IDEAS Book Talk & Book Signing

18 April 2024

IDEAS is pleased to invite you to attend our upcoming Book Talk & Book Signing event with Professor Mohammad Waseem, author of the book ‘Political Conflict in Pakistan’.The book talk will be moderated by IDEAS Research Fellow Maryam S. Khan, and will be followed by a book signing by the guest speaker. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, courtesy of Readings.

Date: Thursday, 18th April 2024

Time: 05:00 – 6:30 PM

Venue:IDEAS office, 19-A, F.C.C. Syed Maratib Ali Road, Gulberg IV, Lahore. 

Registration Link: https://bit.ly/4ax2g9w

About the author:

Mohammad Waseem is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He has been a visiting fellow of: American Political Science Association; British Council; Indian Historical Research Council; Fulbright at Columbia University; Heidelberg University; Ford Foundation at Oxford; New Century Scholars Programme at Brookings: Science Po, Paris; Ford Foundation at Brookings; and Pakistan Chair at St Antony’s College Oxford. He specializes in Pakistan’s ethnic, constitutional, electoral, sectarian, military, and militant politics. His books include Politics and The State in Pakistan (1989), The 1993 Elections in Pakistan (1994), Strengthening of Democracy in Pakistan (co-authored with S.J. Burki) (2002) and Democratization in Pakistan: A Study of the 2002 Elections, (2006). He also edited the book Electoral Reform in Pakistan (2002).

About the book:

This book addresses multiple clashes: between the high culture as a mission to transform the society, and the low culture of the land and the people; between those committed to the establishment’s institutional-constitutional framework and those seeking to dismantle the ‘colonial’ state; between the corrupt and those seeking to hold them to account; between the political class and the middle class; and between civil and military power. The author exposes how the ruling elite centralized power through militarization and judicialization of politics, that rendered the federal system into an empty shell and thus grossly alienated the provinces. The 18th Amendment only partially sought to set things right. The author discusses all this in the contexts of education and media as breeders of conflict, the difficulties of establishing an anti-terrorist regime, and the state’s pragmatic attempts at conflict resolution by seeking to keep the potential outsiders inside. This is a wide-ranging account of a country of contestations.