he political evolution of underdeveloped polities has been persistently obstructed by the refusal of their leaders to relinquish power at the appropriate time. The phenomenon is deeply rooted in the political psychology of personal-ism and the structural weakness of these institutions. Samuel P Huntington’s observation - that the core distinction among states lies not in whether they are democratic or authoritarian but in their degree of institutionalisation - remains central to understanding why so many polities stagnate. Leadership transitions are the lifeblood of institutional maturation. In many post-colonial and underdeveloped states, rulers cling to office. Their insistence to stay in power hollows out the very institutions they claim to protect.

This pattern aligns with Acemoglu and Robinson’s influential thesis in Why Nations Fail, which argues that political systems dominated by extractive institutions—those designed to concentrate power and distribute resources narrowly - naturally generate leaders who fear exit. Departure from office threatens both their personal security and the networks of patronage that sustain the regime. Thus, rulers rationally calculate that relinquishing power may expose them to political and financial - even physical - risk. Their incentives are therefore aligned not with institutional strengthening but with survival, even at the cost of national progress. Suharto’s three-decade rule in Indonesia vividly illustrates this logic: his resistance to stepping down was not a mere whim but the predictable outcome of an extractive political order in which his departure would have unraveled the patronage system that kept the regime intact.

Douglass North argued that sustainable economic and political development requires impersonal institutions that do not depend on particular individuals. But impersonal institutions cannot emerge where leaders personalise the state and treat it as an extension of their authority. Francisco Franco’s prolonged governance of Spain exemplifies this dynamic: his depiction of himself as the sole guarantor of national unity ensured that political institutions remained subordinate to his personal authority. The Spanish state, until his death, could not begin developing autonomous institutional capacities because Franco positioned himself as the irreplaceable core of political order. Only once he was gone did Spain initiate a transition toward constitutional modernity, demonstrating how the persistence of a personalist ruler suspends institutional evolution.

Charles Tilly’s insight that “war made the state, and the state made war” helps explain why rulers in weak polities often justify their extended rule through appeals to national security. The leaders present themselves as bulwarks against internal chaos or external threat. Because these states lack strong coercive and bureaucratic structures, the leader’s monopoly on authority becomes rationalised as necessary for survival. Autocrats from Pinochet in Chile to Gaddafi in Libya deployed precisely this logic: they claimed that national stability depended on their continued presence. They exploited the insecurity inherent in underdeveloped state structures. Rather than building lasting bureaucratic and administrative institutions, such rulers typically eroded them, ensuring that the specter of instability remained a powerful justification for their tenure. As Tilly would suggest, they consolidated coercion without allowing the broader institutional development that could transform coercion into stable governance.

Francis Fukuyama’s extensive work on political order further illuminates why the failure to relinquish power is so damaging in underdeveloped polities. Fukuyama argues that political development requires a delicate equilibrium among the state, the rule of law and accountability. When leaders refuse to leave office, they distort this balance by elevating the state’s executive power above legal and institutional constraints. The result is what Fukuyama terms “political decay,” a process by which the state becomes an instrument of personal rule rather than an impersonal guardian of public interest. This decay was starkly visible in Libya under Gaddafi, whose forty-two-year rule left the country devoid of functioning institutions, so that when he eventually fell, the state collapsed entirely into factionalism. His refusal to ever contemplate a successor, let alone step aside, demonstrated how personalist rule not only weakens institutions in the present but also ensures catastrophe in the future.

Robert Mugabe’s prolonged rule in Zimbabwe offers another striking example of how the concentration of power in a single individual corrodes governance. Having initially emerged as a symbol of liberation, Mugabe remained in office for decades, long after his leadership had ceased to serve the institutional or developmental needs of the country. The machinery of governance deteriorated, the economy collapsed and political institutions hollowed out under the weight of his personalist rule. His tenure illustrates a fundamental political truth: it is beyond the capacity of any single individual to sustain effective leadership indefinitely. Prolonged incumbency almost invariably translates into stagnation rather than progress for the state and its citizens.

A similar dynamic unfolded in Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina, whose extended hold on power progressively weakened democratic checks and institutional balance. By centralising authority and suppressing political competition, her government demonstrated how even initially popular or reformist leaders can fall into the pattern of overextension. The longer such leaders remain in power, the more insulated they become from accountability, and the less capable the polity becomes of renewing itself. Both Zimbabwe and Bangladesh showed that the refusal to step aside at the right moment undermines not only governance but the very political vitality upon which national development depends.

Yet, the leaders who voluntarily relinquish power remain rare. Nelson Mandela’s decision to serve only one term and Mahathir Mohamad’s voluntary exit in 2003 stand out as almost anomalous in the developing world. Mandela’s departure was informed by a conscious desire to institutionalise constitutional norms and prevent the emergence of a personality cult, demonstrating what Robert Dahl calls “the democratic bargain:” the willingness to accept uncertainty in political outcomes in exchange for institutional stability. His exit strengthened South Africa’s nascent political institutions precisely because it signaled that the office, rather than the individual, held primacy. Similarly, Mahathir’s resignation though later followed by a return to politics showed an awareness of the importance of political succession for legitimacy, even in semi-democratic contexts. These cases illustrate that voluntary exit is not only possible but profoundly stabilizing. Yet they remain exceptions rather than models adopted widely.

The reluctance of leaders in underdeveloped polities to part with power, often justified by narratives of national security or indispensable leadership, thus emerges not merely as a personal failing but as a systemic impediment to political development. It prevents the emergence of autonomous institutions, creates political instability by blocking legitimate channels of change, fosters economic stagnation through corruption and extractive governance and erodes public trust. Lord Acton’s dictum “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” captures the moral and psychological dimension of this phenomenon, but the deeper structural explanation lies in the absence of institutional incentives for leaders to exit peacefully.

Ultimately, the maturation of political institutions in underdeveloped polities like Pakistan hinges on cultivating what Huntington called “political institutionalisation,” a process in which political behaviour becomes routinisd, predictable and bound by rules rather than personalities. For such institutionalisation to occur, leaders must recognise that genuine statesmanship is measured not by the longevity of one’s tenure but by the strength of the institutions one leaves behind. The political health of fragile states may depend, more than any other single factor, on the development of a political culture in which relinquishing power is not seen as a personal defeat but as the highest service one can render to the state and its people.

The writer is a professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.