Pakistan’s perennial debate over new provinces has resurfaced with familiar urgency. It is often framed as a corrective—an administrative fix to bring governance closer to the people, address regional inequities, and ease the burden on overcentralized provincial capitals. At one level, this instinct is understandable. There is a deep and widening sense of alienation in many parts of the country. Peripheral districts, smaller towns, and historically neglected regions feel locked out of decision-making and deprived of state services.

Yet a recent report by the Global Think Tank Network (GTTN) “The Mirage of New Provinces: Why Pakistan Needs Local Government Reform, Not Territorial Fragmentation” offers a sobering counterpoint. The problem, it argues, is not the map. It is the state. This is not a trivial distinction. The report contends that Pakistan’s governance crisis stems less from the size or number of provinces and more from the absence of effective institutions, political will, and crucially empowered local governments. “The pathology lies not in provincial boundaries,” it notes, “but in the absence of effective governance.” That formulation alone should give pause to a debate that too easily gravitates toward territorial re-engineering.

The temptation to redraw boundaries is not new. Across the world, states have experimented with creating smaller administrative units to improve efficiency or manage diversity. But the evidence is mixed at best. In contexts where institutions are weak and elite capture is entrenched, fragmentation often produces more bureaucracy, more patronage, and more competition over resources without necessarily improving service delivery. Pakistan fits that profile uncomfortably well.

New provinces do not emerge as neat administrative abstractions. They require entire infrastructures: new secretariats, cabinets, assemblies, police commands, and judicial systems. In a country already struggling with fiscal constraints, this expansion would increase non-development expenditure at the expense of investment in education, health, and........

© The Friday Times