Workshop 'The State, Bureaucracy, and Policy in Contemporary Pakistan'

Convened by Guillaume Beaud (OxPo/Department of Politics and International Relations, Nuffield College, Oxford)

Download the programme here.

Scholarship on contemporary Pakistan remains fragmented across theoretical and methodological approaches structured by disciplinary traditions (Political Sociology, Anthropology, Comparative Politics, South Asian Studies), journals, and academic institutions in which scholars of Pakistan are dispersed. While this fragmentation has enabled prolific research embracing a plurality of approaches and objects, it has also deprived scholars of  shared intellectual platforms in which to engage collectively in a reflection on contemporary Pakistan.

This workshop seeks to provide such a space. It brings together current research focusing on the role of the state, bureaucracy, and public policy to illuminate social and political transformations (re)shaping contemporary Pakistan, whether related to issues of class, health, religion, gender, security, discrimination, or the economy.

Pakistan has inherited and reproduced an “overdeveloped” postcolonial state structure, as coined by Pakistani sociologist Hamza Alavi in a famous 1972 essay, blending civilian administration and military apparatus. Interestingly, scholarship on Pakistan has historically devoted sustained attention in the study of the state and its role in shaping society. Whether this academic inclination constitutes a distorted effect of Pakistan’s official state-centric narrative, or instead simply follows the empirical centrality of the state in regulating social life is yet to be assessed. It nonetheless provides a heuristic point of departure to engage in a collective reflection on contemporary Pakistan and its transformations.

The workshop will be structured around eight individual presentations, interspersed with collective discussions, and will conclude with a synthesis and set of shared conclusions.