The recent controversy over the appointment of DG ISI raises important questions about sovereign power for scholars and laypeople alike. What is power in general? What is sovereign power in particular? Is it money, weapons, manpower, science, religion, beauty, magic or all of these? Or none of these? Does it belong to one person or can it be shared between two or more persons? What is the role of institutions in this debate? Do ordinary people have any role in power struggles? What about the disabled and the LGBTQ+? How does one acquire sovereign power? How is it maintained? How is it destroyed? The stakes are high enough that we should try and answer these simple but all important questions.
It is hard to point out any prominent country in the world today whose people have not had a long history of co-existence with shared values and traditions, other than Pakistan. The provinces put together as ‘West Pakistan’ in 1947 surely have their own individual histories and even a brief collective history as part of India under the Mughals and the British, but never before in history did these four provinces exist as a separate sovereign entity. This meant that Pakistan had no traditional rules of sovereign power and was in fact starting with a clean slate.
Unfortunately, the slate is still as clean as it was on 14 August 1947 because nobody here ever learnt exactly what ‘sovereign power’ is nor did any other country volunteer to teach them. This lack of knowledge resulted in ‘East Pakistan’ breaking away from us, and our ‘state’ oscillating between democracy and dictatorship, theocracy and secularism, centralisation and devolution and all other possible variations of government under the sun. We have literally done every possible experiment in governance during the last 74 years and still do not have any clue as to the best model for running this country.
Fortunately, all these experiments, if looked at closely by an informed citizen, reveal the basic principles of sovereign power that hold true not only in Pakistan but across the world and throughout history. One might think that Machiavelli already revealed those principles 500 years ago, but that would be wrong. Machiavelli only tried to describe how a monarch might try to remain in power but he hardly revealed anything about the nature and behaviour of sovereign power itself.
The fact of the matter is that although ‘sovereign power’ is a social phenomenon in human societies, it is actually a thing-in-itself, subject to certain universal principles that manifest themselves only in the long term – say in 10 to 25 years. The ten most important of these principles, with one example each, are outlined below for general edification of the people of Pakistan.
1- Definition and composition: Sovereign power is the collective imagination of all individuals in a society.
In ordinary parlance, many different things are called ‘power’ – muscle, weapons, money, religion, science, beauty, magic, spirituality, etc. But the power to rule – the sovereign power – is none of these, nor does it belong to any individual, even if he is a King. Rather, it is the collective or aggregate imagination of all individuals in a society, hovering above their heads like a single cloud of thoughts. Every individual plays an equal role in its formation, regardless of whether they do it consciously or unconsciously.
The richest and the poorest, the smartest and the stupidest, the strongest and the weakest, men and women, straight and LGBTQ+, they all have an equal role in forming and upholding this throne-shaped cloud of thoughts. In other words, sovereign power is inherently inclusive and deliberative.
Historically, monarchies were always aware of this general expanse of sovereign power. Hence, the famous saying of Caliph Umar: “Even if a goat dies in an accident on the banks of River Euphrates, I am worried that Allah will hold me accountable for it on the Day of Judgment'' (as quoted in Huliyatul Awliya, p.63, Darul Isha’at, Karachi, 2006). Similarly, the fact that transgender persons in Pakistan are now being recognized as citizens with a distinct identity but all rights of citizenship is also a manifestation of the above general principle.
The thought-cloud of sovereign power connects and binds all individuals in a society regardless of their identity, thereby creating a minimum pool of trust among them. All communication and transactions in a society depend on this common pool of trust. That is, it ensures that, at the minimum, one word has more or less the same meaning and one currency has more or less the same value for all individuals in a given society.
The most well-known example today of this principle is the phrase on the US currency notes: “In God we trust”. The fact that the USA is a secular and not a theocratic country makes it clear that the operative word in this phrase is not “God” but “trust”.
