There is an old saying: when a jeweller begins to wield a blacksmith’s hammer, one must ask whether he is truly a jeweller or whether he intends to destroy the gold just to plunder it. The metaphor is instructive. Every craft has its own instruments, its own discipline and its own logic. Statecraft is no exception. It is among the most delicate of human enterprises, demanding constitutional wisdom, political restraint, institutional balance and an unwavering commitment to public legitimacy. It cannot be reduced to administrative engineering, nor can it endure the unchecked ambitions of any single institution or organised interest.
History repeatedly demonstrates that heterogeneous societies composed of diverse ethnicities, languages, cultures and historical identities cannot be governed sustainably through excessive centralisation. Such societies require a constitutional compact built on representation, consent, federalism, the rule of law and the equitable distribution of power and resorces. Diversity is not a liability to be managed through uniformity; it is a political reality that must be accommodated through democratic institutions.
Pakistan’s present political and economic predicament should therefore not be viewed merely as an administrative failure. Administrative inefficiency is often the symptom rather than the disease. The more fundamental question concerns the nature of political authority itself: who exercises power, through what constitutional mandate, and under what mechanisms of accountability? Unless these questions are confronted honestly, reform efforts risk treating the symptoms while leaving the underlying condition untouched.
Political scientists have long distinguished between constitutional government and praetorianism—a condition in which unelected centres of power exercise decisive influence or almost veto power over political outcomes. The political scientist Samuel P. Huntington examined the phenomenon of praetorian politics, arguing that institutional imbalance produces chronic instability rather than durable order. Likewise, the sociologist Max Weber emphasised that legitimate authority ultimately rests upon accepted legal and constitutional foundations rather than coercive capacity alone.
Pakistan’s constitutional journey reflects repeated experiments intended to reconcile authority with legitimacy. Direct martial law administrations were followed by presidential arrangements, the system of Basic Democracies, hybrid constitutional frameworks and periods of parliamentary government operating under varying degrees of institutional constraint. Each model promised stability, administrative efficiency or national cohesion. Yet none succeeded in resolving the country’s recurring crises because constitutional engineering cannot substitute for constitutional legitimacy. When the political process itself lacks broad public ownership, institutional redesign merely changes the form of the problem rather than eliminating it.
Diversity is not a liability to be managed through uniformity; it is a political reality that must be accommodated through democratic institutions.
The tendency to ’search for technical or bureaucratic solutions to fundamentally political questions has become a recurring feature of Pakistan’s governance discourse. Among the latest proposals is the idea of carving multiple new provinces—or administrative units—out of existing federating units, often justified in the language of administrative efficiency and improved service delivery.
Administrative convenience, however, should never become a substitute for constitutional principle. Decentralisation, in its democratic meaning, transfers power closer to citizens while respecting historical identities and constitutional federalism. Centralisation disguised as decentralisation achieves the opposite: it fragments existing political units while concentrating decisive authority at the centre. These are fundamentally different concepts despite the similarity of their rhetoric.
History offers ample cautionary lessons. Colonial empires frequently redrew territorial boundaries not to empower local populations but to facilitate political control, resource extraction and administrative convenience. Many post-colonial states continue to grapple with the social, political and economic consequences of those arbitrary divisions. Pakistan, however, is a constitutional federation—not an empire. Its constitutional architecture is founded upon federating units that possess political, historical and cultural identities deserving both recognition and protection.
This does not imply that provincial boundaries should remain permanently immutable.
Democracies may legitimately debate whether to remove colonial-era arrangements and subsequent anomalies that divided ethnic communities under the vicious policy of “divide and rule.” Balochistan currently presents such an opportunity—one that could not only correct past mistakes but also help address the continuing tensions between its two major ethnic communities over identity, resources and governance, with potentially positive implications for taming insurgency in the region.
Balochistan constitutes 44% of Pakistan’s total landmass, while Pashtuns make up nearly half of its population. The Pashtuns should either be reunited with their brethren in the present province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or be granted a separate province that reflects their distinct identity. The decisive question is therefore not whether new provinces may be created, but why, through what constitutional process, and towards what political objective/s. Constitutional reform must emerge from democratic deliberation, real parliamentary consensus and the freely expressed will of the people—not from administrative blueprints conceived outside representative institutions.
Equally concerning is the growing tendency to frame governance almost exclusively through managerial language. Efficient administration is unquestionably desirable. Yet efficiency without legitimacy rarely produces stable government and public contentment. Colonial administration was more efficient but lacking legitimacy. Conversely, good governance is not the parent of constitutional order; it is its offspring. Transparency, accountability, competent administration, independent institutions and economic confidence flourish where governments derive their authority from genuine will of people, constitutional legitimacy and remain accountable to representative institutions.
If proposals for new administrative units are eventually coupled with a more centralised executive structure, critics will understandably question whether the cumulative effect would be to weaken provincial autonomy, dilute cultural identities and reduce provincial governments to largely administrative extensions of the federal executive. Such concerns deserve open public debate rather than dismissal.
Public confidence also depends upon transparency in policymaking. Major constitutional reforms should originate through broad-based parliamentary deliberation supported by publicly accessible research, independent scholarship and meaningful consultation with provincial stakeholders. When constitutional blueprints appear to emerge primarily from unelected policy circles or privately commissioned studies, questions regarding legitimacy inevitably arise regardless of the quality of the research itself.
An old political maxim cautions against the dominance of any single organised interest over the state. Whether expressed in classical republican thought or modern constitutional theory, the principle remains remarkably consistent: stable republics require civilian constitutional institutions that mediate competing interests through law rather than through the predominance of any one establishment—military, bureaucratic or commercial. A state governed primarily by coercive institutions risks authoritarianism; one dominated by commercial interests risks oligarchy. Constitutional democracy exists precisely to prevent both outcomes.
The real challenge confronting Pakistan is therefore neither the number of provinces nor the technical structure of administration. The challenge is whether political authority can once again become firmly rooted in constitutional supremacy, parliamentary sovereignty, federalism, judicial independence, rule of law and the free consent of the governed. Without addressing this fundamental question, institutional rearrangements are unlikely to reverse the country’s recurring political instability or economic stagnation.
The "elephant in the room" is not administrative inefficiency alone. It is the unresolved relationship between constitutional authority and effective political power. Until that question is confronted honestly, Pakistan may continue redesigning institutions without curing the deeper constitutional malaise that has repeatedly frustrated democratic consolidation. Statecraft, after all, is not the art of concentrating power. It is the wisdom of distributing power lawfully, balancing competing interests fairly and ensuring that the state serves its citizens rather than requiring citizens to serve the ambitions of the state. That is the enduring lesson of constitutional government and perhaps the lesson Pakistan can least afford to ignore today.