Daily The Kathmandu Post
Federations around the world have adapted political systems to the foundations of their socio-political and cultural realities so that proclamations of identity, the trickling down of the fruits of governance to the grassroots level and the unfurling of even patterns of development based on parity become a tangible reality.
Two federations around the world—Pakistan and the US—are peculiar examples of federal systems with a relatively very short history of nation-making and statehood. Both of these countries were never a sovereign homogeneous state before becoming republics. However, they are polar opposites in terms of federalism and the sovereign autonomy of the federated states. Unlike the US, Pakistan has an extremely centralised political system, which, despite being a federation constitutionally, is a unitary form of governance in practical terms. Although it has reached the highly mature age of sixty-five years after waging three direct and two proxy wars on the Indian and Afghanistan borders, Pakistan has not learned lessons from its own history. The bitter realities of federalism, the political system and state-building have always created a political ecology unsuitable for the strengthening of substantive democracy in Pakistan. Click to read article
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