This is an interim version of our Electronic Legal Deposit Catalogue-eJournals and eBooks while we continue to recover from a cyber-attack.
Democracy under duress: patronage, class and the Pakistani voter: Pakistan's political parties: Surviving between dictatorship and democracy, edited by Mariam Mufti, Sahar Shafqat, and Niloufer Siddiqui, Washington, DC, Georgetown University Press, 2020, 336 pp., £37.50 (paperback), ISBN 9781626167711; The politics of common sense: State, society and culture in Pakistan, by Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018, 212 pp., £75 (hardback), ISBN 9781107155664; Crafty oligarchs, savvy voters: Democracy under inequality in rural Pakistan, by Shandana Khan Mohmand, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019, 320 pp., £85 (hardback), ISBN 9781108473637. Issue 2 (3rd April 2021)
Record Type:
Journal Article
Title:
Democracy under duress: patronage, class and the Pakistani voter: Pakistan's political parties: Surviving between dictatorship and democracy, edited by Mariam Mufti, Sahar Shafqat, and Niloufer Siddiqui, Washington, DC, Georgetown University Press, 2020, 336 pp., £37.50 (paperback), ISBN 9781626167711; The politics of common sense: State, society and culture in Pakistan, by Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018, 212 pp., £75 (hardback), ISBN 9781107155664; Crafty oligarchs, savvy voters: Democracy under inequality in rural Pakistan, by Shandana Khan Mohmand, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019, 320 pp., £85 (hardback), ISBN 9781108473637. Issue 2 (3rd April 2021)
Main Title:
Democracy under duress: patronage, class and the Pakistani voter
ABSTRACT: Pakistan's political landscape has undergone rapid transformation since the 1990s, with the emergence of new actors such as the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf and successive terms of civilian government. However, far from a universal acceptance of democratic norms, politics in Pakistan remains fraught with structural weakness, imbalances of power between civilian governments and the military, and patronage politics. Recent scholarship reviewed here offers invaluable insight into voting, and political institutions in the country, showcasing original data and analysis by political economists and political sociologists. This body of research demonstrates the richness and complexity of a country where political parties, against considerable odds, have acquired institutional coherence and stability, and where citizens in competitive constituencies leverage voting factions for collective benefits. These parties, like many others in the developing world, operate in the context of uneven development and extreme inequality: where, in the absence of universal provision of basic human needs, the foundations of representative democracy remain shaky.