Abstract

This research aims to analyze the effects of the civil and military authority conflict on Pakistan’s political growth between 2002 and 2013. The paper will utilize Lucian Pye’s equality, capacity, and differentiation framework to critique how elite fragmentation influenced the political system. During the rule of Musharraf (2002–2008), military elites excluded the civilian elites through electoral engineering, an emasculated judiciary, and bureaucratic authoritarianism through local government legislation. The judiciary, through removing Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani from his position, aggravated the instability of the political system. Electoral changes, such as the emergence of a new dominant elite group, such as the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Party, complicate the issue. The study also establishes that a lack of unity among the civilian and military elites contributed to the erosion of political equality, weakened institutional development, and delayed differentiation, which slowed the general political evolution of Pakistan.

Key Words

Pakistan’s Civilian and Military Elites, Political Development 2002-2013, Lucian Pye New Structuralism, Elite Fragmentation

Introduction

Political development is a critical factor that may be related to the sustainability and advancement of any state. It is equality, institutional capacity, and differentiation, as described by Lucian Pye (1966). Nonetheless, the growth of Pakistan’s political sector has long been derailed by the polarization of the country’s aristocrats. The period between 2002 and 2013 explains how different elite varieties still characterized by conflicts between civilian and military essences affected the political systems. This research is concerned with the roles of this rivalry on the political growth of Pakistan in the stipulated period.

The political elites in Pakistan consist primarily of two dominant groups: this has been thrown into the prominent groups, which include civilian elites and military elites. Civilian players, mainly politicians, aim to introduce and entrench democracy and enhance political structures. On the other hand, military elites, who have always wielded much power in the Arab world, tend to meddle in civilians’ affairs and disrupt democracy. This has given rise to a politically unstable environment and institutional weakness. Real events of the Specified Period include the 2002 rigged elections, judicial interference, the Charter of Democracy(2006), and the Memogate scandal(2011).

However, valve attempted to encourage democratization through the Charter of Democracy, but the clash between the civilian and the military elites was not resolved. The civilian elites failed to wield common power against the military dominance while the military elites sustained their tradition in orientating the institutional loopholes for political bargaining. This disunity was very detrimental to attaining political parity, as well as experiences in improving the governance capacity and distinguishing between the roles assigned to several institutional players in Pakistan.




This Paper Addresses the Following Research Questions

1. Conflict between civil and military elites in Pakistan: Its causal effect on the political development of Pakistan from 2002 to 2013.

2. To what extent was elite disunity harming equality, institution building, and differentiation during this period?

This paper adopts Higley and Burton’s disunited elites theory to explain how elite division hampered Pakistan’s transition to a politically developed nation. These analyses show that elite convergence and institutional independence are the key factors in establishing stable political development.

Literature Review

This conflict between the civilian and military leadership is one of the most dominant features of Pakistan’s political evolution. To comprehend this process, looking at the literature on elite politics and political development seems logical. Broadcasting theoretical propositions rooted in elites and political development, this literature review has applied them to Pakistan between 2002 and 2013.




Elite Theory and Political Development

Classical writers such as Mosca, Pareto, and Michels

laid down the postulates of elite theory. As Mosca (1939) said, elites are small groups undertaking the decision-making processes in society while the masses are inert. Pareto, 1935 expanded the concept with one of elite circulation by meaning that while elites may shift, the control over power belongs to elites always. The “iron law of oligarchy” was formulated by Michels( 1911), who posited that the leadership of these organizations always tends to become oligarchical irrespective of their original aims. These ideas emphasize the permanency of elite overlordship and, more significantly, are applicable to Pakistan, where civil and military elites have struggled to gain the upper hand politically.

Higley and Burton (2006) extended these ideas by classifying elite structures into three categories: divided elites, ideologically united elites, and consensually united elites. This access denied the country coherent elites. They noted through observing the Pakistan case that disunited elites led to political instability, institutional inefficiency, and low governance standards in the affected societies. They put it that stable democracies depend on the elite being in a consensus, which implies that they agree with set norms and rules of conduct. To this, Finer (2002) has it that, in post-colonial states, this fragmentation only works against stable politics. This theoretical emphasis is essential for understanding the dynamics of the Pakistani elite, as their conflict has constantly undermined the political desensitization process.

