China's Belt and Road Initiative: Democratization and Regime Change in Pakistan

• In Event: International Dimensions of Authoritarian Rule

Abstract

The international liberal order, steered by the US since the end of World War II and the Cold War, is now being challenged by China’s economic rise as the global power shifts towards Asia. In recent years, the Western democratic paradigm encountered various setbacks with Trump’s presidency in the US, Brexit in the UK, and the rise of several populist leaders throughout Europe. This geopolitical landscape and China’s unprecedented economic growth in the past years have allowed China to take the world stage and reconfigure its position especially with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In 2013, China’s President launched this initiative with a focus on infrastructure development and trans-regional connectivity to enhance trade and economic cooperation for around 64 countries across Asia, Europe, and Africa by reviving the ancient Silk Road trade routes and creating new economic corridors and maritime routes. Some scholars consider the BRI as a “win-win” and “China solution” to the development needs, however, others criticize China to have a neo-realist agenda to assert its power and reshape the global order. Although China’s growing influence has been associated to hinder democracy, does China aim to promote autocracy in the host countries through the BRI? My research examines how and to what extent the BRI impacts the process of democratization and regime change in host countries. Specifically, I focus on the case of Pakistan to examine the variation as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has been regarded as the flagship project of BRI with its huge investment and infrastructure development projects. By using Levitsky and Way’s theoretical framework of “linkage” and “leverage”, I conceptualize and operationalize the independent variable of Chinese linkage and leverage for the 2000-2019 time period. I operationalize the dependent variable by using the Liberal Democracy Index from the Varieties of Democracy (V-dem) dataset and examine any trends towards autocratization. Using multivariate analysis, I examine the variation in regime changes before and during the Chinese involvement and evaluate any shift towards democracy retrenchment or autocracy promotion. Considering the socio-economic and political contextual factors, I assess if high Chinese linkage and leverage under BRI show any negative effects on democracy in Pakistan.

Author

• Gul-i-Hina Shahzad