The Ritual of Elections in Pakistan (1970-2018) — A Process Without a Product
By Dr Ijaz Shafi Gilani
Lightstone Publishers
ISBN: 9789697162819
255pp.

Pakistan has experienced 11 general elections since it conducted its first elections based on adult franchise in 1970. Perhaps no academic or researcher has observed these elections more closely and with more interest than Ijaz Shafi Gilani, Pakistan’s leading pollster, known for founding and heading Gallup-Gilani.

The book The Ritual of Elections in Pakistan (1970-2018) — A Process Without a Product by Ijaz Shafi Gilani, who earned his PhD in political science from MIT, aims to compile the insights gained from the eleven elections and to offer a framework of analysis uniquely applicable to Pakistan.

It marks a significant contribution to the limited literature on Pakistani elections. It can be considered the fourth major book on the subject of elections and electoral politics in Pakistan.

The first significant work was The Pakistani Voter, Electoral Politics and Voting Behaviour in the Punjab by Andrew Roberts Wilder, published in 1999. The second was The Pakistan Peoples Party: Rise to Power by Philip E. Jones, published in 2003. A more recent addition is the excellent ethnography by Shandana Khan Mohmand, titled Crafty Oligarchs, Savvy Voters, written in 2019.

A pioneering pollster and political scientist offers a compelling read, compiling insights gained from Pakistan’s 11 elections so far and offering a framework of analysis

Gilani’s book stands out by compiling vast amounts of quantitative data collected over half a century, and presenting it within a new framework to interpret the data.

The book is divided into two parts: the first part analyses Pakistani voters and political parties, while the second part recounts the stories of the 11 elections, each with unique lessons.

Dr Gilani believes that, despite all its flaws and shortcomings, elections in Pakistan are a reliable measure of popular public opinion. They sustain the concept of lawful constitutional government and equality, and invigorate Pakistani society and its socio-political structures.

According to Dr Gilani, voter decisions are influenced by a combination of desires, drivers, and political contexts. Analysing data from exit polls during the last six elections, he demonstrates that the expectation of patronage is the primary reason for voting for a specific candidate.

Twenty-one percent of voters in these elections expected assistance from candidates in dealing with government officials, such as police, local courts, tax collectors, school management, health facilities, etc. Interestingly, this trend has only grown since 1993, when it was at 17 percent, and increased to 24 percent in 2018.

Expectation of assistance in providing public infrastructure facilities in the locality is the second most crucial reason for voting. These facilities include roads, sewage, electricity, cooking gas, etc. In the 2018 elections, 31 percent of voters stated they voted for “development.”

Voters of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) prioritised development and patronage as the most desirable qualities in a candidate, while Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) voters valued patronage and competence; Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) voters emphasised patronage and party loyalty.

Political parties bridge people, communities and authority. Dr Gilani categorises the party structure into four tiers and two layers, offering an intriguing census of these layers, which include both underdogs and top dogs.

Local political entrepreneurs, who mobilise votes, number around 150,000. They compete for 10,000 local government positions during elections. However, these governments often remain unstable, unsupported by funds, and are dismissed before their terms conclude, with none being reinstated. They represent the real underdogs.

This layer is also experiencing a decline due to the development of modern communication methods, as political leaders strive to establish direct communication with grassroots voters.

The second tier consists of electables who lead vote bank pools and aim to contest in national or provincial assembly elections. Only 1,038 have ever been elected to the national assembly, while only 2,059 individuals have successfully received more than 10,000 votes.

These two tiers are considered the first layer. The third and fourth tiers, making up the upper layer, consist of two levels of political party leadership. Political leadership shows little interest in empowering or formalising the character of its foundational layer.

Ironically, the party structure’s top dogs become, in practice, the government structure’s underdogs in Pakistan, due to the disparity between the elected arm of the government and the unelected administrative arm.

Dr Gilani identifies five identity clusters among political party voters. Once a voter has supported a party in one or more elections, the party becomes a marker of their personal identity, and party identification assumes a relatively stable role. The ‘nation-state of Pakistan’ is represented by the Muslim League parties cluster. The second identity cluster includes the religious parties representing the aspiration for the ‘Islamic state of Pakistan’. The regional parties’ cluster stands for the ‘federal state of Pakistan.’

The socio-economic transformations over decades have produced two challengers with new vote banks. Dr Gilani labels them as two disruptive transformational identity clusters. The PPP identity cluster emerged in 1968, and PTI emerged 30 years later, in 1996.

The PPP arose due to demographic shifts that created a new class of the poor. The PPP voiced the concerns of this new poor class, which emerged because of socio-economic changes from the ‘green revolution’ and industrialisation. Since 1988, the PPP has had a voting advantage among the poor and a voting deficit among higher education groups.

The PTI emerged from the demand for political participation by the newly educated and represents the concerns of this group. In the 2018 elections, nearly a third of the PTI voter segment was from this new voter segment, including voters under 30, who might not have voted without this cluster’s emergence. The rise of PTI as a strong electoral identity has significantly impacted all other clusters, especially the PML-N, which lost eight percentage points, dropping from 32 percent to 24 percent.

The 2018 elections suggest that delivery of development does not necessarily act as a decisive motivator for votes. Exit poll data revealed that an impressive 74 percent of respondents were satisfied with the overall PML-N performance, yet its vote share in the province was only around 35 percent. PTI also caused erosion in the vote bank of the religious cluster, as a considerable section of upwardly mobile voters from the religious cluster switched to PTI. Another sizable section, with a lower socio-economic profile, cast its support to the religio-political Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP).

The second part of the book narrates the story of each election, allowing readers to observe the ebb and flow in the fortunes of Pakistan’s political parties, the changing demography and socio-economic dynamics affecting the political landscape, and the manoeuvres of the establishment working its tricks.

For instance, the 1988 elections demonstrated that, in Pakistan’s ‘winner takes all’ system, if political parties are evenly matched at the polls, a small degree of manipulation by adding or denying groups of votes could disproportionately tip the balance.

He concludes that elections have been a well-performed ritual. The real issue does not lie in the quality or correctness of the ritual; rather, it is a ritual without any product, as each cycle ends with tensions between the elected and unelected parts of the government, resulting in premature dissolutions of governments.

Dr Gilani wraps up the book by offering his advice on the current political crisis. He analyses the role of the establishment in functional terms, referring to it as the “oversight system.”

According to him, the current crisis was triggered by a surge in the demand for sharing political power by the newly educated segments of society, led by the PTI. The available space for power is insufficient to satisfy the long-suppressed demand side of power. The crisis will remain unresolved unless power is shared more broadly.

To resolve the current crisis, Pakistan needs to rapidly create new platforms of political power, to meet the demand for power-sharing that has created the crisis. He suggests the creation of 30 sub-provinces, including 10 cosmopolitan cities enjoying sub-provincial status.

He also suggests that the administrative oversight, ie the establishment, should retreat from its prevailing role of oversight and become an enabler of this new experiment.

Alongside the text, Dr Gilani uses the book to provide access to his foundation’s valuable datasets, enabling students, scholars and media persons to conduct their research and draw their independent conclusions.

The book is a compelling read during the election season and a must-read for students of Pakistan’s politics and society. Though Dr Gilani claims to use plain language, avoiding professional jargon, it remains a challenging read for an educated Pakistani reader not familiar with political theory and unaccustomed to interacting with data.

Nonetheless, it offers very insightful and rewarding content.

The reviewer holds a degree in social anthropology from the University of London and works in the field of social development. X: @zaighamkhan

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, February 11th, 2024