Sovereign power can, in theory, manifest itself purely in the form of trust among individuals in a society. However, since societies face novel problems and challenges every day, the common social trust requires precise definitions and an enforcement mechanism for those who violate these definitions. This mechanism, as a unity, is called ‘the law of the land’, which, as is well known by now, itself comprises three powers. Legislative power defines the essential values of the public trust and prescribes punishments for their violations. Executive power ensures that the trust is carried out on a daily basis and those violating it are arrested. Adjudicative power ensures that the accused are given a chance to defend themselves and punishment, if any, is announced in full view of the public so as to reinforce the trust.
Historically, monarchs held all three powers, acting as the sole lawmaker, chief executive and chief justice. However, the USA was the first country in history to acknowledge these three distinct powers and allocate them to three distinct institutions.
The thought-cloud of sovereign power has many contributing imaginations but, at any given point in time, all these imaginations can be organised into only one visible form or personification. In fact, a sovereign power can take only one of these two possible forms: a King or a written Constitution. Conversely, a country or a nation cannot have two Kings at a time, or two Constitutions, or both a Constitution and a King-outside-the-Constitution (that is, both de jure and de facto rulers). Such a hybrid sovereign, no matter how well-designed, would eventually resolve itself into a single entity.
For example, the ‘hybrid regime’ in place in Pakistan since 25 July 2018 – with the Prime Minister acting as the de jure ruler and the army chief as the de facto ruler - has not only been unable to provide meaningful governance but has also tended to move towards a unity on significant questions of domestic and foreign policies. Indeed, the congenital defect in the present regime makes it highly unlikely to complete its five-year term.
For any citizen, it takes quite a lot of time and experience to understand the complex organisation and operation of sovereign power, but once it is understood, any citizen is capable of destroying it in its entirety. That is, any citizen can kill the King or write a new Constitution. Therefore, the only way to establish sovereign power and keep it intact and operational is through continuous public education and buy-in. All adult citizens must have a functional consensus on the basic features of the sovereign power, and these features must be reiterated and reproduced every day. In other words, the legislative, executive and judicial elements of sovereign power must engage with and uphold the public trust on a daily basis.
For example, most democracies under a written Constitution today require a supermajority or near consensus to adopt or amend a Constitution. Ignoring this principle was also the primary reason for East Pakistan to break away from West Pakistan in the wake of the 1970 general elections.
The cloud of sovereign power is absolutely lethal on its edges, and these edges must be directed outwards, or else they turn inwards. When sovereign power is managed successfully, it expands outwards into an empire, federation or confederation. However, if it is understood incorrectly or managed badly, it turns inwards and pits its constituent imaginations against each other - one nation becomes many nations and a ripe target for manipulation and occupation by a foreign nation that knows how to handle sovereign power.
For example, the early Islamic empire was able to expand rapidly because it was not only internally coherent but also took advantage of internal weaknesses of its neighboring empires. The formation of the European Union is also explained by this basic principle. Conversely, the continuous downslide of Pakistan’s international stature since 1947, including the breakup of the country and periodic rebellions in all provinces, has meant that sovereign power in Pakistan has essentially been reduced to sovereign power in Lahore.
Sovereign power is uniquely and exclusively human in its composition. That is, material resources like money and weapons, natural phenomena like storms and earthquakes, and supernatural powers like magic and ghosts have no direct role in its formation or destruction. Rather, as noted above, sovereign power is rooted in trust among individuals and no worldly or other-worldly power can destroy it as long as this trust holds. In other words, sovereign power is inherently secular and realist, even when it operates in the name of a God or some philosophical or physical ideal.
The best recent example of this principle is the survival and return of Taliban – held together by a common trust in the religion of Islam - despite being hunted for 20 years by an all-powerful and all-knowing superpower.
Human beings tend to live in communities and societies that naturally create their own sovereign power. Therefore, even in the worst of times when sovereign power does not exist or breaks down, either due to a people’s own ignorance or because of an external occupation, there is always at least one individual among them who is capable of knowing how to establish or reestablish it. However, such an individual must make a conscious effort to acquire the requisite knowledge and then appropriately manifest and share her knowledge to unite her people, or else the ongoing anarchy or occupation will not end.
With particular reference to Pakistan, where anarchy has prevailed since its Independence, it seems to this author that this ‘accidental King’ was either Qudratullah Shahaab or Sharifuddin Pirzada but, unfortunately, neither of them realised or actualised their capability.
