Neoliberalism and Pakistan’s Rentier Economy
Since independence, Pakistan has been governed as primarily a rentier economy – leveraging its geostrategic location to attract resources from the developed world in exchange for opportunistic political objectives. This resulted in a failure to adopt sustainable development models that could foster a robust industrial sector and lay the foundations for a flourishing tertiary sector. Following the neoliberal turn, in the 1980s, this pathological relationship between global and domestic elites assumed even greater depth – with policy essentially forfeited to international financial institutions and multilateral donor agencies. Furthermore, the entire discipline of economics transformed to one that placed the neoclassical tradition above all else – with international financial institutions wholeheartedly embracing its fundamental axioms and pushing policy prescriptions on the Third World on its basis, the consequences of which cannot be overstated. The entire ordeal functioned to prevent democratization in Pakistan, keeping the security apparatus front and center of political affairs: leading to instability, inflation, piling sovereign debts, and rampant economic precarity for the majority of Pakistanis. How can this cycle be broken?
About the Speaker:
Abbas Moosvi is a Faculty Member and Research Fellow at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad. He is also the Managing Editor of Discourse by PIDE, one of Pakistan’s leading magazines on public policy and political economy. He has served as a biweekly columnist at the Express Tribune since December 2021 and has appeared on various academic/media platforms, including but not limited to BBC, PTV, Dawn, Lok Sujag, LUMS, QAU, and NUST. Politically, Abbas is affiliated with grassroots progressive groups/parties working across the country – including the Awami Workers Party, Progressive Students Federation, Haqooq e Khalq Party, and others.