POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PAKISTAN

State, Society and Power

Towards a New Political Economy
of Pakistan
Majed Akhter

Five scholars engage with S Akbar

Zaidis proposed agenda for
research in the political economy
of Pakistan, Rethinking
Pakistans Political Economy
(1 February 2014). Majed Akhter
introduces the discussion, Aasim
Sajjad Akhtar discusses the
hegemonic politics of common
sense, Fahd Ali draws on
postcolonial theory to engage
Zaidis use of political
settlements, Umair Javed focuses
on associational politics in
Punjab and Adeem Suhail
theorises the negotiated state
based on his fieldwork in Karachi.
Zaidi responds to the critiques
by suggesting they are not
ruthless enough.

Majed Akhter (majed.akhter@gmail.com) is

Assistant Professor, Department of Geography,
Indiana University, Bloomington, the US.
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

june 28, 2014

he historical and social scientific

scholarship on Pakistani state and
society has mushroomed over the
past decade and a half. The reasons are
manifold and complex. The most important factor is probably the heightened
geopolitical interest, driven in large part
by the US security and foreign policy
establishment, in the nature and trajectory of the Pakistani state. Fortunately,
critical scholarship retains a degree of
autonomy from the requirements of state
apparatuses. Many scholars of Pakistan
refuse to straitjacket their research questions and arguments to fit the needs of
various security apparatuses. While this
introduction is not the place to attempt a
balanced and comprehensive review, it
is difficult to refrain from briefly showcasing a sliver of this recent scholarship.
A corpus of innovative and compelling work is developing around a host of
issues: the politics of citizenship and marginality (Ansari 2011; Gazdar and Mallah
2012; Saikia 2014; Toor 2011), corruption (Ansari 2014; Chattha 2012), nationalist ideology (Devji 2013; Khan 2012),
patronage and clientelism (Akhtar 2011;
Javid 2011; Mohmand 2014), urban history and politics (Anwar 2012; Daechsel
2013; Hull 2012), and the critical geography of drone war and terror (Mustafa et
al 2013; Shaw and Akhter 2012, 2014).
A variety of disciplinary and theoretical
commitments underpin this work. Too
often, this means that insights generated
from different disciplinary positions can
silently sail past each other in the night.
The articulation of a shared set of
problmatiques therefore has the potential to catalyse and facilitate scholarly
conversation. S Akbar Zaidi (2014), a
bulwark of historical social science in
Pakistan, has taken a welcome step in

vol xlIX nos 26 & 27

this very direction. The articles in this

forum engage Zaidis call in the spirit of
sympathetic critique.
Zaidi (2014) reviews and critiques
Hamza Alavis seminal theory of the
Pakistani state before engaging Aasim
Sajjad Akhtars recent elaboration of Alavis
theory. Akhtars response comprises the
first article in this forum. He provides
a succinct summary of his theoretical
engagements with Alavi before challenging some of Zaidis formulations.
Zaidi (2014) also proposes several central
research areas to guide and concentrate
scholarly energies, under the broad rubric
of political economy. Fahd Ali recounts
these areas before critiquing Zaidis operationalisation of the concepts of political
settlements and institutions. In the next
two articles, Umair Javed and Adeem
Suhail draw on their dissertation fieldwork to ground their engagement with
Zaidi. Javed draws attention to the role
of trade associations in the politics of
Punjab, and Suhail focuses on the blurry
boundaries between state and society in
Lyari, Karachi.
The articles share a concern with the
elusive conceptual and empirical relationship between civil society, the state,
and the economy in Pakistan. The ideas
of Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci
and institutional economist Mushtaq H
Khan exert notable influence on the
articles in this forum. Although they are
situated in starkly contrasting intellectual
traditions, and wrote in entirely different
historical and institutional contexts,
Gramsci and Khan share a preoccupation
with the articulatory processes of state
and society in the context of uneven
economic development. Gramsci queried
how ruling groups maintain political
legitimacy through the cultural apparatuses of civil society, while Khan is interested in how institutional design and
conflict interact with the processes of
economic development in poor countries.
Taken together, the articles in this
forum suggest that there is enormous
potential for the development of scholarship on Pakistan in placing Marxist cultural political economy in dialogue with
institutional economics. This could equip
49

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PAKISTAN

scholars to connect, not merely juxtapose,

two major aspects of Pakistans political
economy the prosaic and everyday
nature of domination and exploitation,
and the constraints on and opportunities for development imposed by powerful state and non-state institutions.
Neither Zaidi (2014) nor the articles in
this forum purport to be comprehensive or
even representative overviews of historical
and social scientific research on Pakistan.
To begin with, we are all guilty of a glaring disregard for the gendered nature of
Pakistani political economy, social hierarchy, and state power. Our objective is not to
settle a debate or to chisel a research
agenda into stone. Rather, in the spirit of
Zaidi (2014), our hope is to provoke,
refine, and hopefully advance scholarly
conversations regarding Pakistan.

50

References
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june 28, 2014

Hull, M (2012): Government of Paper: The Materiality

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