A people without an understanding of the above rules of sovereign power remain unable to organise themselves into a society or community. Rather, they have an animal existence as in a jungle or ‘the state of nature’, with every man for himself, nobody trusting anybody and every day bringing new trials and tribulations. Every individual is free to call himself a King but his power does not extend beyond his dependents. Most ridiculously, ignorance of the nature and behaviour of sovereign power atomizes the thought-cloud of collective imagination, which in turn devolves upon some ordinary and desperate people and fools them into thinking that they have certain supernatural powers. The survival or progress of such a people is purely a coincidence depending on the benevolence or interests of foreign sovereign powers.
The chronic political instability in Pakistan featuring alternating periods of civil and military rule punctuated by mass protests and tributes to long-dead saints is the clearest living example of this principle. Similarly, one of the best historic examples of this principle is the “Anarchy” that prevailed in England in the mid-twelfth century, featuring hundreds of “pop-up” castles and an incident of the London crowds obstructing the coronation of a Queen despite her victory on the battlefield and support from the clergy.
The above nine laws are fairly self-evident to any student of history. However, for any poor soul who is still confused, all these laws may be conveniently and accurately explained through a simple analogy: playing catch, which is the simplest of all the games. That is, the best way to visualize sovereign power is to imagine a game in which a single ball is moved from one person to another, in a circle consisting of all the people in a land. Every individual gets the ball for a more or less fixed time period and, while they have it, they are free to play with it however they like. The sovereign power – understood as the collective imagination of a people manifested as a unity forming the public trust, the law of the land, and the consensus of elders - will hold as long as the ball remains or is kept in circulation. However, the moment anybody tries to steal the ball from another, or hold onto it permanently, the ball disappears along with the circle, leaving only mindless and pointless anarchy behind. In other words, people who do not know how to play with sovereign power get played by the sovereign power.
It is hard to point out any prominent country in the world today whose people have not had a long history of co-existence with shared values and traditions, other than Pakistan. The provinces put together as ‘West Pakistan’ in 1947 surely have their own individual histories and even a brief collective history as part of India under the Mughals and the British, but never before in history did these four provinces exist as a separate sovereign entity. This meant that Pakistan had no traditional rules of sovereign power and was in fact starting with a clean slate.
Unfortunately, the slate is still as clean as it was on 14 August 1947 because nobody here ever learnt exactly what ‘sovereign power’ is nor did any other country volunteer to teach them. This lack of knowledge resulted in ‘East Pakistan’ breaking away from us, and our ‘state’ oscillating between democracy and dictatorship, theocracy and secularism, centralisation and devolution and all other possible variations of government under the sun. We have literally done every possible experiment in governance during the last 74 years and still do not have any clue as to the best model for running this country.
Fortunately, all these experiments, if looked at closely by an informed citizen, reveal the basic principles of sovereign power that hold true not only in Pakistan but across the world and throughout history. One might think that Machiavelli already revealed those principles 500 years ago, but that would be wrong. Machiavelli only tried to describe how a monarch might try to remain in power but he hardly revealed anything about the nature and behaviour of sovereign power itself.
The fact of the matter is that although ‘sovereign power’ is a social phenomenon in human societies, it is actually a thing-in-itself, subject to certain universal principles that manifest themselves only in the long term – say in 10 to 25 years. The ten most important of these principles, with one example each, are outlined below for general edification of the people of Pakistan.
1- Definition and composition: Sovereign power is the collective imagination of all individuals in a society.
In ordinary parlance, many different things are called ‘power’ – muscle, weapons, money, religion, science, beauty, magic, spirituality, etc. But the power to rule – the sovereign power – is none of these, nor does it belong to any individual, even if he is a King. Rather, it is the collective or aggregate imagination of all individuals in a society, hovering above their heads like a single cloud of thoughts. Every individual plays an equal role in its formation, regardless of whether they do it consciously or unconsciously.
