Pakistan’s elections have already been eventful — with one party leader’s arrest, another’s stunning return from exile, and at least nine deaths on Election Day — but how much of a change they will truly bring about remains to be seen.
Pakistan has been in political, economic, and security turmoil for years now. Between former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s expulsion from his post in 2022, the country’s record inflation and unemployment, as well as a spike in violent insurgency, Pakistan is struggling to regain a sense of stability and equilibrium, not to mention security.
Regional issues have also led to rising political temperatures. Pakistan and India are typically, though not always, engaged in some form of cross-border dispute, which becomes a serious international problem when tensions heat up between the two nuclear-armed nations. And in the post-September 11, 2001, American landscape, Pakistan has been a problematic ally, with its intelligence services benefiting from US support and collaboration while also fostering the Taliban insurgency that enabled Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and contributed to instability within Pakistan.
That particular security concern, as well as the return of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the rise of the Islamic State Khorasan Province in recent years, has renewed the insurgencies, creating an atmosphere that even stable governments would be hard-pressed to quell.
All of that has been a recipe for dissatisfaction. But if widespread anger leads to a new prime minister, that change may actually only deepen the status quo. Pakistan, though generally considered a democracy, has a hybrid regime in which leadership changes — sometimes violently — between civilian leaders who’ve been elected (in sometimes disputed contests) and unelected military officials, who often use the processes of democracy to entrench their power. That’s certainly believed to be the case this time around, as former Prime…
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