ABSTRACT
Political parties have not worked very well in Pakistan—though not for want of trying. Political parties, then, become loose confederations of kinship groups, and political leaders are typically prominent members of important families. Since 1958 the Muslim League has remained defunct, although several parties have borrowed its name, including, most prominently, the political parties associated with Parvez Musharraf and Nawaz Sharif. The Pakistan Muslim League is a lineal descendant of the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad, a composite party formed in 1988 to contest the general elections. The Pakistan People's Party was largely the creation of one man, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Islamist parties have been the most ideologically consistent parties in Pakistan, and the largest and most articulate of these has been the Jamaat-i-Islami, or Association of Islam. The most significant ethnoregionalist party to emerge since 1988 has been the Muhajir Qaumi Mahaz, since 1997 called the Muttahida Qaumi Mahaz.