The richest and the poorest, the smartest and the stupidest, the strongest and the weakest, men and women, straight and LGBTQ+, they all have an equal role in forming and upholding this throne-shaped cloud of thoughts. In other words, sovereign power is inherently inclusive and deliberative.
Fortunately, all these experiments, if looked at closely by an informed citizen, reveal the basic principles of sovereign power that hold true not only in Pakistan but across the world and throughout history.
Historically, monarchies were always aware of this general expanse of sovereign power. Hence, the famous saying of Caliph Umar: “Even if a goat dies in an accident on the banks of River Euphrates, I am worried that Allah will hold me accountable for it on the Day of Judgment'' (as quoted in Huliyatul Awliya, p.63, Darul Isha’at, Karachi, 2006). Similarly, the fact that transgender persons in Pakistan are now being recognized as citizens with a distinct identity but all rights of citizenship is also a manifestation of the above general principle.
- Purpose: Sovereign power creates a minimum pool of trust among all individuals in a society.
The thought-cloud of sovereign power connects and binds all individuals in a society regardless of their identity, thereby creating a minimum pool of trust among them. All communication and transactions in a society depend on this common pool of trust. That is, it ensures that, at the minimum, one word has more or less the same meaning and one currency has more or less the same value for all individuals in a given society.
The most well-known example today of this principle is the phrase on the US currency notes: “In God we trust”. The fact that the USA is a secular and not a theocratic country makes it clear that the operative word in this phrase is not “God” but “trust”.
- Structure: Sovereign power comprises powers of legislation, execution, and adjudication.
Sovereign power can, in theory, manifest itself purely in the form of trust among individuals in a society. However, since societies face novel problems and challenges every day, the common social trust requires precise definitions and an enforcement mechanism for those who violate these definitions. This mechanism, as a unity, is called ‘the law of the land’, which, as is well known by now, itself comprises three powers. Legislative power defines the essential values of the public trust and prescribes punishments for their violations. Executive power ensures that the trust is carried out on a daily basis and those violating it are arrested. Adjudicative power ensures that the accused are given a chance to defend themselves and punishment, if any, is announced in full view of the public so as to reinforce the trust.
Historically, monarchs held all three powers, acting as the sole lawmaker, chief executive and chief justice. However, the USA was the first country in history to acknowledge these three distinct powers and allocate them to three distinct institutions.
- Appearance: Sovereign power can only have one visible form or personification at a time.
The thought-cloud of sovereign power has many contributing imaginations but, at any given point in time, all these imaginations can be organised into only one visible form or personification. In fact, a sovereign power can take only one of these two possible forms: a King or a written Constitution. Conversely, a country or a nation cannot have two Kings at a time, or two Constitutions, or both a Constitution and a King-outside-the-Constitution (that is, both de jure and de facto rulers). Such a hybrid sovereign, no matter how well-designed, would eventually resolve itself into a single entity.
For example, the ‘hybrid regime’ in place in Pakistan since 25 July 2018 – with the Prime Minister acting as the de jure ruler and the army chief as the de facto ruler - has not only been unable to provide meaningful governance but has also tended to move towards a unity on significant questions of domestic and foreign policies. Indeed, the congenital defect in the present regime makes it highly unlikely to complete its five-year term.
- Operation: Sovereign power can only operate through consensus of elders.
For any citizen, it takes quite a lot of time and experience to understand the complex organisation and operation of sovereign power, but once it is understood, any citizen is capable of destroying it in its entirety. That is, any citizen can kill the King or write a new Constitution. Therefore, the only way to establish sovereign power and keep it intact and operational is through continuous public education and buy-in. All adult citizens must have a functional consensus on the basic features of the sovereign power, and these features must be reiterated and reproduced every day. In other words, the legislative, executive and judicial elements of sovereign power must engage with and uphold the public trust on a daily basis.
For example, most democracies under a written Constitution today require a supermajority or near consensus to adopt or amend a Constitution. Ignoring this principle was also the primary reason for East Pakistan to break away from West Pakistan in the wake of the 1970 general elections.
- Size: Sovereign power either expands or contracts but never stays the same.
