Monarchies, dynasties, institutions
It has become de rigueur these days for many commentators to speak alarmingly about the pitfalls of political dynasties. The ‘dynasties’ they particularly disapprove of are the Sharif and the…
Backdoor delimitation
GENERAL election 2013 was held in constituencies demarcated in 2002. For the 2018 elections, boundaries were defined afresh on the basis of Census 2017’s provisional results. With a new census…
Is the party over?
WHAT is the PTI’s electoral future after recent events? The answer in the short term, unfortunately for its remaining party leaders, depends more on the military leadership than on any…
Whither public service?
IN the past two decades that the country has been in the midst of various economic and service delivery crises, nearly all solutions proposed by economists, policy professionals, and even…
Disaster orthodoxy in Pakistan
ALMOST 40 years ago, ‘disaster orthodoxy’ started being challenged and critiqued in Western societies by researchers such as Kenneth Hewitt, Paul Susman and Phil O’Keefe, amongst others. According to Kathleen…
Imperial ideology
AT its zenith, the British Empire was celebrated by its ideologues as the dominion upon which the sun never set. When it came, however, the end was eye-catchingly inglorious —…
As opium is to heroin addicts
ROMILA Thapar delivered yet another magisterial lecture on history last week. Titled ‘Our history. Their history. Whose history?’, the 91-year-old professor wove the theme around a quote from Eric Hobsbawn…
Do parties understand youth bulge?
PAKISTAN is the 46th youngest country with a median age of 20.4 years among 237 countries and territories in the world, according to UN Population Division statistics released this year.…
Crisis in party
IS there any political party in the entire democratic world, which has not faced a crisis; be it a crisis of leadership, of organisation, of the behaviour of cadres or,…
Of cavemen and nationalists
WE may cry or mope and petition the powers that be. We may even succeed in finding a kind-hearted judge who would cancel the shocking release of 11 men convicted for the…
