Reserved Domains and the Great Fear Decade, Article 58(2)(b) and the Recurring Dismissal of Elected Governments in Pakistan, 1988 to 1999

Abstract

Between 1988 and 1999 Pakistan produced and dismissed four elected governments, two headed by Benazir Bhutto and two by Nawaz Sharif, each removed or fatally undermined through the same constitutional instrument, the presidential power of dissolution contained in Article 58(2)(b) of the 1973 Constitution. This article treats the decade as a single institutional pattern rather than as four unrelated crises. Building on Samuel Valenzuela's concept of reserved domains and tutelary powers and extending the delegative democracy framework developed by Guillermo O'Donnell, the article argues that Article 58(2)(b) functioned as a standing reserved domain that allowed an unelected president, and behind him the military establishment, to discipline elected governments without ever needing to suspend the constitution outright. The article traces this pattern across the dismissal of Benazir Bhutto's first government in 1990, the dismissal and subsequent restoration and forced resignation of Nawaz Sharif's first government in 1993, the unelected caretaker administration of Moeen Qureshi, the dismissal of Benazir Bhutto's second government in 1996, and the eventual repeal of Article 58(2)(b) under Nawaz Sharif's second government in 1997. It closes by asking why the repeal of the reserved domain's most visible instrument failed to produce lasting democratic stability, a question the 1999 military coup answers with some force. The article situates this history within the wider argument, developed in a companion study of the Zia and Junejo period, that Pakistani democracy after 1985 was delegated rather than restored, and that the removal of one instrument of delegation does not by itself dissolve the underlying tutelary structure.

Keywords: Pakistan, Article 58(2)(B), Reserved Domains, Tutelary Democracy, Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Farooq Leghari, Civil Military Relations.