WHAT is the primary end of politics and purpose of a sovereign state? What makes a political system legitimate? What gives the right to rule? How should leaders be chosen or elevated, and what should count as merit in ruling elites? Are some rights ‘lexically prior’ to others? Is liberal democracy the only morally and rationally defensible model of government?

These are the first-order questions that we explore in my class, cross-listed by the School of Law and the Department of Politics in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Lums, and the ones that all citizens should be pondering as we confront state failure.

In Pakistan, we often limit our thinking to the systems that we have tried: parliamentary democracy, military dictatorship, and their hybrid variants. They have failed, and likely will fail, to deliver structural reform, sustainable development, economic and human security, and a just society.

Worse, many self-appointed and aspiring ‘technocrats’ have devoted themselves to policy solutions — necessarily second-or third-order concerns — without addressing underlying structural flaws. Even well-intentioned, rigorously researched ‘evidence-based’ policy prescriptions are meaningless if there are deficiencies in constitutional design and in the political theory on which the state’s purpose is premised.

There is a feeling of relative satisfaction in our ruling elites as the country sinks to new depths.

This approach, admirable in its intentions and taught enthusiastically at places like the Harvard Kennedy School, is akin to treating a cancer patient’s more superficial symptoms, like bed sores or chronic pain, without addressing the underlying tumour. Chances of survival in such cases are, one can reasonably assume, quite bleak.

In other words, we don’t need to add to the laundry list of technical solutions; we need the political will to implement the glaringly obvious and a political model that allows such will to exist and be realised. Indeed, the solutions to some of Pakistan’s problems are so fundamental and self-evident that college students can readily identify and conceive workable remedies to them.

So, the right question may not be whether X action is constitutional or not, rather if this constitution can spawn effective government that enables human well-being and collective flourishing given our unique social, cultural, and political realities.

A few quick thought experiments.

Can a (manipulatable) democratic system pre­mised on ‘electables’ and a relentless cycle of concessions to the electorate to secure re-election de­­l­­iver? If research in the developed world has shown that voters are not rational actors, even about their own economic interests, what hope does parl­iamentary ‘democracy’ have given our perfect sto­rm of low literacy rates, ethnolinguistic identity politics, sectarian biases, and persistent feudalism?

Would any institution willingly support policies that seek to implement checks on its power and make it more accountable?

Can interventions by a military hierarchy steeped in a conformist, monopolistic, colonial, ‘yessir’ culture access the imagination and creative thinking needed for institutional innovation and national transformation?

The highest virtue here is obedience — and the proof is in the pudding.

Perhaps most dangerously, there is a feeling of relative satisfaction in our ruling elites as the country sinks to new depths. Justifications include ridiculous logic: ‘we seem to be doing better than Afghanistan,’ or that such issues ‘necessarily exist in developing nations’.

If our objectively bad status quo is considered satisfactory, or even excellent, I wonder if there are policy solutions to cure such cognitive ailments? For Aristotle, a prerequisite of virtuous action was correct moral perception: if a person lacks these emotional capacities, no amount of formal reasoning or technical policy proposals can help them rule well.

What we need is a higher bar, not self-justificatory or apologetic rhetoric by extractive power elites benefiting from a rotten system and others who, even if well-intentioned, confuse mediocrity with excellence.

Fortunately for those who realise that a new social contract is needed, facts don’t care about the justificatory rhetoric deployed by status quo elites. Pakistan ranks terribly on almost all development indicators, with the distinction of being in the bottom four in a few key areas.

Our passport ranks worse than North Korea’s and Somalia’s. (It is only ranked higher than the passports of war-torn Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.)

How can we get out of this mess? More experimentation with a constitutional framework, and its resultant institutional design, that has had, to put it mildly, limited success over several decades? Hollow, regurgitated slogans like ‘more democracy’ and individual rights enshrined in liberalism that are never protected in real terms by a politicised and/or weak judiciary that is generally incapable of confronting the deep state?

Or do we need a new constitution that ensures that citizens with the most appropriate moral, civic, and intellectual virtues for demanding leadership roles find themselves in positions of power — a ‘political meritocracy’ premised on ensuring a people’s right to effective government by promoting those with superior ability and virtue?

Such models exist (and are implemented to varying degrees in Singapore and China, two major socioeconomic success stories in Asia), and my class is designing a new ‘Pakistani constitution’ premised on this most fundamental right, from which all other rights are enabled: the right to effective government.

There can be no real equality, particularly equality before the law, without effective government based on independent, efficient institutions run by (globally competitive) talent. You can have liberal democracy, but you won’t have a life of dignity and security.

For example, if courts cannot de facto protect your right to freedom of expression, or investigative agencies can’t competently prove your innocence, then the relevant constitutional right becomes essentially meaningless in the face of tyranny.

Fundamentally, we must ask ourselves what the end of government is. Is our constitutional democracy primarily valuable as a means to an end — the end of effective government that promotes the common good — or is it valuable in itself even if it does not produce just outcomes?

First principles matter. We would be wise to ponder them.

The writer teaches at Lums and is a Harvard graduate. umaragha10@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, April 13th, 2023