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Rethinking Pakistan's Political Economy
Examining the numerous and often contradictory issuesand problems that emerge in trying to look at a statist or Islamist Pakistan, this paper points out that both undermine the vast array of processes that are at work and feed into the nature of Pakistan's state and society. Scholarship on Pakistan's political economy still lacks a comprehensive theory of the Pakistani state and of its society. The attempt here is to identify and explain the issues and constraints in doing so.
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the South Asia Institute seminar series at Columbia University and I am grateful for comments made by Akeel Bilgrami, Partha Chatterjee, Valentine Daniel and Mahmood Mamdani. Comments from Afiya S Zia and Faisal Siddiqui are also appreciated.