Resilience of Weak Democracies against Political Agitation for Government Change

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.