Pakistan’s Real Crisis |
The ongoing political instability in Pakistan is often dubbed as a political crisis: prolonged confrontation between PTI and government, shrinking space for political opposition, contentious electoral process, politicisation of judiciary, controversies surrounding 26th and 27th amendments, increasing media polarisation, and mounting public discontent. But viewing Pakistan’s predicament through the political lens overlooks the central dilemma. Politics is merely the visible layer where the symptoms emerge. The real crisis stems from the country’s institutions, which have, steadily, lost credibility, legitimacy, and the capacity to operate in accordance with constitutional ambits. Unless this institutional erosion is admitted, political fixes are bound to fail.
At its heart, an institutional crisis occurs when regulations are uncertain, responsibilities are ambiguous, and authority is exercised unevenly. In Pakistan, institutions are designed to operate as neutral referees – parliament, judiciary, and bureaucracy – but are perpetually dragged into political tussles. Rather than consolidating the system, they end up being competing players inside the system. As American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington argued in his book “Political Order in Changing Societies,”........