The present paper situates Pakistan within a context of political development utilizing Lucian Pye’s (1966) propositions towards this end. He identifies three key dimensions of political development: distribution of equal opportunities, maximum capacity, and differentiation. Equality is similar to the one where all people have an equal right to participate in politics, and all laws are equally implemented. Therefore, capacity has to do with a system’s capability of optimally delivering public goods or services. It refers to the specialization and coordination of institutions in a way that fosters political stability. Skocpol (1979) further notes that fragmented elites and weak institutions characterize the state conditions that confer the delay in political development. Pakistan also experienced the same state conditions from 2002 to 2013.




Empirical Studies on Political Elites in Pakistan

Sustained elite fragmentation is the most common feature in Pakistan’s political history. Hussain (1976) posited that the country enjoys an elitist political system in which traditional, military, and bureaucratic elites fight for supremacy. This competition has negatively impacted the growth of democratic political culture and democracy in particular. So from 2002 to 2013, the military under Musharraf once again reasserted its domination, sidelining civilian elites, leading to more institutional imbalance and fragmented elites.

Shoukat and Gomez (2017) studied the changing relations between civilians and militaries in Pakistan. Using the case of Pakistan, O’Donnell argues that military regimes tend to integrate civilians into power to gain legitimacy. For instance, during Musharraf’s presidency, when creating the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q), military elites exemplarily used civilian elites to sustain political power. Exerting such manipulation negatively influenced political democratization, subverting the democratic approach and forming confrontation among civilian elites. In detail, Alavi (1972) argues that the post-colonial process in Pakistan allowed military supremacy through the centralization of political authority and bureaucratization of authoritarianism.

Jalal (1995) also compares and contrasts the position of Pakistan's civil and military elites and its structures. For her, the military elites have used institutional vulnerabilities like the judiciary to entrench themselves. Over the period 2002 to 2008, the judiciary aligned with military elites, especially under the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO), which continued to erode political development in Pakistan. This view is affirmed by Shah (2014), who notes that judiciary decisions during moments of military influence led to the repression of the political rights of civilians as well as sealing off the independence of institutions. Zulfiqar, 2012 sees that the judiciary's support of military regimes slowed down the democratization process in Pakistan's context as early as 2012.

Humayun (2008) studies the absence of elite convergence in Pakistan’s history. He disagrees with this, suggesting that Pakistan’s elite culture is essentially one of short-termism focused on tumultuous power struggles rather than responsible nation-building. The Charter of Democracy (2006), as an elite coalescence phenomenon, was exceptional in Thailand. Nevertheless, it did not function adequately due to a lack of trust between civilian elites and external pressure from military elites. Problems like the Memogate scandal of 2011 show how divided elites could not cooperate, which prevented democracy from organizing stable political norms, and, therefore, more retarded political growth. These existing studies suggest that Huntington (1968) posited that the condition in democratizing politics results in elite failure to institutionalize political creations.




Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan

Civil-military relations in Pakistan are critical to analyzing elite contestation. Ahmed (2013) gives detailed information about the military supremacy over civilian organizations in Pakistan since its creation. He explains how the military always pursues political inequality by denying civilian elites the opportunity to make decisions. This exclusion is most sharply illustrated in Musharraf's reforms of the local government system in 2001, which centralized political power within pro-military elites while formally promoting decentralization. Such decentralization reforms employed during the period, Cheema et al. (2005) observed, are often applied by authoritarian regimes to deepen their grip on power.

In his 2005 article in Partnership, Asghar Khan, 2005 critically evaluates how military elites have overthrown civilian dispensations in a way that halts the state's political development. Analysts have said this is because of continued military interference in civilian matters from 2002 to 2013, as seen from the recent removal of PM Yousaf Raza Gillani in 2012. Such interferences similarly erode governance and distort the differentiation of institutions by overwriting the judiciary and the legislature with military power. Rizvi (2000) supports this view by explaining that all those years, the military interfered with Pakistan’s economy and politics and undermined the country’s democracy constantly.

The military influence is related to the failure of political parties in Pakistan, according to Shafqat (1997). He notes that dysfunctional political parties formed along a factional basis and characterized by personal animosity create conditions that allow military elites to seize power. Hitherto, in the 2002–2013 period, opposition political parties, such as the PPP and the PML-N, failed to effectively challenge the institution collectively. This disunity facilitated the failure of elite consensuses to significant extents like the Charter of Democracy.




