State and civil society in Pakistan
Subtitle: politics of authority, ideology, and ethnicity
By: Iftikhar H. Malik.
Series: St. Antony's series
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 347
Subjects: Ethnicity -- Pakistan.; Pakistan -- Politics and government.; Pakistan -- Ethnic relations.
Description: State and Civil Society in Pakistan analyses the enduring problems of governance as experienced in the predominantly Muslim polity of Pakistan in the context of an unequal relationship between the elitist state structure and weak civic institutions. The predicament is largely rooted in the unclear and mutually antagonistic relationship among the forces of authority, ideology and ethnicity.

Whereas manipulation of Islamic symbols by various regimes has exacerbated sectarianism, their own specific regionalist preferences (Muhajir and Punjabi earlier, and now with a visible Punjabi and Pushtun dispensation) have only politicized ethnicity. Volatile ethnic pluralism in Sindh and its criminalization in Karachi are the latest spectre of uneven politics in this country where successive governments have insisted on administrative rather than compact and consensus-based politico-economic measures.

Pakistan's difficulties with India help rationalize the continuity of an enormous defence establishment while significant areas like the judiciary, women's progress, education, health and press remain neglected, hampering the empowerment of civil society.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 327-337) and index.
"In association with St Antony's College Oxford."