WILL Musharraf be allowed to leave? Are there cracks developing within the PML-N on the matter? How does all of this augur for the relationship between Nawaz Sharif and the chief of army staff that the former recently appointed? Welcome to Pakistan, a proverbial haven for rhetoric and speculation, where interest in the fate of a general trumps analysis of the deep state that the former served.

Truth be told, the Musharraf saga is no longer news — notwithstanding the rantings and ravings of the TV media. When the story first broke, democrats rejoiced in the knowledge a coup-making general would be tried for the first time in this country’s history.

Yet we also knew then that Musharraf’s beloved army would tolerate only so much public humiliation and that the hue and cry would eventually die down. Alas we will have to put up with the drama for a little while longer, but soon Musharraf will be yet another military dictator fallen from grace, nestled away in the far reaches of our collective consciousness. It is a matter of when, rather than if.

I am not suggesting that the legal case against him is of no consequence to this country and its long-suffering people. Indeed, the fact that Musharraf is in the dock and that the current army leadership is reportedly having to negotiate for his departure does reflect that the once taken-for-granted fact of military domination in Pakistan has now given way to an altered political economy.

But to develop a sense of what exactly has changed, we need to focus less on Musharraf’s person and think deeply about the evolving structure of power in Pakistan that has thrown up an event as momentous as Musharraf’s indictment.

A healthy debate has emerged recently — some of it taking place on these very pages — about Pakistan’s ‘new’ political economy, framed in part around the question of whether the military remains the most powerful institution in the country. The most popular hypothesis doing the rounds is that other institutional actors, the judiciary and media foremost, have come to exercise significant political influence which is both cause and consequence of a curtailment in the military’s power.

Other participants in the debate have drawn attention to the rise of social classes and ideological forces that, while not necessarily in direct conflict with historically powerful class and institutional actors, still represent considerable change. The two that are most often flagged are a ‘nativised’ bourgeoisie that occupies urban spaces and operates largely outside the realm of formal legality, and religio-political groups that also thrive in the undocumented economy and now exercise considerable economic and cultural sway.

In this developing discussion, one of the most crucial sticking points is whether or not the state retains the cohesion that one typically assumes in referring to it.

So, for instance, state patronage for religio-political groups — militant or otherwise — is a widely acknowledged fact of recent Pakistani history. But in sociological terms it is just too simplistic to view the religious right as an extension of the ‘state’. Moreover, the state is anything but a monolith, even if one could argue that the military institution still has an apparent fondness for certain brands of religious militancy.

I think that this debate has a long way to go yet, although all the notable contributions to it offer considerable insights into our political economy. There is one aspect, though, that remains greatly underspecified: is the prevailing structure of power, as diffuse as it may have become, actually threatened by a counter-hegemony rooted in a politics of the working poor?

It may be true that the military’s power is no longer unquestioned in the way that it once was. It can also be argued that other classes and institutions have forced their way into the reckoning, and that a process of democratisation — defined loosely — is proceeding apace. Furthermore, there are visible cracks emerging in the ideological edifices of state — particularly military — power; liberal alarmism about the impending takeover of Pakistan by the religious right actually betrays the tremendous contestation taking place within both state and society about the ideological foundations of Pakistan.

All of this is well and good. But where are the people in all of this? Change does not wait for popular forces, of course. But can a case really be made that in today’s Pakistan the toiling classes actually feel more empowered than a generation ago? Beyond the populism of the superior judiciary and the corporate media, is democratic accountability a reality for a poor villager or slum-dweller?

The hegemony of the artifact that is the post-colonial state — including the military — is crumbling. But real change will come about only when working people have the necessary vehicle — and belief — to build something new atop the wreckage.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.