Islam and the Politics of Development: Shrines and Literacy in Pakistan

This chapter studies the role of religious elites in shaping the politics of development. It argues that the impact of Islam on economic development can be strongly conditioned by history and expressed through an interplay with formal institutional structures. Using insights from an ongoing project on the political economy of shrines in Pakistan (Malik and Mirza 2018), we show how regions with a greater presence of historically significant Muslim shrines experienced a more retarded growth of literacy after General Zia-ul-Haq’s military coup in 1977. These empirical patterns are explained by the historical aversion of shrine-based religious elites to education and their greater ability to suppress education in the wake of the 1977 military coup, which brought shrine elites to greater political prominence and gave elected politicians direct control over public goods provision. The chapter concludes by discussing the entry and persistence of shrine elites in electoral politics and drawing out its implications for the study of Islam and development.