Territorial re-organisation of administrative units in Pakistan: the demand for new provinces in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindh

Abstract

ABSTRACT The 18th Amendment ushered a public discourse on a novel ethnofederal experiment with both federal and ethnic elites advocating territorial reorganisation of existing provinces, however, this has not resulted in the creation of new units. I argue that this has to do with three inter-related dynamics: first, selective and instrumental political incentives guide the behaviour of federal political elites, combined with the securitisation of the ethnic question. Second, non-dominant ethnic elites are electorally weak and divided among themselves. Third, the rigidity of the constitutional procedure makes non-dominant ethnic elites acutely dependent on the preferences of the provincial majority ethnic group. The paper outlines discourses of the dominant and non-dominant ethnic elites as well as the National Assembly's Report of the Commission for Creation of New Province (s) in the Province of the Punjab, 2013 in order to make sense of the gap between the talk on ethnofederalism and its non-realisation.