Assignment 2: Explanations for Regimes
The CIA World Factbook (2023) states that Pakistan holds different ethnic
groups and languages, the largest being Punjabi, making up 44.7% of the
population and 38.8% speaking the language. Pakistan’s official religion is
Islam, with Islamic law embedded in the constitution and legal system
(Pakistan, 2012) and 96.5% of the population identifying as Muslim (CIA World
Factbook, 2023).
Table 2: Economic Average Scores
Country
GDP PER CAPITA
GINI INDEX 2018
(US$) (2022)
Pakistan
6,437.2
29.6
India
8,379.1
34.6
Bangladesh
7,395.1
32.4 (2016)
South Asia
7931.1
31.9
Source: World Bank: GDP per capita 2022, Gini Index 2018
https://data.worldbank.org/
As late as 2009, Pakistan had the highest GDP per capita compared against
India and Bangladesh but has since been overtaken (World Bank Data, 2022).
The Gini index from 2000 shows that Pakistan has always scored lowest for
income inequality, but this does not defend the Pakistani economy which has
been experiencing a worsening economic situation since the COVID-19
pandemic; the country is reliant on loans from the IMF and foreign aid, whilst
suffering high inflation (BTI, 2022). Modernisation theory has been revised by
political scientists asserting that the probability of transitioning to a democracy
increases as income increases and is more likely to survive (Clark et al. 2017)
Pakistan’s economy, although weak, is industrialised so the explanation for the
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