A Frozen Democratic Transition: Pakistan's Hybrid Regime and Weak Party System

Multiple factors stand in the way of constitutional and democratic consolidation in Pakistan. The focus of this chapter is on the country's weak system of party politics. Several regimes like Pakistan, which adopted electoral politics in the post-third wave of democratization, are often referred to as 'hybrid regimes', where the elements of both liberal democracy and authoritarianism coexist. After the restoration of democracy in 1988, Pakistan's weak yet competitive multi-party system became overshadowed by the predominance of the military in foreign and security policies. Poorly organised political parties and a weakly institutionalised party system enable military interference in politics. On the one hand, constitutional changes enacted by military regimes continue to determine inter-party interaction both within and outside Parliament. On the other hand, legislation sanctioning military involvement in politics has been enacted by recent democratic governments with full support from opposition parties. In this study, we focus on weaknesses in the institutionalisation of the party system. We employ a framework that combines the concept of party system institutionalisation with the two-dimensional typology of hybrid regimes to explain weak democratisation in Pakistan.