State Sovereignty and International Relations in Pakistan: Analysing the Realism Stranglehold

What is it about?

In Pakistan, the field of international relations (IR) theory remains firmly embedded in the ‘realist’ tradition, to the detriment of a wider range of considerations. This stranglehold, strengthened by the particular evolutionary trajectory of the Pakistani state as well as a complacent academia, seems to have created a vicious circle of knowledge reproduction, reinforced by various bids for power, or proximity to it. This article scrutinises specifically the dominant understandings in Pakistan of state sovereignty and security in a broadly historical perspective, showing how the rise of the military, combined with security paranoia, has prevented academic creativity in this field, including scrutiny of recent concerns over rather close China–Pakistan links.

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Why is it important?

To gauge the predicament of IR theories in Pakistan, it is first of all necessary to understand how state sovereignty, as enshrined in realism, is conceived in Pakistan. The dominance of realism is attributed to Pakistan’s doctrinal adherence to sovereignty, which seems to ignore the country’s internal strife and the postcolonial democratic environment. Unless other views on state sovereignty are allowed to permeate the state’s policymaking membrane, alternative IR theories will remain sidelined and classified as a marginal academic concern. The article builds on detailed study of state sovereignty in Pakistan, considering the various factors involved in the evolution of this norm in Pakistan’s policy circles into the shape we witness today and its influence on academia. The key argument is that a notable complicity of Pakistan’s academia has resulted in a vicious circle in which the state provides patronage to certain types of research, while academia in return re-endorses state preferences.