Pakistan, Aug. 8 -- Every few years, Pakistan finds itself back at the same junction: a balance-of-payments crunch, a circular debt crisis, an IMF programme, a change of government, and a fresh round of promises about reform. The details shift, the faces change, but the pattern repeats with almost mechanical regularity. The question worth asking is not why this or that policy failed, but how a country with this much talent, this capable a diaspora, and this promising an early economic record ends up stuck in this loop instead of building toward sustained development.

The answer is structural rather than personal. It is not an argument about any single leader, party, or institution failing the country. It is an argument about a self-reinf...