Clientelist Politics

The personalised nature of politics is closely related to the dominant historical position by a narrowly-based political elite that was feudal and tribal in origin.

It shares power with well-to-do urban groups, epitomised by the rise of Mian Nawaz Sharif who came from a mercantile background.*

Members of this mercantile power elite shared a similar ‘feudal-tribal’ style of conducting politics:

• personalised
• based on ‘primordial’ social hierarchies
• characterised by patronage-seeking activity
• preoccupied with protecting and promoting their economic interests and privileged status.

Clientelism has been the principal hallmark of Pakistani politics.

• It relies on an exchange of material favours for political support among actors with asymmetric power.

Aspects of clientelism exist in even advanced democracies.

But such politics are not defined or organised around exploitative patron-client relationships, which are based on hierarchical social relations based on lineage.

It operates in the Pakistani case in a manner that is antithetical to the notion of citizenship.

‘Feudal’ here refers not so much to a ‘mode of agricultural production’ but to social structures that have given rise to networks of relationships of obligation and patronage.

In this sense, feudal attitudes reinforced by a social system of tribal and biradari alignments have long spilled into and influenced Pakistan’s urban politics.

This political culture has extended beyond rural landowners or tribal chiefs and their economic or geographical sphere of operation.

It has expressed itself in patron-client forms of political representation and behaviour.

This explains why urban-based parties, such as the Nawaz League, are tradition-bound rather than ‘modern’.

The urban rich function much like their rural counterparts. Their political mobilisation rests more on working lineage and biradari connections and alliances than representing wider urban interests.

It is how they conduct politics that blurs the rural-urban distinction.

Oriented more to patronage than to policy, their politics is essentially about recruiting and managing familial and clan networks.

Access to power enhances their capacity to do so.

Political competition is rarely about programmes or policy issues. It is about access to the spoils of office.

Parties are extensions of biradaries and influential families.

Electoral competition is principally about gaining control of state patronage to cement patron-client relationships and reward supporters.

Such clientelist politics is:

• geared to the ’local’ or parochial
• inimical to encouraging wider mobilisation and fostering attitudes or thinking about larger national issues.

The criterion of allocation of ‘public goods’ is particularistic not universalistic. This:

• keeps politics primordial and oriented to narrow issues
• reduces any incentive for political leaders to ask the citizenry to contribute their share to the ’national good’ by way of taxes or the full cost of public services.

These features were present in the politics of:

• the 1950s parliamentary period
• the controlled politics of the 1960s
• the 1990s decade of democracy*

The PPP has been more representative of landowning interests (with its strongholds in rural Sindh and southern Punjab) than the Nawaz League.

The struggle for power between these parties has exhibited few of the attributes of modern political contests, in which there is a battle of ideas with clear-cut platforms and policy alternatives.

Instead they have sought to represent the economic interests of their clientelist bases of support even as the PPP has retained some of its populist roots.

In the classic style of clientelism, governance is embedded in the notion of rewarding their ‘clients’ rather than the electorate as citizens.

Their preoccupation with ‘rulership’ rather than public ‘service’ is in keeping with the patrimonial structures of traditional society.

Sharif’s party has inducted several urban politicians and professionals who are more oriented to providing services to constituents rather than catering to a select, clientelist base.

But they are neither numerous nor politically influential enough to modify the overall character of the party.

Members of the political elite have frequently split off to join or serve as junior partners in military governments in return for the accretion of their power by entry into the spoils system.

The Muslim League that served as the ‘King’s party’ under Musharraf is a case in point. It consisted of former PPP or Nawaz supporters who broke to ally themselves with the military regime and find berths in various cabinets during 1999-2008.

The narrow social base of this political elite is evidenced by a number of factors. Influential families from a rural landowning and tribal background continue to dominate Pakistan’s legislatures.

This reflects remarkable continuity with the past. A familiar array of names representing landed families, tribal dynasties and extended clans have found their way into every assembly since independence.

The tickets awarded by the three main parties vying for power in 2008 showed an overwhelming number went to influential rural and urban families.

One writer has estimated that a few hundred families have dominated virtually all of Pakistan’s legislatures, including the present ones.

The political baton has been passed on to scions of these families in the current Parliament: Gilanis, Qureshis, Tamans, Mehars, Bijranis, Rinds, Raisanis, Jhakaranis, Makhdums of Hala, Shahs of Nawabpur, the Khan of Kalabagh’s family and others.

This political class has resisted meaningful reform-whether in land holdings, taxation, social welfare or in governance.

The power elite has also acquired ‘rentier’ characteristics of using public office as a means of leveraging state resources to transfer wealth and secure sources of unearned income

• credit from state-owned banks
• state land at nominal prices
• ‘development spending’

This has been a common feature of both the civilian and military elites.

This explains why with few exceptions their economic management has been so similar. This brings up the next faultline.