The cloud of sovereign power is absolutely lethal on its edges, and these edges must be directed outwards, or else they turn inwards. When sovereign power is managed successfully, it expands outwards into an empire, federation or confederation. However, if it is understood incorrectly or managed badly, it turns inwards and pits its constituent imaginations against each other - one nation becomes many nations and a ripe target for manipulation and occupation by a foreign nation that knows how to handle sovereign power.
For example, the early Islamic empire was able to expand rapidly because it was not only internally coherent but also took advantage of internal weaknesses of its neighboring empires. The formation of the European Union is also explained by this basic principle. Conversely, the continuous downslide of Pakistan’s international stature since 1947, including the breakup of the country and periodic rebellions in all provinces, has meant that sovereign power in Pakistan has essentially been reduced to sovereign power in Lahore.
- Limitation: Natural or supernatural resources have no direct bearing on sovereign power.
Sovereign power is uniquely and exclusively human in its composition. That is, material resources like money and weapons, natural phenomena like storms and earthquakes, and supernatural powers like magic and ghosts have no direct role in its formation or destruction. Rather, as noted above, sovereign power is rooted in trust among individuals and no worldly or other-worldly power can destroy it as long as this trust holds. In other words, sovereign power is inherently secular and realist, even when it operates in the name of a God or some philosophical or physical ideal.
The best recent example of this principle is the survival and return of Taliban – held together by a common trust in the religion of Islam - despite being hunted for 20 years by an all-powerful and all-knowing superpower.
- The bare-minimum scenario: There is always a King.
Human beings tend to live in communities and societies that naturally create their own sovereign power. Therefore, even in the worst of times when sovereign power does not exist or breaks down, either due to a people’s own ignorance or because of an external occupation, there is always at least one individual among them who is capable of knowing how to establish or reestablish it. However, such an individual must make a conscious effort to acquire the requisite knowledge and then appropriately manifest and share her knowledge to unite her people, or else the ongoing anarchy or occupation will not end.
With particular reference to Pakistan, where anarchy has prevailed since its Independence, it seems to this author that this ‘accidental King’ was either Qudratullah Shahaab or Sharifuddin Pirzada but, unfortunately, neither of them realised or actualised their capability.
- The worst case scenario: Without sovereign power, law of the jungle prevails.
A people without an understanding of the above rules of sovereign power remain unable to organise themselves into a society or community. Rather, they have an animal existence as in a jungle or ‘the state of nature’, with every man for himself, nobody trusting anybody and every day bringing new trials and tribulations. Every individual is free to call himself a King but his power does not extend beyond his dependents. Most ridiculously, ignorance of the nature and behaviour of sovereign power atomizes the thought-cloud of collective imagination, which in turn devolves upon some ordinary and desperate people and fools them into thinking that they have certain supernatural powers. The survival or progress of such a people is purely a coincidence depending on the benevolence or interests of foreign sovereign powers.
The chronic political instability in Pakistan featuring alternating periods of civil and military rule punctuated by mass protests and tributes to long-dead saints is the clearest living example of this principle. Similarly, one of the best historic examples of this principle is the “Anarchy” that prevailed in England in the mid-twelfth century, featuring hundreds of “pop-up” castles and an incident of the London crowds obstructing the coronation of a Queen despite her victory on the battlefield and support from the clergy.
- Analogy for lay people: Managing sovereign power is like playing catch.
The above nine laws are fairly self-evident to any student of history. However, for any poor soul who is still confused, all these laws may be conveniently and accurately explained through a simple analogy: playing catch, which is the simplest of all the games. That is, the best way to visualize sovereign power is to imagine a game in which a single ball is moved from one person to another, in a circle consisting of all the people in a land. Every individual gets the ball for a more or less fixed time period and, while they have it, they are free to play with it however they like. The sovereign power – understood as the collective imagination of a people manifested as a unity forming the public trust, the law of the land, and the consensus of elders - will hold as long as the ball remains or is kept in circulation. However, the moment anybody tries to steal the ball from another, or hold onto it permanently, the ball disappears along with the circle, leaving only mindless and pointless anarchy behind. In other words, people who do not know how to play with sovereign power get played by the sovereign power.