SOME facts about this country are very clear. It faces big threats in the next 25 years that may dwarf the big ones of the last 75 years. The remedies are quite clear too but misrule impedes their adoption. Unfortunately, the ‘sages’ give conflicting and iffy paths to end misrule.

I checked the merit of 10 such paths against those taken by 20 key states. These include global growth leaders like Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore and lesser regional leaders like Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand in Southeast Asia; India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives in South Asia; Turkey and Israel in the Middle East; South Africa, Mauritius and Seychelles in Africa; and Brazil and Mexico in Latin America.

The first path is revolution via public uprising. It only ends the old autocratic regime, and usually the army and politico-economic system with it. But it often gives a new autocracy, and rarely quick progress, which may come after its own demise. The only revolt with even a tiny chance of toppling the current system is an extremist one.

Angry and short street protests have replaced tough and long, armed revolutions in a yuppie, instant era. They don’t end the old system but just a regime. Unless led by grassroots progressive groups that win polls later, they can’t yield significant progress, as in our own case. In Sri Lanka, protests just reinstalled an aged, right-wing, elite insider.

In 16 cases, old parties just adopted good strategies.

The next three paths — army, technocratic or hybrid rule — advocate short breaks from democracy to fix the political system’s ills. But systemic ills emerge and reflect societal ills. Fixing them means fixing society, which is often too hard. In my sample, only Taiwan and Korea did well under army rule, but more due to huge US aid, and not under technocratic or hybrid rule. Six in my sample, and 50-plus countries globally did poorly under all three. We did badly in three army eras despite US aid, and recently under a hybrid era, with the PTI and establishment now locking horns as a suffering nation sighs wearily.

The success of China and Vietnam has evoked much interest in the virtues of one-party rule among the sages despite its big failures elsewhere. Both are run by communist atheist parties. But our communists are moribund and national religious fervour naturally won’t tolerate atheistic views. None of our parties have the huge capacities that the parties in China and Vietnam got via long wars — even then they misfired for long after victory. A dominant long-ruling party may have led to progress in some cases like Singapore but not in many others. National pluses emerge from local societal traits; they can’t be copied and pasted across nations and must be crafted slowly over decades within countries.

Some see fixing the poll system as the cure: presidentialism, proportional representation and term and family limits. But data shows no gains from them. All but two in my sample are multiparty democracies, albeit weak ones. Eight have parliamentary, seven presidential and five mixed systems and half don’t have the PR system. Only the presidential ones have term limits but neither type has limits on family. Nor do simple switches give progress: Turkey changed to presidentialism but is doing worse now.

Some crave a theocracy, but lack good ideas on how it will work economically and politically today. States like Sudan and Iran have not done well. Even those mixing faith and politics experience political harm: for eg, India, Israel and Turkey. Many love populist messiahs for their rhetorical promises of change of elitist, corrupt systems. But they fail, lacking clear ideas, as we know well from our recent exposure to one. So this path is a damp squib too.

If these paths didn’t work well in my sample, what did? The answer is surprisingly simple: in 16 cases, old parties just adopted good strategies (eg, exports and pro-poor growth and cutting twin deficits) under the same electoral/political system, often after big crises. The other four examples were one-party and army rule cases, unsuited for us.

Lest this simple answer trigger excess national ecstasy from a false view that the long desired progress we see even arch-rival India attain may soon be our fate too, let’s tamp emotions with realism. Long autocracy has filled our politics with patronage, extremism, elitism, a short vision and oblivious institutions. So it can’t easily do better. Despite many economic and political crises, it remains unbent. This review doesn’t show a miracle short-cut to fix it, but that there isn’t one. So we must stop chasing futile novel ideas; instead, we must push for better strategies by supporting new grassroots leftist parties which alone offer fair and durable progress and are the tenth and the best path. But progress may be slow given autocracy’s bad legacies.

The writer is a political economist with a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

murtazaniaz@yahoo.com

Twitter: @NiazMurtaza2

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2022