Abstract
Amid rising extremism and intense local powerplay, how do ordinary Pakistani voters make decisions? Political scientist and author
As a consequence, over the years, Taseer received numerous death threats. He showed true moral courage by refusing to be silenced. After lunch that day he was murdered by a member of his own security detail. He died where he fell.
The rise of extremist political groups in Pakistan is of great international significance. Poised, with a fully loaded nuclear arsenal, at the crossroads of religious fundamentalism, nationalist fervour, and the war on terror, Pakistan’s importance to global geopolitical stability and international peace is inescapable. While Pakistan’s political landscape still depends on military patronage, its current democratic transition will depend on how political parties contribute to civilian rule and mobilise support for political reform. Voters are stuck between a series of tough choices. The most under-studied aspects of key political stakeholders in Pakistan are political parties, especially those that use religion to leverage their agenda. How do common voters make decisions about who to follow? What is the role of religion in these decisions?
Above: The face of Mumtaz Qadri, the bodyguard who murdered Salmaan Taseer for speaking out against Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, is carried on a banner. Members of various political parties demonstrated against Qadri’s sentence for Taseer’s murder in Karachi, 2011
Credit: Akhtar Soomro/Reuters
The majority of Pakistanis come into contact with the state – and, by extension, formal politics – via the mediation of their landlord. Many rural workers owe their livelihoods to wealthy land barons, who control their votes. Landlords may or may not be politicians themselves, but they do participate in politics on the provincial or national level, usually by promising the votes of their local faction to a politician who, in turn, provides the village with services.
The combination of landlord power and religious politics is a powerful dynamic
On the village level, therefore, landlords fulfill many of the roles that are normally associated with the state, including securing and spending public development funds and assisting villagers in navigating bureaucracy. Landlords’ connections to provincial-level politicians, who are connected to national-level power brokers, allow them to obtain and distribute such important favours as jobs. The combination of landlord power and religious politics is a powerful dynamic.
Political scientist Stathis Kalyvas has defined ‘‘confessional’’ political parties as organisations that leverage aspects of religious ideology and culture to mobilise, recruit and campaign in electoral contests. Pakistan is not alone in having confessional parties. Confessional movements have developed out of many religious traditions in many countries. Jews in Israel, Christians in Brazil, and Hindus in India have all formed political parties whose platforms draw from and focus on religious tradition. Islamic confessional movements, however, are of particular interest in the post-9/11 world. Pakistan has several new trends, especially with regards to the information explosion, voter sophistication and party organisational behaviour.
With over 80 TV channels and over 100 million with access to TV, the explosion in information has fundamentally changed politics in Pakistan. Information on political activities and mobilisation is now ubiquitous. Parties can cater towards niche voters that are watching their specific TV channel. In fact, Islamic political organisations frequently engage in political strategies that require them to condone actions, including violence, and form coalitions with militant and secular organisations that run contrary to their own platforms. Recognising that these organisations are as tethered to practical political considerations has huge implications for our understanding of what drives political extremism and how to create incentives for moderation.
While debate over the proper role of Islam still rages in Pakistan, people there generally accept the overlap between affairs of state and of the soul. The separation between religion and politics, considered so desirable in Western democracies, simply does not exist in Pakistan. The ‘‘hand of Allah’’ and references to God’s will are seen and felt everywhere. The Pakistani constitution begins, ‘‘In the name of God, the Beneficent and the Merciful.’’ Confessional parties use slogans like ‘‘Islam is the solution’’. Banners on election booths remind voters, ‘‘Islam is our destiny, in this life and the hereafter.’’ The Pakistani legal system incorporates aspects of sharia with its sharia courts, religious laws governing marriage and inheritance, and the infamous blasphemy laws, which ban defamatory speech against Islam or its prophet Mohammed. Children in public schools all over Pakistan are required to memorise Bilad-e-Islamia, a poem by Muhammad Iqbal that deplores political leaders who tout themselves as Muslims but are devoid of a genuine spiritual attachment to the prophet.
