Rethinking_Pakistans_Political_Economy 2014.pdf (original) (raw)

Alliance of State and Ruling Classes in Contemporary Pakistan

This article examines the structure of Pakistan’s ruling classes, their relationship to the state, and how the nature of these relationships have shifted significantly in certain regards over the past 40 years, whilst remaining surprisingly constant in others. In contrast to the work of Akbar Zaidi (2014: 51), who has argued that Pakistan is “a long way from the classical structuralist or even Marxist formulation of the Pakistani state dominated by landlords, industrialists, and the metropolitan bourgeoisie,” I argue that Pakistan is not such a long way from these formulations as may initially be supposed. Rather, these ruling classes have allied themselves with the bureaucratic-military oligarchy to the extent that the families of each of these interest groups now interpenetrate and overlap so that, in many instances, these families and the institutions they represent, are almost indistinguishable from one another. - See more at: http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/31/notes/alliance-state-and-ruling-classes-contemporary-pakistan.html?0=ip\_login\_no\_cache%3Df29d57f3afc3573eeaf68421b25b1587#sthash.kHZjZWJR.dpuf

Pakistan's search for a successful model of national political economy

The Round Table, 2021

This article examines Pakistan’s search for a model of political economy capable of meeting the national objectives of industriali- sation and accumulation of sufficient military power to deter India. It contends that the period of promise (1950s and 1960s) was made possible through heavy subsidies drawn from East Pakistan and the West. The resultant hubris blinded Pakistan’s rulers to growing discontent in the eastern wing of the country while encouraging them to take serious strategic risks against India. The unravelling of this strategy plunged Pakistan into a permanent crisis of its national political economy characterised by underdevelopment, internal and external fiscal imbalances, and a failure to mobilise national resources on a scale commensurate with its national goals. Experiments with socialism (1970s) and neo-classical economics- inspired structural adjustments (since the 1980s) have failed to deliver the desired outcomes and, in fact, entrenched Pakistan’s crisis of political economy.

Power Elites in Pakistan: Creation, Contestations, Continuity

Malaysian Journal of Economic Studies, 2017

This study examines the creation of power elites in Pakistan and how they have come to acquire a prominent presence in this country's economy. The article deals with an interesting paradox: how have power elites, in constant contestation with each other, managed to collectively maintain their presence in this country's economy? The complex concept of power is reviewed here by deconstructing the state to understand where it lies and how it is deployed to attain different, even contradictory, objectives. This study highlights, in historical perspective, the way power has been employed, expressed, and legitimised. The exercise and maintenance of power is framed through an inter-disciplinary framework that encompasses political as well as socioeconomic dimensions.