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Pakistan’s Democratic Breakdown of 1999: An Actor-Model Perspective

Abi Chamlagai

Published 2025 in South Asia Research

ABSTRACT

After surviving military rule for a decade under General Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan again transitioned to democracy in 1988 by holding four relatively free and fair elections, along with several rounds of peaceful power transfers. However, this steady progress of democratisation was cut short by a semi-system actor, the military, which often displays tendencies to intervene in the country’s political system. Using an actor-model of democratisation, this article contends that the military seized power because not enough political pressure was exerted by the weak system actors, which included country’s two largest political parties—Pakistan People’s Party and Pakistan Muslim League (N). Besides this, the actor-model perspective reveals that disunity, party factionalism, weak-intra-party democracy, governmental instability and corruption were responsible for offering the least resistance by the system actors. Furthermore, the article argues that the Muhajirs Quami Movement Party, the anti-system actor, did not have any impactful causal role in the country’s democratic breakdown.

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