Paper short abstract:

This paper will compare the elections of 1970 and 2008, as well as the movements that led up to them, and identify the combination of causes and events that allowed for these potentially transformative conjunctures to emerge in Pakistan.

Paper long abstract:

The 1970 and 2008 elections in Pakistan, both of which took place following popular protest movements against military regimes, arguably represent moments at which the established political status quo could have been altered, initiating a more progressive and participatory process of democratization. Instead, the radical promise of these events proved to be short-lived as the very forces they displaced, both in the military and the political elite, successfully re-embedded themselves within the structures of governance and power. By employing a historical institutionalist approach, and drawing on archival sources and electoral data, this paper will compare the elections of 1970 and 2008, as well as the movements that led up to them, and identify the combination of causes and events that allowed for these conjunctures to emerge. The paper will then seek to explain why these instances failed to deliver on their potential for disjuncture, focusing in particular on the economic, electoral, bureaucratic, and ideological mechanisms that have historically underpinned the reproduction and persistence of military and elite power in Pakistan. In a context where the elections of 2013 represent the first ever democratic transfer of power from one civilian regime to another, this paper highlights the deep-rooted constraints that impede a move towards more substantive and participatory democratization in Pakistan, and also advances a few propositions about the circumstances under which more radical institutional change and reform can potentially take place.