As Pakistan enters its 79th year, the debate over new provinces and administrative units has once again acquired political prominence. But before drawing new lines on the map, a more fundamental question needs to be asked: is Pakistan’s central problem its administrative geography, or the manner in which the existing constitutional system is governed?

Pakistan’s history suggests that the answer cannot be found simply in the number or size of its provinces. The country has experienced parliamentary and presidential systems, military rule and elected governments, constitutional amendments and administrative reorganisations. Yet many of the underlying problems of governance have persisted.

The more important question, therefore, is not which system Pakistan should adopt, but whether the constitutional system it already has is being implemented in letter and spirit.

The country’s early constitutional history offers a sobering lesson. In 1954, Governor-General Ghulam Muhammad dissolved the Constituent Assembly, triggering the legal challenge by Maulvi Tamizuddin Khan. The ensuing constitutional controversy exposed a fundamental uncertainty about the relationship between executive authority, representative institutions and constitutional supremacy.

Pakistan’s first Constitution, adopted in 1956, established a parliamentary and federal system. It lasted only until 1958, when the Constitution was abrogated and martial law imposed. A presidential system followed under the 1962 Constitution. The 1970 general elections then produced a clear majority for the Awami League in East Pakistan, but the failure to translate that electoral mandate into a constitutional transfer of........

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