Analogías en la busca de nuevos conceptos espaciales

In this section I explain how I use the data collected during fieldwork is applied to create a social network analysis which essentially illustrates the power dynamics of the governance system in each of the three cases. To understand relationships, connections & decision making among a group of people, one must look at it as a network. Decisions and plans get developed not in a vacuum but based on interactions and discussions within a network of people. In that sense we can view a government of a country as a network of people involved in the process of governance.

Network analysis has long been used in other domains of research such as computer science, epidemiology, math and biology (Watts, 2003). Management and Business studies have

used network analysis since the 1960s in the study of organizational behavior (Katz & Kahn, 1966; Tichy, Tushman & Fomburn, 1979) and in understanding decision making patterns (Polsby, 1963; Presthus, 1965). Even though other social sciences like sociology and economics have recently been relying more and more on social network analysis, political science has yet to take a shine to this method (Wasserman and Faust, 1997; Jackson, 2014).

Maoz (2010) provides a thorough explanation of the social network analysis from a political science perspective in his book Networks of Nations: The evolution, structure and impact of international networks, 1816 – 2001.Based on the classification outlined in the book, the network analysis I am conducting is of a relational nature rather than an affiliation network. In each of the networks I am analyzing in this project, the relationship between two units has a direction, weight and rule. For instance, the relationship between the Minister of Trade – a political appointee – and Secretary Trade – a career bureaucrat – is directional and weighted. The minister on paper can overrule the secretary, has more weight than the latter’s opinion and the rule is the secretary cannot outrightly say no to a policy decision. But based on my fieldwork research, I can add nuance to the relationship and draw out the network where the Secretary Trade can bypass the Minister of Trade by opting to communicate technical aspects directly to the Principle Secretary who holds direct sway over the Prime Minister or the President.

The measures that I use for the social network analysis are Centrality, Clustering and Weight. Centrality simply means how connected one node is to other nodes in the network. Node is the technical term in network analysis for a player. For example, the President is one node and his relationships with other nodes such as the Principle Secretary is one edge i.e. one relationship. A President or PM of a country would have very high centrality score because they have relationships with other well-connected nodes such as the Chief of Army Staff and the Principle

Secretary. The principle secretary also has high centrality scores by the virtue of aiding the head of state on governance.

Clustering looks at how many smaller networks exist within a larger network. How many nodes are connected to each other and in what capacity, gives us as sense of clusters that exist? Bureaucracy itself is one cluster with sub clusters that may be completely devoid of political linkages. Weight simply refers to how important that node is apart from its centrality and clustering. Consider the role of the Chief of Army Staff in Pakistan who has significant weight but does not have high centrality and clustering score as they are on the sidelines of the network and have no active role in day to day governance. But the decision they do contribute to are of high value and their connections to highly centralized players – nodes – gives them high weight in the system.

On a larger scale, the social network analysis that is employed throughout this project analyzes social networks of governance in different case studies before and after key events to highlight how the network changes and alters the directions, centrality, rules and weights of relationship in lieu of the situation. According to my theory, in times of governance crises, the bureaucratic elites, if they are apolitical, will steady the ship and ensure stability for the country to continue function with services being provided along with consistent policy implementation.

The illustrated networks change their power dynamic based on key events and the new networks highlight altered relationship between elites. The changes between the original dynamics before a critical political crisis in contrast to the new network with altered dynamics will highlight the shift in roles by looking at centrality, weight and clustering of the key elite stakeholders. What this means is that the network will see different players move into central roles and their centrality and importance within the governance network will increase. For instance, if there are no political

crises, the Prime Minister and Principle secretary would be the two most important nodes in the network. But if there is a political crisis, the most important node becomes the senior most bureaucrat in the country given there is a crisis of leadership. This would also mean the centrality of the bureaucrat in the network would go up along with the number of relationships they manage with other stakeholders.

In the next three chapters, I apply these methods to test my theory and hypotheses. Each chapter starts with a brief history of the country, the governance dynamics and power players in each case. This is followed by discussion on critical elite players like the bureaucracy, politicians and the military. These discussions highlight the role of these elites in historical context of the cases. After that I present two instances; One event is a situation without political turmoil how governance happens in the country while the second one is governance in times of political turmoil. The compare and contrast between the two network analyses highlights the new roles of elites in times of political crises. Based on my theory, I hypothesize that in each case, as long as the quality of bureaucratic elites remains high i.e., they are professionally trained, enjoy institutional autonomy, have clear institutional identity and have merit-based recruitment, the senior bureaucratic elites will take over critical functions of the state i.e. they will call the shots and make decisions on policies as well as their implementation while the governance crises are sorted out among political and military elites. The stabilizing role they play would confirm my theoretical argument.

3 PAKISTAN: BUREAUCRACY IN CHARGE

Pakistan’s case is interesting and relevant to this dissertation due to a number of reasons. Firstly, the country presents a unique scenario whereby there are patches of genuine democracy and institution building followed by long periods of authoritarian rule. There is a practical ten-year

cycle of democratic and authoritarian rule in Pakistan that is unique in its consistency. In essence, Pakistan can be considered a near perfect case of a country moving from one political crisis to another. In its 72 years of independence, no Prime Minister has ever completed their five-year term of office. That means even during dictatorships, the Prime Minister, who is the head of state, was never able to complete their tenure due to political turmoil.

On an average, every ten years, Pakistan moves from one cycle to the next i.e. from authoritarianism to democracy. While there has been significant discussion on democratization in Pakistan as well as the strength of the military that keeps seizing power, little work has been done on studying how Pakistan keeps managing to survive these shifts and still have governance structures intact. There has also been little to no discussion in recent literature to understand how Pakistan manages to survive and even thrive at times as a country that seems to be stuck in a state of constant political crisis. The theory presented in this dissertation argues that is due to the fact that Pakistan has a high-quality bureaucratic elite that has managed to maintain significant institutional autonomy under different governments.

This chapter fleshes out this argument by initially presenting a short history of Pakistan and its institutions. This by no means is an attempt to discuss the history of Pakistan in depth, the purpose is to simply lay out the context for the argument being made. That is followed by a discussion on bureaucracy and why it has a special status in case of Pakistan. That is followed by examples of bureaucracy under different regimes since in the 1970s and their changing interactions. Network analyses of two situations are presented to compare governance structures in times of no political crisis as opposed to during a political crisis. The intention is to show how no matter what happens politically, the governance structures remains functional due to the “high quality” bureaucracy and institutional autonomy enjoyed by these senior bureaucratic elite sin

Pakistan. I end the chapter by summarizing how the bureaucratic elites are able to maintain their status as stabilizers in an otherwise volatile state to ensure economic growth as well as semblance of stability.