JMD on NBN: Aasim Sajjad Akhtar's The Politics of Common Sense
AASIM SAJJAD AKHTAR
State, Society and
Culture in Pakistan
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 2018
November 29,
2018
James M. Dorsey
Aasim Sajjad Akhtar’s The Politics of Common Sense:
State, Society and Culture in Pakistan (Cambridge
University Press, 2018) is an incisive study of continuity as well as change in
Pakistan that has moved the country towards religious conservatism and
increased authoritarianism. Akhtar, a political scientist and self-confessed
left-wing activist, documents the development of political power in Pakistan
that with the military dictatorship in the 1980s of General Zia ul-Haq ended an
era of more liberal and left-wing politics and put the country on a path of
right-wing religious ultra-conservatism from which it has yet to deviate. In
tracking that development, Akhtar’s book makes a significant contribution by
focussing not only on its ideological but also its economic aspects as well as
the religious right’s appeal to urban shopkeepers and traders. He projects the
religious right as a vehicle for subordinate classes to access the state and
claim a stake in status quo politics. Akhtar’s contribution with this book is
also his analysis of the waning of counter-hegemonic and transformative
politics in Pakistan. Akhtar notes that the perceived benefits of carving out a
stake in a patronage-based system far outstrip the cost and risk of efforts to
transform the system. It is that cost-benefit analysis that has given Pakistan
politics resilience and undergird a system in which religion is the ultimate
source of legitimacy at the expense of any opposition to class and state power.
In looking at how subordinate classes cope through the politics of common
sense, Akhtar’s book represents a significant and innovative addition to the
study not only of Pakistan but of an era in which religious, nationalist and
populist forces are on the rise.
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James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies.
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