Research shows Islamist parties that are successful on the local level stand to gain material, social and organisational benefits. For one, control over the local levels of government, including the offices of nazim (mayor) and patwari (local record keeper) confers a huge amount of authority over land distribution and ownership, still the central component of class standing in Pakistan’s pseudo-feudal economy. Local political power also drives membership and fundraising for the local religious institutions that sponsor and staff Islamist political parties. Religious authority and political authority are mutually reinforcing in rural districts, so it makes sense for organisations that have religious origins to engage in electoral competition at that level. For rural political entrepreneurs, national elections may be of little relevance, at least compared to the direct benefits of winning local control.
Above: A woman knits a mat outside her home in Saidpur village, Islamabad. Village landlords act as political intermediaries and fulfil many of the roles normally associated with the state
Credit: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters
The work of Dr Matthew Nelson, of the Centre for the Study of Pakistan at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, on politician-constituent relations in Punjab province provides specific examples of how the patron-client relationships function in Pakistani politics. Nelson shows that most rural Punjabis assess their representatives, whether on the local or national level, not on the politicians’ ability to craft and promote new legislation that will advance the people’s interests but on their ability to help them avoid the impact of Pakistan’s laws on the inheritance of land. Since the 1970s and Zia’s Islamisation campaign, these laws have been gradually changed to better reflect Islam’s insistence that female heirs receive a share of the land, but the changes have brought them into direct conflict with tribal custom, which dictates only males inherit land. Nelson’s survey of local landowners and district court cases found that constituents believe the politicians’ most important job is to craft out-of-court settlements and keep lawsuits out of the courts. As far as land law is concerned, the most important politician in a village may not be the district’s member of the National Assembly but the patwari, who, for a fee, can alter the records of land ownership in a particular citizen’s favour. By arranging for their clients to avoid the mandates of Pakistani law (whether in questions of land distribution or merely passing through customs at the airport), politicians show that they are “stronger than rules”. Their influence attracts more clients, who in turn increase their political power.
By contrast, in urban areas the nazim does not distribute land, nor is land ownership of such huge significance. Local religious institutions are not the sole authority here, nor are religious leaders even close to the most powerful elites. For the Muslim democratic political entrepreneur in an urban centre, local elections simply are not worth the investment. For these actors and organisations, the better payoff is at the national-level elections. Muslim democratic parties are the product of ancient aristocracies and efforts by a relatively small number of feudal lords and their families to protect their feudal rule over land, wealth and power. With the rise of suffrage, that system has morphed into a form of patronage democracy in which the National Assembly has control over the dispersal of desirable material goods, services and jobs. Traditional elites maintain their political, economic and social power through their access to the state and consequent ability to distribute or withhold patronage. Electoral success at the national level also gives Muslim democrats a platform to espouse policies that may appeal to targeted voters, but parliamentary inefficacy protects them from having to address the actual implementation or the practical consequences of those policies.
For rural entrepreneurs, national elections are of little relevance, compared to the benefits of winning local control
Pakistan’s current political climate is marked by uncertainty and upheaval. The Taliban’s move into the northwest tribal regions and more settled areas of Pakistan has changed the geopolitical landscape; traditional political alliances and affiliations are facing real challenges. Muslim democrats are threatened by the neo-Taliban expansion. While the Punjabi Taliban are interested in a different set of issues, their geographic proximity with democrats means they are now competing for supporters. Interestingly, as a result of the neo-Taliban expansion, even some Islamist parties now share interests with the state. In Sindh, the Jamaat-e-Islami fears the Taliban incursion because it will reduce its support among the Urdu-speaking Mujahir urban population. The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), meanwhile, is reluctant to say anything publicly about the Taliban. The party highly values the perception of being a mediator. If the JUI was seen as leaning too heavily in the other direction, they would fear Taliban excursions into their own power bases in the northern areas.
The Taliban have been able to carve out a political role given the geographic electoral politics and international issues in Afghanistan. In short, the rise of the Taliban and violent terrorist groups is resulting in major changes in Pakistan’s historical political alliances. Landowners and religious entrepreneurs have never been more powerful.