The world watches political developments in Pakistan attentively but also with a great deal of consternation. Pakistan’s location neighbouring Afghanistan, Iran, India and China makes it a critical geostrategic flashpoint. This also partially explains why Pakistan is simultaneously seen as a state capable of using nuclear weapons against India over the disputed territory of Kashmir while also being a critical ally of the United states in the War on Terror.

This textbook highlights the dynamism of Pakistan’s politics and provides a comprehensive, well-researched introduction to Pakistani politics written in clear and accessible language. Structured in four thematic sections – 1. Political Foundations; 2. Political Competition; 3. Political Institutions and 4. Policy-formation – the book creates awareness about the nature of politics and the interaction among political identities, interests and institutions that leads to the formation of policy in the context of Pakistan. It provides knowledge and understanding of the structures of authority and power, behaviour of political actors and political processes in Pakistan. Not critiquing Pakistan’s politics for being unstable and divisive, the book offers an explanation as to why this is the case. For this reason, a comparative politics framework is adopted, which results in a focus on Pakistan’s domestic politics. Finally, the book emphasizes historical institutionalism as the theoretical approach to Pakistan’s politics, thus arguing that political events must be understood within the historical context in which they occurred and that expectations of the future are moulded by the past.

Identifying potential avenues for positive change in Pakistani politics, not necessarily policy prescriptions, but sources of dynamism in the everyday political life of Pakistan, the book will be of interest to students of comparative politics and political science with a particular focus on South Asia and suitable as a supplemental textbook for courses on South Asian Politics and Introductions to South Asia.

Mariam Mufti is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo, Canada. A comparative political scientist by training, she works on regime change and political participation in hybrid regime and teaches courses on domestic and international politics of South Asia.