Paper short abstract:

This paper attempts to provide a theory for the continuous oscillation between authoritarian and democratic tendencies in Pakistan's hybrid political regime by examining the recruitment and selection of the political elite as a window into regime dynamics.

Paper long abstract:

Pakistan is a case in which fragmentation of power among the ruling classes has endured since the country's inception, creating a kind of "persistent instability". This may sound oxymoronic but I argue that to understand political regimes that have remained locked in their hybrid state, yet have been unstable due to the presence of both authoritarian and democratic tendencies, we need a concept of regime change that can address lasting instability.

The normative concern driving the scholarly discussion of Pakistan's regime is to understand the failure of democracy. Explanations have focused on military interventions and the ineffectiveness of narrow-minded and corrupt politicians. This has led to analyses that are not only one-sided but also view regime change as linear and uni-directional. I contribute a voluntarist explanation of regime change and stability in Pakistan by investigating the role of the military and 4 main political parties in the processes of recruitment and selection of the political elite. I suggest that the question of political recruitment and selection is important because it determines who gains power, empowers the recruiters, and defines the relationship between the rulers and the ruled by guiding and affecting the behavior of political leadership. Furthermore to understand the ensemble of institutions and norms that make up a regime, we need to examine the totality of incentives operating on political actors that have access to principal public offices. These incentives are rooted in recruitment and selection processes and consequently in the access to public goods.