Re-Imagining Federalism in Pakistan
The Mushtaq Ahmed Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences (MGSHSS) organized a two-day international workshop, Re-Imagining Federalism in Pakistan: Issues of Devolution and Reform on 14-15 October 2022 at LUMS. This workshop was the culmination of the Peridot Project jointly funded by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Pakistan and Campus France, led by eminent political scientists Prof. Mohammad Waseem (LUMS) and Prof. Christophe Jaffrelot (Sciences Po, Paris). The workshop brought scholars based in various universities in Pakistan, France and England together for an exchange of ideas and analytical debates. A wide range of themes covering various dimensions of the post-18th Amendment federalism in Pakistan were discussed. These included a critical reflection on the state of federalism in Pakistan a decade after the passage of the 18th Amendment; a comparative analysis of the patterns of convergence and divergence between India and Pakistan within the federal framework and the political economy of devolution in Pakistan. The workshop also generated discussions on the practice of federalism at the provincial level keeping Sindh and Balochistan’s relations with Islamabad in view, as well as the state of Pakistan’s ‘peripheries’ especially Gilgit-Baltistan after the 18th Amendment. The demand for new provinces; the role of higher judiciary in implementing the 18th Amendment and the decentralization of internal security and policing also marked important points of deliberation. The project leaders aim to produce an edited volume based on the research papers presented at the workshop.