Political Development and Institutions Vulnerability

According to Pye (1966), it can be seen that institutional independence is essential in attaining political development. Still, Pakistan’s law, parliament, and local administrative structures have always been undermined by the rivalry of elites. For example, Jalal (1995) makes a point that institutional vulnerability in Pakistan is both a reason for and an outcome of elite decentralization. This is evident in the judiciary during the regime of Musharraf where judges were removed or were compelled to swear under the PCO.

Local governance reforms are considered in the work of Cheema et al. (2005) with regard to political development. They have pointed out that whereas decentralization may in fact build political capacity, in many instances in authoritarian systems, it transforms into an instrument of political manipulation by the ruling elite. Policies that were implemented in the Musharraf era had done much damage to the political structure and ascending power over local government to the military preferential class.

Hashmatullah (2018) himself emphasized the emergence of other types of elites including the Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party that arose mainly from the failure of traditional civilian and military elites. Although new elites may bring about political diversification the dynamics are made more complex as highlighted earlier, in the period 2008–2013 when PTI emerged as a serious challenger to the military and civilian elites.

Theoretical Framework

This study employs two theoretical lenses to examine the impact of the struggle between civilian and military elites on Pakistan's political development during 2002–2013: Higley and Burton’s foreign elite structure and Lucian Pye’s political development hypothesis. These frameworks provide systematic knowledge of how elite fragmentation and institutional breakdown affect political systems, especially in countries like Pakistan. This research studies the direct relationship between the elite struggle and the political development of Pakistan by integrating the two frameworks. Higley and Burton’s theory tells how divided elites lead to instability. On the other hand, Pye’s framework focuses on how this instability influences equality, capacity, and differentiation.




Elements of Higley and Burton’s Theory of Elite Configurations

Higley and Burton (2006) claimed that the elite form differentiates states' stability and political growth. They categorize elites into three types based on their level of cohesion and shared norms:

? Disunited Elites: Described by dissension, conflict, and power struggle within the organizational structure. These elites cannot even set working norms, and thus cause political and institutional volatility.

? Ideologically United Elites: People are united by similar ideas and beliefs, hence, in most cases, ending up with authoritarian governments because authority is vested with a group of people in charge of radical reform.

? Consensually Unified Elites: Deliberately codify key general behaviors and rivalries, thus building a solid platform for liberal democracy.

Pakistan has traditionally had a volatile political climate because elites have been hopelessly divided. This fragmentation is well demonstrated by the ongoing civilian and military elites’ power tussle, as none of the two has set out to create governance standards. This situation is evident from critical incidents such as the manipulated elections in 2002, judicial activism during Musharraf’s regime, and the Memogate scandal in 2011. Higley and Burton’s disunity theory enables a socially constructed view of how this has led to the continued political instability in Pakistan.

Among these, one has to single out the strategy of ‘‘elite settlements’’ by John Higley and Michael Burton. As Kruggle argued, some of them believe that in the context of settlement or agreements, convergence exists, which means that where the transition of elites is disunited, they become consensually unified, thus celebrating political stability. The Charter of Democracy (2006) was one effort towards such a bargain between civilian elites Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto. However, these efforts were marred by mistrust, which never faded away, and military elites continued to dominate political power. This paper employs Higley and Burton’s framework to consider the failure of elite settlements in Pakistan and its impacts on political advancement.




The Political Development Framework of Lucian Pye

Lucian Pye (1966) provides a multidimensional framework for understanding political development, focusing on three key indicators: equality, capacity, and differentiation.




Equality

Equality is in the political rights of citizens, the equality of political rights of all individuals, and general non-discrimination in civil servant staffing. In Pakistan, civil-military imbalance has been a major factor that has distorted political equality consistently. The 2002 elections that were managed by the military to gain support for PML-Q excluded civil political players and reduced electoral democracy (Shoukat & Gomez, 2017). Moreover, the absence of free and fair elections in most countries cut a large segment of the population from active political participation.




Capacity

According to definitions, capacity refers to the capacity of a political system to deliver public goods, enforce laws and order, and address citizens' demands. In Pakistan, the elite fragmentation led by different political parties restrained the government from performing responsively. In Musharraf’s era, civil officialdom was marginalized, and the judiciary was compelled by pressure through the PCO (Shah, 2014). Missing solid institutional independence and subsequently weakened the state’s ability to enforce the rule of law. Indeed, after the Musharraf era, new president scandals, such as the Memogate scandal in 2011 and the dismissal of PM Yousaf Raza Gillani in 2012, show that the installed system was weak.




