Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 51, no. 3, June–July 2009, pp. 29–54
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Armed with nuclear weapons, home to al-Qaeda, and heavily infested with a growing mass of domestic radical Islamists, Pakistan has been famously called the ‘most dangerous place on earth’. At the root of the country’s problems is a feudal political establishment primarily interested in promoting and preserving its own narrow class interests and unable or unwilling to seriously address the myriad threats the country faces. Unless and until this dynamic changes, Pakistan cannot be counted on to help the United States in its struggle against the Taliban or even to stop the spread of radical Islam within its own borders. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the nature of Pakistani political culture, nor in the performance of the Pakistani political class since the founding of the state, that provides any grounds for optimism.
Pakistan’s political feudalism
Although Pakistan is often characterised as a failing state, the reality is much more complex. Despite frequent changes of government and periodic bouts of military rule, the country’s political system is actually highly predictable and surprisingly resilient. Pakistan is run by two groups of political actors, a civilian aristocracy consisting of wealthy agricultural landowners and their industrial counterparts, and the Army. The civilian elites have arrayed themselves into political parties built around prominent families, individuals or institutions. The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is associated with the Bhutto family, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML(N)) with Nawaz Sharif, and the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-i-Azam) (PML(Q)) with influential supporters of the Army. These parties function predominately as patronage networks, using political power to distribute favours and resources to members of the network. This is a manifestation at the political level of an underlying feudal culture centred on agricultural landowners that has dominated the region for generations. Although the term ‘feudal’ is popularly used in Pakistan to refer to the landed aristocracy, industrial magnates such as Nawaz Sharif and his PML(Q) rivals, the Chaudhrys of Gujrat, have fully internalised the feudal way of doing business. The highly contentious and sometimes violent nature of Pakistani politics does not reflect deep-seated differences of approach on policy issues, but rather a struggle between competing networks for the right to control state resources. Although each party possesses a committed core of followers, changes in party affiliation are quite common as individual politicians, political families and political alliances seek to enhance their prospects by recalibrating their loyalties.
Despite the combativeness of Pakistani politics, there is very little difference in how Pakistan is governed regardless of the party in power. This is because all the major parties share a desire to preserve the prerogatives of the agricultural and industrial elites. In terms of economic policy, this means, first and foremost, avoiding the payment of income taxes. The Pakistani government is chronically in debt, not simply or even primarily because it spends such a high percentage of government revenue on the Army, but because so little of what the country earns is taxed. Not only is there no tax on agricultural income, only 1% of...
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John R. Schmidt is a former senior officer in the US Foreign Service who was Political Counselor at the US Embassy in Islamabad from 1998 to 2001. He currently teaches a graduate seminar on ‘Pakistan and the Radical Islamic Threat’ at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University in Washington DC.
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