Pakistan keeps circling back to the same question, even if it rarely says it out loud: what actually keeps the system stable—tight control or broad participation?

Every few years, usually in the middle of a political crisis, this question resurfaces with urgency. One side insists that without firm institutions—rules that are enforced, not negotiated—the system falls apart. The other argues that without inclusion, those same rules lose meaning because people stop believing in them. Both are right. And that is precisely the problem.

Pakistan has tried both approaches repeatedly. Neither has worked on its own.

The case for control is easy to understand. A political system cannot function if rules are optional. When parties take their battles to the streets instead of institutions, when pressure matters more than process, the entire structure starts to bend. Decisions begin to look less like outcomes of law and more like responses to whoever can create the most disruption. Over time, that kind of politics becomes unsustainable.

There is nothing theoretical about this in Pakistan’s case. The country’s early decades were marked by weak civilian governments, constant infighting, and an inability to manage political disagreements within a stable framework. The eventual intervention by Ayub Khan in 1958 came after years of drift, not in a vacuum. The same pattern repeated before Zia-ul-Haq took power in 1977—mounting political confrontation, institutional breakdown, and a system that could no longer contain its own conflicts.

From this angle, the lesson........

© The Friday Times