Constitutionalism as Leadership Strategy: Comparing Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's Foundational Parliamentarism and Asif Ali Zardari's Devolutionary Pragmatism in Pakistan's Democratic Trajectory

Abstract

The history of parliamentary politics in Pakistan is defined to a greater extent than most post-colonial nations by the constitutional judgments made by individual rulers who must act within the context of a constantly weak institution and civil-military rivalry. The paper provides a comparative study analysis of two transformative leaders in the Pakistan’s political history both belongs to Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) one is ex-Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (1973-1977) and the other one is President Asif Ali Zardari (2008-2013) and again from 2024 to till today on how their difference in constitutional worldviews created both differences and similarities in the parliamentary development in Pakistan. Based on qualitative interview data on elite opinions, primary constitutional documents, parliamentary debates and an in-depth assessment of the scholarly literature, the study contends that the authentic constitutionalism substantially formed the normative constitution of parliamentary sovereignty in the most enduring and sustainable manner with the adoption of the unanimous 1973 Constitution and also created institutional weaknesses by centralizing the various governance practices. The following leadership of Zardari, with its pragmatic coalition-building and explicit devolutionary reform, operationalized the federal pledge of the charter drafted by Bhutto, in the landmark 18th Constitutional Amendment (2010), about parliamentary supremacy, and a fundamental rebalancing in intergovernmental relations. The paper also contends that the two leadership paradigms of charismatic rupture and pragmatic consolidation do not exist to oppose each other however, they are sequentially needed on the path toward parliamentary democratization in the hybrid-regime setting. The results have some implications to the comparative democratization theory especially the analysis of the relationship among the agency of the leadership, constitutional engineering and resilience of institutions in highly institutional states which are not elected. The research work is also a complement to a developing literature on constitutional design, federal redesign and democratic consolidation in South Asia and the global South in general.

Keywords: Constitutional Leadership, Parliamentary Democracy, Devolution, Pakistan Peoples Party, 18th Amendment, 1973 Constitution, Democratic Consolidation, Civil-Military Relations, Federalism, South Asia