Differentiation

Integration, on the other hand, is the process whereby political institutions become specialized. As Pye argued, a politically developed system must call for the differentiation of work and the division of labor among state institutions, such as the judiciary, executive, and legislature. Indeed, this differentiation has been constantly eroded in Pakistan by elite rivalries. Military elites tended to infringe on the domain of civilians, dominating the judiciary and the legislature. For example, the Musharraf regime intruded on the judiciary when some judges were sacked for their consideration to take the PCO oath (Jalal, 1995; Shah, 2014). This absence of institutional differentiation enshrined the culture of cooperation’s misfeasance by showing that no institution could function in isolation or efficiency.

Discussion

Pakistan experienced civilian-military rivalry from 2002-2013, which has affected the Pakistani political structure. In this regard, power competition remained a characteristic feature of the Pakistani elite's existence and diminished equality, capacity, and differentiation within the political system. This era characterized the Military elite where, especially under General Pervez Musharraf, the Military confined the civilian elite and produced a systematic decline of political institutions. The study of this period shows how the fragmentation of the elites contributed to Honduras’s lack of political stability and an efficient democratic environment. Higley and Burton (2006) state that fragmented elites undermine the political stability the institutions need to develop. This theoretical perspective sheds light on why the fragmentation of elites in Pakistan during this period retarded the political advancements.

This paper posited that during the Musharraf era, military elites sought to enhance their authority at the demise of the civilian political players and with the assistance of institutional weaknesses. The corrupt and much-maligned 2002 general elections were emblematic of the military’s interference within the democratic framework (Shoukat & Gomez, 2016). Musharraf forged the PML-Q because of the break-apart factions of the mainstream civil control parties like the PML-N and the PPP. These political strategies marginalized civil political actors and reduced the capabilities of the opposition, thus negating equality by stifling valuable political roles. Electoral manipulation also lowered people’s confidence in the electoral process, thus distancing citizens from participating in political processes. In Pye’s view, this period was a major deficiency in political development because the ruling elites did not establish political equality in governance for the general public but rather were inclined to personal and institutional gains (Pye, 1966).

On another den of elite domination, Musharraf's local government reforms made another dimension of the phenomenon. Though the above-mentioned reforms seemed to be taken towards decentralizing political power, in a real sense, they served the centralization of power within the backdrop of the military. The creation of district governments under the Local Government Ordinance (2001) produced a provincial-level constituency for military-favored elites who took control of local politics and administration, thereby turning it into an instrument for enhancing Musharraf's hegemony (Cheema et al., 2005). This manipulation of local governance structures also diminished the position of civilian elites still more, thus denying them considerable say in the decision-making. These liberal reforms weakened the institutional capacity of the political system because these reforms excluded civil actors and enhanced the role of the military. According to Pye (1966), capacity should be understood as a system's capability of providing governance and accommodations for the public. Musharraf heavily weakened Pakistan's political capability since state institutions were gradually shifted into elite control instead of public necessities.

The judiciary’s activity during this period also captures the social cost of competition among elites on political elaboration. The judiciary, an important branch of government tasked with balancing powers, was suppressed through forceful features such as the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO). Some of the provincial high court judges, like Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui, the chief justice, did not take the PCO, and those who the PPP govt sacked due to pressure from the military, were replaced by the benches comprised of immature loyal judges, thus ending judicial sovereignty (Shah, 2014). This subversion of the judiciary affected separation and ultimately reduced differentiation required in the stable political system. In addition, the judiciary accepted Musharraf’s referendum in 2002 and later supported his authority through the ‘doctrine of necessity’ (Jalal, 1995), which showed the weakening of the judiciary. These actions strengthened the supremacy of the military and weakened the judiciary to defend democracy. These institutions could not assume specific and separate tasks at this time, which Pye (1966) has associated with failed political development.

The Charter of Democracy was signed in December of 2006, meaning civilians can attempt to balance the power of the military and set the rules of the game. However, this understanding between Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto aimed at forging an anti-military joint force to combat the military intrusion into the civil sphere. For the first time in Pakistan, major emergent civilian elites realized the importance of consensus to minimize elite division to provide democratic stability (Humayun, 2008). However, the above-discussed confidence-building measures were not successful in the case of the charter because mistrust continued to prevail in the civilian elites and pressure from the military outside the charter. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in 2007 subsequently diluted the civilian camp and, more so, the PPP leadership under Asif Zardari, whose creditability was always in doubt. By showing that these internal divisions among civilian elites hampered their efforts to confront military power, this paper also proves that achieving elite convergence in a fragmented political system is antithetical.

