Pakistan’s Crisis of Legitimacy

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Abstract

Prepared for an Immigration Law Practioner's Association Conference, this paper explores the way in which the religious right has taken advantage of the doubtful legitimcay of Pakistan's success regimes, both civilian and military, to engineer itself into a position where it is able to mount a constant critique of state authority. In the course of so doing it has steadily undermine the capacity of civil institutions to challege its narrow, authoritarian, and in demographic terms largely unpopular agenda. As a result members of all those groups whose agendas differ from that of the neo-fundamentalists, especially in terms of gender and religion, currently find themselves under ever more vigorous attacks, from which the properly consituted authorities are either able or willing to offer them adequate protection.