This paper examines the evolution of social orders in Pakistan since its independence in 1947 and relates the economic performance during this period to these social orders. The analysis is based on the social orders framework developed by North, Wallis, and Weingast (2009). I argue that the system in Pakistan has oscillated between basic and fragile limited access orders in which capacity of organizing and controlling means of violence has been the decisive factor. None of the groups, however, has been able to sustain its hold over power for longer period and make firm progress towards a mature limited access order as the excluded groups managed to organize dissent after every few years. Successive regimes failed to establish impersonal institutions, rather conflicts among whatever little institutions that existed proved extremely counterproductive. Highly personal forms of political organization and concentration of political power in a very limited number of families have meant that elections too failed to produce open access order style democracy; rather they have perpetuated limited access orders.