Leadership Crisis or Systemic Failure? Understanding Pakistan’s Politics

Abstract

This article critically examines Pakistan's enduring political instability since 1947, interrogating whether its root causes lie primarily in a leadership crisis characterized by dynastic dominance, personalistic rule, corruption, and the absence of visionary, accountable leaders or in systemic failures embedded in institutional weaknesses, civil-military imbalances, electoral manipulations, elite capture, and economic dependencies. Drawing on historical-comparative analysis and thematic synthesis, the study traces the evolution of Pakistan's polity through military coups, short-lived civilian governments, and hybrid regimes, highlighting key patterns of elite fragmentation, regional tensions, and persistent civil-military asymmetry. The leadership crisis perspective is substantiated through evidence of post-Jinnah vacuums, failures during the 1988-1999 democratic alternation, and recent polarization under figures like Imran Khan, demonstrating how self-interested leadership erodes civilian authority and invites military intervention. Conversely, the systemic failure perspective reveals how structural constraints overdeveloped military prerogatives, weak institutions, and patronage politics systematically produce and sustain dysfunctional leadership, as illustrated by hybrid regime dynamics from 2018-2022, post-2022 unrest, and elite capture perpetuating inequality. The analysis concludes that these dimensions are not mutually exclusive but reciprocally reinforcing, creating a self-sustaining cycle of instability that demands simultaneous reforms in leadership selection and institutional architecture to achieve genuine democratic consolidation and national resilience.

Keywords: Pakistan politics, leadership crisis, systemic failure, civil-military imbalance, hybrid regime, elite capture