Foqia Sadiq Khan

Has Pakistan’s judiciary come of age? Some think it has had some independent status in the near past. A lot of people disagree with this view as well and consider the judiciary as still being under the establishment’s influence. Yasser Kureshi’s chapter on judiciary in the new book on “Pakistan’s Political Parties: Surviving between Dictatorship […]

How did 2019 fare for democracy, for men and women of this country? Has democracy strengthened or weakened in this year? We look at the some key trends of the year with the help of press reports. It might be difficult to cover a whole range of issues of democracy and gender in a limited […]

In the first part of this two articles series on the role of elite published in these pages on 22 November 2019, we presented a few distinctive viewpoints. One school of thought argues that a tiny elite has rigged the market and controls that state to accrue benefits for itself at the cost of majority […]

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that taxation reforms are the need of the hour in Pakistan and such efforts are going on (with a few gaps) for almost three decades. Why is it so hard for Pakistan to revamp its taxation whereas our neighbours in South Asia have comparatively much better tax to […]

There is a trend of ‘Democratic Backsliding’ all over the world including in the developed countries and democracy is receding in many regions. We are going to extend democratic backsliding argument to focus on the concept and operationalization of hybrid regime with a particular focus on Pakistan. We are going to refer to some literature […]

In part 1 of this two part series on Judicial Accountability published in these pages on 14th October, we discussed ‘institutional disequilibrium’ with the help of social science literature. The judiciary seeks absolute ‘independence’ and it needs to be balanced with being accountable and constrained. We also discussed that judiciary ensures its independence from the […]

While addressing the beginning of the new judicial year a little while back, the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) recognized the perception that the accountability drive being pursued is considered part of the ‘political engineering’ and it makes the accountability process lose it credibility. He also referred to the ‘loss of political space […]

Any country in the world must ensure protection of its citizens as per its Constitutions and keeping in mind the best practices in the world. Unfortunately, it is not implemented in letter and spirit in many countries, including Pakistan. This article refers to some literature (Kishore 2011; DRI 2016; Pasha 2014; EU 2018; Wolf 2014) […]