Devolution without representation—I Redrawing power before fixing the vote

Pakistan is debating new provinces, autonomous administrative units and empowered districts without confronting the prior constitutional question: who will legitimately receive the power being redistributed?

Pakistan is once again debating how the State should be divided, devolved and administered. Fifteen provinces, smaller provinces, autonomous administrative units, empowered districts, metropolitan governments and stronger local councils are all on the table. Almost nobody is asking the question that logically precedes all of them: who will legitimately exercise the redistributed power?

A map cannot democratise a State. It can only change the geography within which power is exercised. If elections remain disputed, political parties remain internally undemocratic, campaign finance remains opaque, elected representatives escape meaningful financial scrutiny and the institution administering elections lacks the confidence of competing political forces, creating smaller units may multiply the democratic deficit rather than cure it. This is the missing first chapter of Pakistan’s current devolution debate.

The Constitution is not ambiguous about the electoral principle. Article 218(3) requires the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to organise elections in a manner that is honest, just, fair and lawful and guards against corrupt practices. These are not decorative aspirations. They define the constitutional route through which political authority becomes legitimate.

Article 140A similarly requires political, administrative and financial authority to be devolved to elected representatives of local governments. The important word is not merely “devolved”. It is “elected”. Transferring powers from Islamabad to Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar or Quetta is not democratisation by itself. Nor does transferring them further to district headquarters automatically create self-government. 

Devolution becomes democratic only when authority reaches representatives whose mandate has been freely given, honestly counted and institutionally protected. This distinction has become more important after the February 8, 2024 general election.

The issue need not be reduced to competing party narratives. Commonwealth Observer Group acknowledged the enormous administrative and security challenge faced by Pakistan and commended election officials for conducting a nationwide poll, while also recording serious concerns about restrictions, transparency and results process.

Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) similarly found much of polling and counting orderly but identified serious weaknesses in subsequent result management. The distinction is crucial: ballots may be cast peacefully and still fail to produce uncontested democratic legitimacy if consolidation, transmission and announcement lack confidence.

Pakistan at this point of confronts something more serious than episodic allegations of rigging. It confronts a crisis of electoral trust and endorsement of unrepresentative rule by those wo matter in the land. This cannot be cured by asking citizens simply to accept declared results.

Electoral legitimacy is produced through institutions, procedures and transparency. When losers believe that the process gave them a genuine opportunity to win, democratic competition survives defeat. When large sections of the electorate believe outcomes are predetermined or subsequently altered, elections cease to settle political conflict and instead become its other stage. That is why independence of ECP must be understood functionally rather than ceremonially.

Pakistan’s Constitution creates a permanent Commission. Its members enjoy constitutional status. This formal architecture is important. International IDEA stresses, however, that credible electoral competition requires impartial management and that independence must extend to institutional structure, resources, decision-making and relations with other organs of the State.

South Africa makes the principle unusually explicit. Its Constitution not only declares Electoral Commission independent and impartial; it requires other state institutions to assist and protect its independence and prohibits interference with its functioning. 

Pakistan needs the same philosophy in substance, whatever institutional model it ultimately adopts. There is an equally serious problem before a ballot ever reaches ECP: the political parties themselves.

We expect parties to produce democratic governments while many operate through concentrated leadership, hereditary succession, controlled nomination processes and internal elections whose credibility is frequently questioned.

ECP’s own Annual Report 2024 is instructive. Intra-party elections of 31 political parties were due during the year. Only 15 conducted them within the required process; show-cause notices went to 16, three parties were ultimately delisted after failing to conduct valid elections and several proceedings remained pending at year-end. This is not an administrative footnote. A party that does not permit meaningful competition within itself will hardly become an enthusiastic instrument of democratic decentralisation after obtaining power.

Germany recognised the problem constitutionally decades ago. Article 21 of its Basic Law requires the internal organisation of political parties to conform to democratic principles and obliges them to account publicly for their assets and the sources and use of their funds.

Pakistan’s Article 17 requires political parties to account for their sources of funds. The Elections Act, 2017 adds requirements for audited annual accounts and intra-party elections. What remains missing is a culture of democratic parties backed by effective public scrutiny, transparent political financing and credible enforcement.

S.Y. Quraishi, India’s former Chief Election Commissioner, has repeatedly argued for stronger election-management autonomy, internal party democracy, independent auditing of party finances and transparency in political funding. His recent formulation is particularly relevant to Pakistan: an election commission is judged not only by administrative efficiency but by the confidence it inspires among those who lose. His argument deserves close attention.

India itself is currently debating the credibility and appointment structure of its Election Commission. That should discourage romantic comparison. The lesson is not that India has solved every electoral problem. It is that credible election administration is a continuous constitutional project, never an institutional achievement that can be presumed permanent.

Transparency of political wealth belongs to the same project. Under sections 137 and 138 of the Elections Act, 2017, members submit annual statements of assets and liabilities, including those of spouses and dependent children. Instead of deepening verification, recent changes have moved toward greater restriction on public access. FAFEN has documented these restrictions and proposals.

A democracy cannot demand extensive documentation from ordinary citizens while gradually reducing scrutiny of those exercising public power. This brings us back to provinces and devolution. Suppose Pakistan creates twelve or fifteen provinces tomorrow. Suppose metropolitan governments and autonomous districts are simultaneously established. 

Who selects their candidates? How democratic are the parties making those selections? Who finances their campaigns? Who verifies their assets? Who administers their elections? Who controls returning officers? How are disputed results resolved? Can citizens inspect the evidence? Can governments suddenly change local-government laws and constituencies on the eve of polling?  If these questions remain unanswered, Pakistan may decentralise offices without decentralising democracy.

The danger is considerable. Smaller units can bring government closer to citizens. They can also bring patronage, dynastic control, land interests and local coercive power closer to citizens. Devolution without electoral integrity could convert national or provincial elite capture into district-level elite capture.

Our recent work on Article 140A has addressed only one half of the democratic equation. Fixed local-government terms, predictable finance and protected functions are indispensable. The other half is an electoral system capable of ensuring that those institutions genuinely belong to the people rather than to whichever party, bureaucracy or patron happens to control the machinery when elections are held.

Pakistan should certainly debate new provinces. It desperately needs meaningful local self-government. Islamabad itself provides compelling evidence of how easily elected government can be postponed when executives prefer administrative control. The sequence, however, matters.

Before asking how many provinces Pakistan should have, we must ask what makes any federal, provincial, metropolitan or district government genuinely representative.

Electoral reform is not another item to be added to the devolution agenda. It is the democratic foundation on which the entire agenda rests. If Pakistan redraws the State without first rebuilding trust in the vote, new boundaries will merely redistribute an old crisis. Devolution before division is sensible. Democratic representation must come before both.

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Huzaima Bukhari, lawyer and author, has been Adjunct Faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), member Advisory Board and Senior Visiting Fellow of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE). She also served Civil Services of Pakistan from 1984 to 2003. 

Dr. Ikramul Haq, Advocate Supreme Court, Adjunct Faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), member Advisory Board and Visiting Senior Fellow of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), holds an LLD in tax laws. He was full-time journalist from 1979 to 1984 with Viewpoint and Dawn. He also served Civil Services of Pakistan from 1984 to 1996.