Abstract:
There are two basic notions related to democratic values. Firstly, a democratic system is designed
to deal with national and international conflicts keeping the interests of the people in mind.
Secondly, in a democracy a change in the political system is through regular, free and fair elections.
However, in nascent or evolving democracies, people become impatient and try to change elected
governments through political agitation. In contrast to expectations of organizers of such
movements, elected governments despite the weaknesses in the system have withstood such
challenges, at least in Pakistan.
This research is a case study of Pakistani political system, which has survived political agitation
since the revival of democracy in the second decade of the twenty first century. The questions that
have been addressed are: Why are political agitations launched in unstable democratic systems to
bring about a change in government? Why even relatively weak governments in the evolving
democratic system survived political street protests? How weak governments in a democratic
dispensation deal with protests and agitations?
Historically, since 1966, there have been five popular movements against military dictators and
unstable democratic systems in Pakistan. Two movements were waged against the military
dictators and one succeeded, while none of three movements in the form of street protests could
remove the elected governments.
This study is inductive in its approach and assumes that weak government, in a democratic
dispensation can sustain street protests in far better manner than military dictatorships. The
research ascribes the survivability of a political government even in a struggling democratic system
to five major reasons i.e. a strong sense of legitimacy based on the results of seemingly fair and
free elections, resilience in face of challenges mounted by non-parliamentary forces, flexible
political behaviour that seeks negotiations and engagement to break an impasse, support of
political and democratic forces that fear the worst, and a genuine desire not to use force against
unarmed protesters as in contrast to dictatorial government’s propensity to quell political dissent
using disproportionate use of force.
