In Pakistan, local, constituency-level social structures, particularly the economic relations between classes and the forms of authority they sustain, offer a better guide to the country’s politics than the individual- or institution-centred accounts that usually dominate analysis. Though understudied, these structures can shed useful light on a number of persistent political puzzles: why central and northern Punjab outpaces other regions on development, why “electables” dominate ballots, and why political parties lack coherent policy agendas.
This article re-evaluates Pakistani politics through a sociological lens to argue that where a commercially independent social class exists – people with secure property or market ties who do not depend on a single patron – politics is far more likely to produce policy-driven, accountable government. Parts of central and northern Punjab approximate that condition, while much of the rest of Pakistan, where this class is weak or absent, alternative forms of authority dominate. The result is lagging economic development and weak accountability of elected officials.
To explain these patterns, we turn to Barrington Moore. A foundational figure in modern political science, Moore’s seminal work, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, asked a deceptively simple question: why did some countries move towards liberal democracy while others did not? To answer his question, Moore looked at the relative strength of, and alliances between, the landed elites, tenant farmers, and an emerging bourgeoisie class.
The bourgeoisie people who earn their living from trade, industry or secure property and do not depend on a single patron were critical for Moore in the emergence and establishment of democracy. In places where the bourgeoisie were powerful and could act as a counterweight to rural landed elites, politics was able, over time, to transform into mature democracies. In areas where this class failed to emerge or was weakened due to exogenous factors such as wars or revolutions, elite capture and authoritarian outcomes generally followed.
In Pakistan, the closest we have to that bourgeoisie class is in parts of central and northern Punjab. Two factors, both engineered under British rule, inadvertently contributed to the emergence of what is today the largest concentration of this class in the country. The first was the individualisation of property rights and a push towards commercial agriculture to raise tax revenue. Where previously parcels of land were collectively owned by castes or tribes, the British moved to individual title and ownership. The second, and crucially, was the establishment of canal colonies and settlements of owner-cultivators who were expected to farm the land and generate revenue.
Far from being the result of Punjabi hegemony, as is often alleged, this performance reflects a bottom-up pressure from a class that expects and can credibly demand development
The outcome was the creation of a class of small-scale owner-cultivators engaged in market-oriented agriculture. The new towns where they were settled resembled in many ways the market towns of pre-industrial Europe. Over time, the children of these settlers moved beyond agriculture and into agro-commerce and industry, laying the foundation for a more urban-oriented, commercially minded class. Many of these settlements grew into large urban centres, while others became dense small-town clusters that remain deeply embedded in local production networks. Today, alongside agriculture, Punjab is dotted with cottage and small-scale industries, with individual family units engaged in trade, agriculture and manufacturing, very close to Moore’s characterisation of the bourgeoisie.
This has had significant political implications: because its income is tied to markets rather than landlords, the Punjabi bourgeoisie of today acts as a counterweight to landed elites. Moreover, its commercial impulse drives a demand for infrastructure, including roads, electricity, and basic administration, and creates pressure on elected representatives to deliver. The result is a more institutionalised and accountable politics.
This is why Punjab consistently shows higher levels of public service delivery and infrastructure investment than other regions. Far from being the result of Punjabi hegemony as is often alleged, this performance reflects a bottom-up pressure from a class that expects and can credibly demand development. The trend persists across elections, suggesting that the explanation is structural rather than partisan.
By contrast, in much of the rest of the country, a comparable bourgeois class has either not emerged or is not effective. The result is that the bottom-up pressures which enforce democratic accountability are absent. What exists instead are systems of patronage and economic dependency, which can be grouped into three broad modes of authority: feudal (landed oligarchy), spiritual, and tribal.
The first is a landed oligarchy. While varying in intensity, this system dominates much of Sindh, southern Punjab and parts of Balochistan. Land, rent and social power are concentrated in a small group of large landholders, and the tenant farmers depend on them for livelihood and security. In contrast to central Punjab’s owner-cultivators, these tenants do not own the land they farm, and their dependence is often so deep that formal constitutional and civic rights are displaced by patron–client obligations.
Here, tenants offer loyalty in exchange for tenancy rights. Because electoral survival depends on patronage rather than performance, there is little pressure to provide public goods or invest in development. Under Moore’s framework, this is a textbook case of how persistent landed dominance blocks the emergence of representative democracy and prevents the rise of a commercially independent middle class.
In the absence of an independent, assertive and sizeable bourgeoisie class, the necessary mechanisms for democratic accountability do not exist, and local politics is in one way or another captured by local elites
The second is the shrine-based or spiritual mode of authority. Concentrated heavily in parts of South Punjab and Sindh, this system rests not on coercion but on sacral legitimacy. Pirs in these regions command voluntary but potent loyalties (although in some constituencies, spiritual authority and control of land overlap, producing extreme levels of patronage and control). Their followers offer allegiance, time and resources in expectation of spiritual benefit or communal prestige. Politically, shrine networks operate as powerful vote banks and/or brokers.
And although a bourgeois class might exist, it is either too small to decisively shape electoral outcomes or is socially embedded in the same networks of spiritual authority, making it unwilling to act as an independent political force. The result is similar to the feudal mode: followers defer to spiritual authority, insulating candidates from ordinary electoral accountability.
Alongside these, various tribal and kinship-based systems of authority are common in parts of KP, Balochistan, and even pockets of Punjab. These structures may be less hierarchical than those of landed estates, but they produce a similar effect: individuals remain embedded in collective decision-making units, and local notables mediate access to state resources.
Whether the tie is feudal, spiritual, or tribal, the pattern is the same: in the absence of an independent, assertive and sizeable bourgeoisie class, the necessary mechanisms for democratic accountability do not exist, and local politics is in one way or another captured by local elites.
This produces several predictable outcomes. The first is obvious: weak or uneven development, since there is little pressure on representatives to deliver public goods. But the consequences go far beyond underdevelopment. Because these elites control reliable vote banks, they retain political relevance regardless of national political currents (“electables”). At provincial and federal levels, they form coalitions less to represent their constituencies and more to secure rents and patronage for themselves. Their durability in the system undermines the emergence of true party-based politics: parties must accommodate them to win elections, and so policy competition becomes secondary.
Perhaps most consequentially, their dominance fragments parties internally. Executive committees and leadership cores are weakened, decision-making becomes hostage to multiple veto players, and attempts at legislative reform are routinely stalled by local interests. This fragmentation also leaves parties vulnerable to outside interference, a phenomenon that has repeatedly afflicted Pakistan’s electoral outcomes. The sociological lens is therefore not just helpful for explaining why some regions develop faster than others; it also helps make sense of the dysfunction of Pakistan’s national politics.
The deepest fault lines in Pakistani politics run not at the national or provincial level but between regions where bottom-up accountability exists and those where it does not. Development outcomes, party coherence and even the quality of democracy flow from this underlying structure. The sociological lens does not capture every detail of Pakistan’s politics (this analysis notably leaves out the dynamics of large urban centres), but it does move the debate beyond the surface-level accounts that dominate public discussion. Structural and evidence-based, a sociological reading of Pakistan promises to explain much of the dysfunction that has so far eluded us.