The parties we elect

Pakistanis have a strange love and hate relationship with political parties. After every election, they curse the very parties for their ineffectiveness, even though they will use their votes faithfully to re-elect the same parties in the next elections. Consequently, the geographical constellation of Pakistani political parties’ dominance has remained stable since the 1980s, eg, the PPP in interior Sindh and southern Punjab, the PML-N in northern Punjab and Hazara, and the MQM in urban Sindh.
Corrupt, incompetent and nepotistic are the common terms used to describe these parties. Although these terms have undoubted therapeutic value in helping vent people’s spleens, they provide little basis for evaluating these parties systematically. Thus, while fully recognising the critical importance of venting the spleen in overall bodily maintenance, I provide a framework for those interested in also exercising the mind to more systematically analyse Pakistan’s main parties, i e, the PPP, PMLs – N and Q, MQM, ANP, JUI-F, JI, BNP, JWP and the PTI.
Political parties are formally organised citizen groups seeking state power, and serve three essential political functions. The first function is mobilisation, i e, identifying critical societal problems and developing agendas and coalitions around them. The second function is electioneering, ie, nominating candidates during elections. The third function is governance if they win elections. Political parties adopt different profiles in performing these functions. These differences lie along three organisational and three agenda-related dimensions.
Organisationally, parties differ first in whether their leadership is personalised or bureaucratised. Personalised parties revolve around a charismatic personality and often become dynastic subsequently. Bureaucratised parties elect their leadership based on merit. Except the JI, all parties have personalised leadership. The PPP, PMLs, ANP, JWP, BNP and the JUI-F have

also mutated into political dynasties. Since the PTI and MQM are still in their first generation of leadership, it remains to be seen whether they will become dynasties.
The second organisational distinction relates to the social background of the leadership. In contrast with the first dimension, the Pakistani parties exhibit a high degree of variation here. The JUI and JI are led by urban middle-class religious leaders. The PPP, ANP and BNP/JWP are led by rural upper-income large landlords, mid-sized landlords and upper-income tribal leaders respectively. The PMLs are both led by urban upper-income industrialists. Finally, the MQM and PTI are led by urban middle-class professionals.
Thus, the widely held view that Pakistani politics is monopolised by large landlords is not fully accurate. As Pakistan’s economy has diversified from its agricultural origins, more diverse leadership is gradually emerging. Industrialists are already well-entrenched. Urban middle-class professionals are also stirring into action as urbanisation and industrialisation increase. Their strength will increase in the coming decades as these trends continue.
Ironically, Pakistan had started out with an urban professional leadership (Jinnah) in 1947, since the negotiated independence path provided by the British required educated independence leadership to undertake the complex constitutional negotiations. However, such leadership soon disappeared as Pakistan’s largely rural economy did not provide a natural habitat for it then. It is gradually staging a return now as the economy diversifies.
The final organisational dimension relates to whether a party is mass-based or skeletal. The JI and MQM and to some extent the PPP have a mass-based structure with deep roots into their respective constituencies. The other parties have skeletal structures which inhibit their ability to mobilise their constituencies significantly.
Agenda-wise, parties are either particularistic or universalistic. Particularistic parties focus on a limited number of issues (e g, anti-immigration), geography or population groups (e g, certain ethnic or religious groups). The PPP, PMLs, PTI, JUI and the JI are all universalistic, although the PMLs are largely restricted to the province of their top leaders while the PTI remains untested. The ANP, MQM, JWP and BNP focus on specific ethnic groups, though the MQM is desperately and largely unsuccessfully trying to establish itself nationally. With its relations with other ethnicities living in Karachi so tense, it is difficult to see how it can succeed in other provinces without first winning over the former.
The second agenda-related aspect pertains to whether the party focuses primarily on policy/programmes or patronage distribution. Unfortunately, Pakistani parties (except the PTI and JI) focus largely on patronage distribution. This is a result of Pakistan’s largely patronage-based economy where people’s economic fortunes are largely tied to their cultural connections. It is this dimension that earns these parties the spleen-generated descriptors of corrupt, incompetent and nepotistic. However, some minute differences can be discerned even among the mainstream parties on the competence dimension. Thus, parties with urban-based leadership exhibit stronger project management skills related to the delivery of municipal-level services (though not much more beyond that).
Although the PTI and JI do not thrive on patronage, neither do they possess clear policy prescriptions for Pakistan’s myriad problems. The PTI’s counter-argument that “honesty is the best policy” is true to some extent. Clearly, honesty alone will yield immediate results in some areas, e g, controlling corruption. However, honesty alone will not be adequate in other areas, e g, economic revitalisation, unless accompanied by solid policy ideas.
To the extent that programmes, policies and ideology exist within these parties as a residual factor, they provide the third agenda-based dimension for analysing them. The JUI, JI, PTI and the PMLs gravitate towards right-wing conservative politics while the remaining parties are supposedly left-wing liberal parties. However, the left-wing parties have largely abandoned their ideological moorings.
Thus, most Pakistani parties presently fall on the wrong end of the spectrum on almost all dimensions. Although this is a dismal overall picture, the evolving differentiation in the social background of political leaders and the consequent improvement at least in municipal-level governance does provide some basis for future optimism. As urbanisation and industrialisation increase, there will be greater scope for urban middle-class dominated parties to emerge and win elections, especially those more rooted within the masses. Thus, Pakistan’s day may eventually come further down the road.
The writer is a political economist at theUniversity of California, Berkeley.
Email: murtazaniaz@yahoo.com