Assistant Professor Sarah Khan has a new article in Foreign Affairs Magazine entitled “In Pakistan, the Military Is Still Running the Show: Last Month’s Election Results Were a Surprise—but Not a Shock to the System.”
Abstract:
Pakistani voters want change. On February 8, they delivered a surprising rebuke to the powers that be in national elections. Independent candidates aligned with the imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI) won a plurality of parliamentary seats, dealing a blow to the incumbent Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) and its allies, as well as to the military, which supported the PML-N in the runup to the voting. Since then, the PML-N and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) have come together to form a coalition government, with Shahbaz Sharif of the PML-N elected to serve a second term as prime minister on March 3. Whatever government emerges, observers saw last month’s election result as a verdict that went beyond the jockeying of rival political parties: in huge numbers, they claimed, Pakistanis were rejecting the implicit arrangement that allows the military to be the country’s de facto rulers.