Publication

This paper 1) summarizes the interrelated histories of democracy and federalism in Pakistan, and 2) details the country's political evolution since its third extended martial law regime, which ended in 2008. As the paper’s author sees it, the prospects for the above forms of political self-organization have improved in the post-2008 era, but too many Pakistanis – especially in the urban Punjabi heartland – remain contemptuous of the mechanisms and outcomes of mass democracy, primarily because they’re still committed to a unitary form of nationalism.