POLARIZED POLITICS: THE CHALLENGE OF DEMOCRACY IN PAKISTAN.

In Pakistan, state elites have been affiliating with the different ethnic groups for their own political interests. This diminishes the sense of equal justice and state legitimacy. The creation of a nation-state is a historical process that may take a long time to complete. This is not to suggest that Pakistan or other Third World countries have to pass through the same sequences of state-making as the Europeans did. We need to highlight the complex issues and the constraints that Pakistan has faced since its inception in 1947. While the internal obstacles to national integration are well-known, one must also consider the geopolitical pressures that emanate from the regional and international environments. The central theme of this paper is that nations and identities are evolutionary processes that cannot be artificially and externally imposed, but only aided by policies that are sensitive to needs of the constituent groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]