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Illustration by Abro
The nutshell identity of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) is still slotted on the left side of the conventional political divide. But over the decades, and especially after the end of the Cold War in 1991, the nature of this divide has continued to transform.
According to Richard Gunther and Larry Diamond in the 2003 issue of the Journal of Political Parties, by the 1990s, the mainstream right and left of electoral politics had become the status quo, which began being challenged by new ‘anti-status quo’ groups. Gunther and Diamond write that the roots of large electoral right/centre-right parties can be found in the 19th century, when they emerged as a reaction to monarchism or parties entirely driven by aristocratic elites.