The March 9, 2008 agreement between Pakistan's largest political parties to form a coalition government could mark the beginning of the end of military-bureaucratic rule in Pakistan. Until now, Pakistan has been governed by an alliance of politicized generals, bureaucrats, intelligence operatives and professionals or technocrats who have prevented politics from taking its course. Cooption of some electable politicians by "the establishment" has facilitated the unique brand of Pakistani governance that depended on military intervention, manipulated elections and dismissal of governments to create a mirage of stability. As a result, Pakistan has seen several constitutions, Legal Framework Orders and Provisional Constitution Orders in its short sixty-year history.

The Co-Chairman of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Asif Zardari and the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) Nawaz Sharif have both suffered in varying degrees at the hands of "the establishment." They have been falsely charged with crimes as diverse as corruption, murder and hijacking an aircraft. Both have been imprisoned though Mr Zardari's eleven and a half years in jail without conviction for any crime, and the assassination of his wife Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, stand out as the greatest sacrifices for defying the dictates of Pakistan's invisible permanent government. Mr Zardari and Mr Sharif both know the machinations of Pakistan's "establishment" and seem to have decided to put them to end.

The PPP-PML-N agreement was signed exactly one year after the arbitrary removal of Pakistan's Supreme Court Chief Justice by General Pervez Musharraf. The Chief Justice's refusal to go away quietly and Musharraf's subsequent repressive measures led the country's civil society and middle class into recognizing the fallacy of the notion of a benign or enlightened autocracy. Now there is a wide consensus among Pakistanis that for good or for bad, democracy is the way forward for the country and that there can be no democracy without politicians. Only General (retired) Musharraf still claims that he can provide stability to Pakistan. Everyone else, including his erstwhile U.S. backers, recognizes that Musharraf is now a marginal figure in Pakistan's future. The politicians he maligned for years are the ones with popular support.

These politicians have become wiser with time and are unwilling to accept manipulated squabbling among them that derailed previous attempts at establishing democracy. Since the elections of February 18, both the PML-N and the PPP have effectively thwarted establishment-backed efforts to divide them. A free media has helped by exposing behind-the-scenes maneuvers to create factions and blocs within the major parties.

Musharraf and his coterie will still continue to try and sow the seeds of discord among the elected politicians, reflecting the deep-rooted antipathy towards politics cultivated by Pakistan's ruling oligarchy. The Generals, technocrats, senior civil servants, international bankers and global businessmen who have virtually controlled the fate of Pakistan under long periods of military rule have also worked hard to depoliticize discourse about governance in Pakistan.

Occasional outbreaks of violence, often orchestrated by groups nurtured by Pakistan's ubiquitous security services, and rumours of corruption are meant to prove that politics is "dirty" and that only non-political leaders such as a coup-making general have the country's best interest at heart. Only last week Musharraf declared that parliamentarians should not waste their time in politicking and should focus on governance. Trained to think of governance as only administration, Musharraf does not understand that politicking is an integral part of governance.

Before the military's direct intervention in government under Field Marshal Ayub Khan, in 1958 Pakistan's politics were by and large civil, cooperative and non-violent. Patronage, protest and policy differences were all factors in the political process, as they are in any non-authoritarian system. But Ayub Khan began a process of demonizing politics and politicians that continues to this day. Some segments of Pakistan's elite have never accepted the value of the political process. They seem to have embraced the view of the country as a corporation. Under this view, rulers are measured by their ability to improve GDP growth rates just as a corporation is assessed by its bottom line profit. Uniting the people, abiding by the constitution and providing opportunities for changing governments without moving a military brigade "“all of which are important functions of politics "“ are simply not deemed important.

The anti-political crowd does not see a Supreme Court judge insisting on asking hard questions about missing persons as a hero seeking to establish the rule of law. They consider him an inconvenience, like a corporation might view an executive who undermines higher profits by questioning their legitimacy. Political parties voicing dissent on behalf of the people are seen as being equal to trouble-making unions and pro-government parties are encouraged to behave like pocket unions willing to beat up on their rivals in the interest of top management. The shareholders, in this case the oligarchs, are constantly reminded of the ever-increasing foreign exchange reserves and the expanding growth rate to keep them from asking questions about the ethics and legitimacy of the corporation's methods.

But in historic reality, economics is only one of the factors in a nation's life albeit an important factor. Seeing "a factor" as "the factor" distorts the way one understands political and historic forces. A nation's life is more than economic statistics. History judges leaders on the basis of their socio-political and institutional legacy more than their ability to drive up the bottom line "“ in case of nations, GDP growth.

Austrian-born British philosopher Sir Karl Popper explained in his book "The Open Society and Its Enemies" during a period of Right and Left wing totalitarianism in Europe that modern democracy is not about "who" rules but it is about "how" a state must govern. A constitutional mechanism of checks and balances separates a modern democracy from a dictatorship.

From Plato to Marx, the critical question in politics dealt with defining "who" should rule but that did not help in finding an ideal government. Plato sought Philosopher-Kings Marx wanted rule by the proletariat rule and the Islamists speak of governance by the Pious. In all cases, the absence of checks and balances "“the "how" of governance"”results in tyranny.

Popper wrote that an entirely new problem should be recognized as the fundamental problem of a rational political theory. According to him, "The new problem, as distinct from the old 'Who should rule?' can be formulated as follows: how is the state to be constituted so that bad rulers can be got rid of without bloodshed, without violence? Authoritarian and totalitarian governments can sometimes not be removed, even with bloodshed, in contrast to Richard Nixon's government in the United States that was removed by impeachment without bloodshed.

The distinguishing feature of a good system of government, Popper says, is its openness to criticism. "No system is capable of doing everything right, so no system should have too much power," is how one scholar summarized the philosopher's views. If Pakistan's tragic political history of military interventions and the obsession of the drawing room class with finding "a clean government of technocrats and patriotic generals" are to be avoided, we must turn to Popper's ideas of an Open Society.

The agreement between Mr Zardari and Mr Sharif offers an opportunity for the creation of a stable democratic coalition. Instead of attempting to undermine it to keep Musharraf incharge, Pakistan's permanent institutions of state should now allow the politicians to move Pakistan in the direction of an open democratic society that lets political accommodation and negotiation determine the direction of the state rather than manipulation by hidden hands. The two leaders must now ensure that their cooperation leads to the laying of the foundations of democracy and Pakistan never returns to the era of extra-constitutional authoritarianism.

Husain Haqqani is Director of Boston University's Center for International Relations, and Co-Chair of the Islam and Democracy Project at Hudson Institute, Washington D.C. He is author of the book 'Pakistan between Mosque and Military'.)