political support by formalising the proprietorship over land of the zamindars, who had newly emerged from the upper-peasant strata.  By contrast, in Sindh, the British sought the support of the traditional agrarian elite. In both cases, the colonial government, created a political constituency through patron-client relationships with selected factions of the rural elite.

The most important and far-reaching form of patronage was done through the development of canal irrigation. From 1885 onwards, areas that were previously arid, and had now become arable were appropriated by the colonial government. Large parts of the newly arable land were transferred as land grants to loyal supporters in the agrarian elite of Punjab and Sindh. This constituted the greatest resource gratification to client elites in history.

The basic model of governance that emerged during the Raj was accessing state resources and generating rents through government regulations for transfer as patronage to selected individuals for building political support. In the post-independence period, the patron-client model of governance persisted under both ostensibly democratic and military regimes. The rent transfer for patronage took a variety of forms: The transfer of evacuee property on the basis of false claims in the aftermath of partition; the granting of licenses and contracts to favoured individuals in the private sector during the Ayub regime; lucrative appointments in the public sector following nationalisation under the Bhutto regime; siphoning of funds and weapons obtained from the US for use in the Afghan war, to favoured individuals; loan write-off after loans were granted by state-controlled financial institutions to selected supporters of the government during the democratic period of the 1990s, and alleged stock market manipulation by the government for enabling capital gains to selected individuals during the Musharraf-Shaukat Aziz period.

There was a two-fold problem in this post-independence model of governance. First, it shaped an economic structure that, in giving rents to the elite, became aid dependent, and in which mass poverty was endemic. Second, the price of large aid inflows during the military regimes was that Pakistan became a client state and ended up playing a role in pursuing western strategic interests: a role that was to give an increasing influence to the security establishment in Pakistan’s process of governance. This role took a particularly heavy toll on Pakistan’s security environment during the Ziaul Haq period, when state funds were used to create the social and military infrastructure to fight the ‘jihad’ against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Over a million impressionable young men were indoctrinated to hate, and trained to kill, in the name of religion. Security agencies burgeoned, as did the militant extremist groups they nurtured. At the end of the war the Mujahideen mutated into the Taliban and al Qaeda combine, which has now become the principal security threat to Pakistan.

The processes in the spheres of the economy and national security that were engendered by Pakistan’s mode of governance have now come to a head. The challenge of governance today in the economic sphere is to transit from a rent-based limited access social order focused on the elite, towards an open-access order which provides economic opportunities to all citizens. In the sphere of security the challenge is to bring to bear the power of the state to enforce the law without fear or favour.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24th, 2011.

COMMENTS (1)

Palvasha von Hassell | 13 years ago | Reply Wonderful analysis, Dr. Hussain, couldn't agree more. Both challenges that you mention are great, but steps must be taken to meet both. Quite fundamental questions will have to be addressed in the process, e.g. the lack of general consensus on what is a capital crime. As long as our society makes it possible to pillory the sane, to glorify murderers, and for their crimes to be used to generate support and votes for politicians in the name of religion, it will be difficult to enforce the law. But it must be done, to to show the clear difference between right and wrong, before new levels of barbarism, ignorance and fanaticism are reached in Pakistan.
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