A ‘Hybrid Regime’, Such As the One in Pakistan, Inevitably Creates Discontent
By Nadeem F. Paracha
11 Oct
2020\
The term
‘hybrid regime’ has gained increasing currency in Pakistan among analysts and
politicians. It is specifically used to explain the existential nature of the
current PTI-led coalition government, which came to power after the July 2018
elections. The elections were severely criticised by various parties for being
‘rigged,’ whereas a December 9, 2018 report by the Free and Fair Election
Network (FAFEN) found ‘various irregularities’ in the electoral process.
Illustration
by Abro
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The
government’s critics insist that institutions such as the Election Commission
of Pakistan (ECP) — at the behest of the so-called ‘military-establishment’ —
tampered with the voting and counting processes. They claim that this was done
to aid Imran Khan’s centre-right PTI, so it could gain just enough seats to
form a coalition government, especially at the expense of the country’s two
other mainstream parties, the centrist PML-N and the liberal-left, PPP. Over
the decades, the relationship of these two outfits with the
military-establishment has continued to deteriorate.
Observers
and analysts who subscribe to this view, use the term ‘hybrid regime’ in a
negative light to explain the current government as an artificially bolstered
civilian vessel of the military-establishment, propped up so that the latter
can sustain its political influence within a semblance of democracy and without
the controversial complexities of direct intervention. However, interestingly,
even though the government and its supporters rubbish such claims, there have
also been those within them who have used the term in a positive manner, to
mean that the government and military-establishment are ‘on the same page.’
Nevertheless,
‘hybrid regime’ as a concept and reality has come under increasing scrutiny and
criticism by political scientists. But this criticism was missing when the
Hungarian sociologist Elemér Hankiss first used the term. Hankiss used it in
the 1990s to describe the communist regime of János Kádár in Hungary. Kádár was
appointed by the then Soviet Union as Hungary’s premier in 1956, after a
popular uprising in Budapest against the preceding communist set-up was crushed
by Soviet forces. Hankiss treaded a fine line between the democratic
aspirations of the protestors and Soviet-style authoritarianism by introducing
civil, cultural and economic reforms that were a departure from the previous ‘Stalinist’
model of authoritarianism. But he maintained the political supremacy and
monopoly of the Hungarian Communist Party.
However,
Hankiss’ term was quickly picked up by European and American political
scientists to mean a transitional period in former communist countries and
non-communist dictatorships, which began to adopt increasing democratic reforms
and mechanisms after the end of the Cold War in 1991. Till the 1980s, countries
going through this process were described as ‘transitional democracies.’ But
this term was replaced with ‘hybrid regimes’ in the post-Cold-War period.
In an essay
for the January 2012 issue of the Journal of World Politics, the American
political scientist Yonatan Morse writes that, initially, there was an element
of optimism in the term, because most political scientists believed that hybrid
regimes would eventually evolve into becoming full-fledged liberal democracies.
Their optimism can be understood in the context of an unprecedented occurrence
at the end of the Cold War, which saw numerous authoritarian systems across the
world erode and/or adopt democratic electoral and constitutional tools and
reforms.
In 2002,
the American author and political analyst Thomas Carothers nudged political
scientists to study the term ‘hybrid regime’ without the optimism attached to
it, and without the assumption that such regimes would transform into becoming
liberal democracies. Secondly, hybrid regimes were not homogenous. After
Carothers’ essay (published in the June 2002 issue of the Journal of
Democracy), a conceptual shift occurred in the study of ‘hybrid regimes’.
According
to Morse, the common practice and theme in most ‘hybrid regimes’ is ‘electoral
authoritarianism’ and that’s how most of them are now understood (as opposed to
earlier, when they were seen as political systems transitioning to liberal
democracy). In electoral authoritarianism, elections do not stand up to
democratic standards of being free and fair.
Such
elections continue to, directly or indirectly, keep an authoritarian constant
in power, but give it ‘democratic legitimacy’ and the authority to alter the
constitution to sustain its monopoly over large areas of power that it had
earlier accumulated as a non-electoral entity, before the system went hybrid.
This arrangement can be seen in countries where once-dictatorial cliques
reinvented themselves as ‘popularly elected’ entities through sham elections.
They pay lip-service to democratic rights and manipulate the judiciary and an
‘elected’ parliament to do their bidding. Examples in this respect include
former ‘strongmen’ in certain African countries and in former Soviet republics
in Central Asia, and Vladimir Putin in Russia.
Another
manifestation of electoral authoritarianism is when a powerful state
institution, such as the military, gets one of its high ranking former members
elected through a questionable electoral process and continues to manipulate
elections and alter the constitution to keep him there (e.g. Egypt’s Abdel
Fattah el-Sisi). Or the institution may nourish the rise of an easily
manoeuvred and manageable ‘democrat,’ and aid him to come to power through a
tampered election (e.g. allegedly in Pakistan).
Yet another
manifestation is when a genuinely popular figure/party is elected through a
fair election but, once it becomes an established incumbent, it begins to alter
the constitution and laws to aid its continuation (Erdogan in Turkey).
All these
manifestations of ‘hybrid regimes’ claim to be democratic but resort to
undemocratic practices, including usurping civil rights, using strong-arm
tactics and state machinery to browbeat the opposition. However, according to
Morse, electoral authoritarianism and/or ‘hybrid regimes’ can become
problematic for those who impose and retain them.
Morse
writes that, electoral authoritarianism can be a ‘double-edged sword’ because
even the process of sham elections has the potential of creating new power
centres, and also give the opposition access to certain constitutional tools
which can be turned against ‘hybrid regimes’ — especially if, because of an
assortment of economic, political or existential threats and challenges, the
polity pours out on the streets to protest.
One can
thus conclude, that a ‘hybrid regime’, such as the one currently in Pakistan,
inevitably heads that way.
Original Headline: ‘HYBRID REGIMES’ AND THEIR
DISCONTENTS
Source: The Dawn, Pakistan
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