The post-Musharraf era of Pakistan was experienced from 2008 to 2013 when civilian and military elites continued confrontations that negatively impacted the country's development. While civilians wrested power from the military after the 2008 elections, the elections showed that military elites continue to dominate over civilian political elites in terms of an ability to set institutions down permanently. As the Memogate scandal of 2011 underlined, there is a lack of trust between civilian and military leaders. This scandal, which entailed duplicate that the civilian government wanted America’s help to minimize the military’s role, reiterated the absence of coherence and harmony among elites (Shah, 2014). The military’s response to the scandal, where the military overpowered the civilian leadership and subjected them to increased scrutiny, as well as unleashing its power against the political leadership of the country, escalated the political crisis. This episode not only delegitimized the civilian government to a greater degree in the eyes of the public but also undermined the faith in the democratic systems and processes, making the situation cyclically result in the political fragmentation of elites.

The removal of PMYR in 2012, in particular, again indicates how non-civilian elites keep infringing upon the civilian spheres. Despite its independence during this period, the judiciary’s decision to disqualify Gillani was viewed by most people as a direct influence of the military. This episode well captured the duality of the judiciary as a site of elite contestation and as an institution prone to be influenced by extraneous factors Shafqat [1997]. Pakistan’s political parties from 2002 to 2013 demonstrated that the elected leaders were often dismissed because the country’s political institutions were weak and unable to cope with conflicts between elites. This absence of institutionalization became a challenge to the ability of the system to meet public needs and, therefore, a negative factor to the general development of the state.

PTI's emergence during this period added another dimension to elite relationships in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Campaigned by the young, charismatic leader Imran Khan, the PTI offered itself as an anti-establishment party across the civilian and military structure, which received huge success from young urbanites. Although new political actors can be found to be contributing to the differentiation of the political system, in the case of PTI, it also triggered competition among the elites. The PTI’s entry into the political field disrupted the traditional PML-N and PPP hegemony while shifting the elite formations further apart. This fragmentation attempted elite convergence more difficult to achieve, as PTI found itself in the role of opposition either to the civilian or military establishments.

The political culture of Pakistan is as divided as it was before, and it's proved by political conflicts and military interventions from 2002 to 2013. Beginning with military authorities' control of civilians through institutions of coercion, followed by the civilian elites' inability to defend a specific set of norms and, in some cases, to even form a coherent opposition to it. Furthermore,  this splitting in the elite's own interests formed other political advantages, but they lacked institutional cohesion and undermined the differentiation which is the basis of political development. The Bearing of this elite contest on the Political fate of Pakistan is also clear in the form of the inconclusiveness of the Charter of Democracy and the continued marginalization of important organizations like the Judiciary. After all, it can be argued that in the given period competition between civilian and military elites did not make democracy in Pakistan, while themselves creating instabilities and liabilities within that are now hindering the state's political development.

Conclusion and Recommendations

It is found that civilian militias in Pakistan from 2002 to 2013 negatively affected the political system – particularly its political leveling, institutionalization, and differentiation – in competition with civilian and military elites. However, civil political leaders were restrained during the military rule by excluding them from unwanted rivalry through rigged elections, devolution to local government, and judicial pressure, especially during general Pervez Musharaff's rule. Such situations as the 2002 rigged elections, the attempt to implement the PCO, or the breakup of the Charter of Democracy indicated that the conflict between the elites was still far from being solved. Unfortunately, civilian elites could not set themselves in a coherent group, while military elites acted cohesively, learning institutional vulnerabilities to accumulate more power. This rivalry further ensured political instability, even delayed the virtues of democracy, and eroded people's confidence in politics. Perhaps there is no doubt that for sustainable political development, the elites and political institutions must converge.

? Civilian and military elites must ensure that the norms and the frameworks they adopt harmonize and merge through such agreements as an expanded Charter of Democracy.

? Promote the independence of the judiciary by reducing political pressure on courts and improving their opportunities to act as impartial third parties.

? Electoral reforms must be implemented to allow for free, fair, and competitive contests that are not so rigged to favor certain candidates.

? Grant resources to local governments to improve governance efficiency and comprehensively tackle problems existing at the base level.

? Encourage merit in public institutions' recruitment processes to counter elite inception as well as administrators' effectiveness.

? Promote international mediation because high levels of mistrust hinder institutional renovations among elites.

If these structural problems are solved, then they have the potential to lay down the foundation for a more constructive Pakistani political system.

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