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.

Article 140A similarly requires political, administrative and financial authority to be devolved to elected representatives of local governments.

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 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........

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