Abstract
This study attempts to explore, investigate and analyze Benazir Bhutto’s political leadership by focusing on her role as a ruler/Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1988-90 and 1993-96. The study will encapsulate political challenges, administrative difficulties and managerial response of Benazir Bhutto; to these issues as the first women Prime Minister of Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, as a Prime Minister of Pakistan for two terms took significant steps, worked for democratic stability, addressed socio economic challenges and tried to address social issues like women health, poverty and economic deprivation. Her opponents like Nawaz Sharif did not let her to run the governments smoothly and adopted all those tools and tactics which could destabilize her government which was, infact, the main drawback of the power struggle of 1990s. Her governments were dismissed on the pretext of corruption, nepotism and bad governance; however, she managed to rule Pakistan twice besides all these odds which are unique in the history of Pakistan. Therefore, it is of immense significant to understand the leadership qualities of lady leader in a society where women are at the margins and still she emerged as a head of main political party Pakistan Peoples’ Party(PPP) and became Prime Minister twice. Her supporters believe that she got charismatic leadership qualities that enabled her to display resilience after her father’s death and to emerge as first woman Prime Minister of Pakistan and the Muslim world. Therefore, this study would like to understand how she emerged as a political leader and how she became a head of the party and what traits made her charismatic leader and why she faced challenges and what were the implications of her becoming a lady Prime Minister of Pakistan. Much has already been written on the role of Benazir in the political history of Pakistan but hardly anyone has explained her leadership qualities by adopting any framework and this paper is an attempt to address it. The present author would like to understand the leadership qualities of Benazir Bhutto by applying various theories and approaches; however, the trait theory seems the most suitable in her case. This paper examines such questions as: What were the main characteristics of Benazir Bhutto as a female political leader? What were the major factors which contributed to the emergence of Benazir Bhutto as a political leader/Prime Minister? What were those fault lines and challenges which did not let Benzir Bhutto to complete her tenures as a Prime Minister? What were those steps and contributions which made her a charismatic leader?