This chapter provides a brief history of political competition in Pakistan to set the context for recruitment and selection of the political elite. It highlights how Pakistan’s parallel electoral system and FPTP nature of electoral contests have encouraged a pattern of selecting party candidates with strong links to electoral districts. Symptomatic of the weak institutionalization of the party system, a key finding of this chapter is that Pakistani political parties have not invested in party organization and membership development leading to low levels of party identification. This in turn explains why the main linkage between parties and voters is often mediated by locally influential politicians.