Recent research under the rubric of the New Institutional Economics
casts light on the problem of violence and the institutional forms of
managing it. Douglass North and others have argued that since the dawn
of history, management of violence
to establish order in society has been the principal challenge for
human society.
Without a semblance of order, it is not possible to have
the structured interaction between individuals that defines social
stability, conduct transactions in the economy, and enable various
organisations of the state to function in harmony. In Pakistan today,
widespread disorder threatens the cohesion of state and society and is a
major constraint to economic growth.
How has violence been controlled in human history? Through the
establishment of resilient institutions. Here, it may be helpful to
define an institution. An institution is a set of formal rules and
informal norms that together with their enforcement mechanisms structure
human interaction. Now, for rules to be effective, enforcement
mechanisms must function. At the same time, rules embody incentives and
disincentives and so, if they are enforced, they shape the behaviour of
individuals and organisations. Violence occurs either when the rules do
not take account of organisations that specialise in violence and
undermine order or when rules are not enforced. In such a case, it is a
failure of the executive, along with its law-enforcement agencies, such
as the police and military. In any case, if as in Pakistan at present,
there are non-state organisations that have emerged as rival powers to
that of the state within its geographic domain, then it is the state as a
whole that gets undermined, not just its component organisations.
Max Weber
defines the state in terms of its monopoly over the legitimate use of
violence. Now the minimum function through which a state acquires
legitimacy is the provision of security of life and property of
citizens. In this sense, if there is widespread violence by non-state
groups, who remain unchallenged, then the monopoly of the state over
violence is lost and hence, the very legitimacy of the state gets
eroded. This sets into motion a self-destruct process, where normally
peaceful and law abiding citizens, having lost confidence in the state
to establish order, begin to join one or the other militant group or,
otherwise, take to lawlessness to protect their individual interests.
When law is not enforced and cannot provide order, the law ceases to
exist. Civil war can result at some stage in the continuing breakdown of
order. Foreign powers seeking to protect their own interests then step
in as the state unravels. This is what we observe in Sub-Saharan Africa,
Libya, and more recently, Syria.
It is in this perspective that it is possible to understand the
vociferous demand for establishing order in Karachi by the National
Assembly members as well as the Senate last week. Armed militant groups
driven by various ethnic, sectarian and gang identities are competing
for power and resources by seeking to control parts of the city. The
judiciary, too, had earlier called upon the government to fulfil its
primary responsibility of providing protection of life and property
to citizens in Karachi. But the problem is not limited to Karachi.
Taliban groups are on the rampage in Fata and even settled areas such as
Swat in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), Dera Ismail Khan in southern Punjab
and areas bordering Afghanistan in Balochistan. Worse still, in some of
the major cities in Punjab, Sindh, K-P and Balochistan, Taliban groups
have pre-positioned themselves with arsenals of weapons and trained
cadres. They have the capacity to launch simultaneous terrorist attacks
aimed at paralysing the main urban centres of the country.
This is a defining moment for Pakistan. The vision of the founding fathers was of a pluralist, democratic polity
nurtured by love, enlightenment and freedom; of a society enriched by
the soaring creativity of its human potential. Can this experience of
being, be brought to bear in confronting the forces of hate, bigotry and
oppression; the forces of fear, which alienate us from the aesthetic
and the spiritual? Can a consensus be achieved on who we are as a nation
and can the state defend the nation?