Pakistan needs effective and responsive governance to address the socio-economic and socio-political challenges confronting its people. At its core, good governance means ensuring the effective delivery of public services, administration, and development opportunities to citizens at the grassroots level and, as far as possible, at their doorsteps. This requires not only efficient institutions but also an administrative structure capable of responding to the diverse needs of different regions.Pakistan currently consists of four provinces, in addition to Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. The large geographical size and population of some provinces have created significant challenges in administration, political representation, service delivery, and equitable development. These challenges have persisted for decades. The experience of local government systems has also been uneven, partly because of political considerations, institutional weaknesses, and the distribution of powers and resources between the federal and provincial governments.
In this context, Pakistan needs to seriously consider the creation of smaller provinces and additional administrative units within its existing constitutional and federal framework. The objective should not be the division of the country for political expediency, but the establishment of appropriately sized administrative and political units that can provide better governance, stronger representation, and more balanced socio-economic development.The creation of new provinces, however, should not be viewed as a substitute for effective local governments. Rather, the two reforms address different levels of governance and should be pursued as complementary components of a broader decentralization strategy.
Local governments bring public services and everyday administration closer to citizens. They are primarily responsible for functions that directly affect daily life, including municipal services, local infrastructure, sanitation, water supply, community development, and other grassroots needs. Effective local governments therefore decentralise service delivery and local administration.New provinces, by contrast, bring political, administrative, legislative, and developmental decision-making closer to regions. A province possesses constitutional status and has substantially greater authority over legislation, budgeting, executive administration, public policy, and development planning. Consequently, an empowered district or local government may improve the delivery of services, but it cannot exercise the full range of legislative, executive, financial, and development-planning powers available to a province.
This distinction is particularly important where major political and administrative decisions remain concentrated in a distant provincial capital. Strengthening local governments alone may improve service delivery, but it cannot fully address the broader concentration of political authority and development resources at the provincial level. Local devolution redistributes administrative functions, whereas the creation of a new province changes a region’s constitutional and political position within Pakistan’s federal structure.Similarly, local governments can implement development programmes and address immediate community needs, while a province can formulate broader policies, allocate resources, prepare development strategies, and establish priorities in accordance with the specific requirements of its constituent regions. Smaller and appropriately structured provinces can therefore reduce the political and administrative distance between governments and the populations they serve. The creation of new provinces should consequently be considered within a broader framework of administrative decentralization, political representation, equitable resource distribution, and effective local governance. Any proposal for new provinces or administrative units should be based on objective criteria, including population, geographical considerations, administrative viability, economic potential, cultural and regional identities, accessibility, and the capacity to provide public services effectively. Such decisions should emerge through constitutional, democratic, and consultative processes rather than short-term political considerations. Pakistan should therefore move beyond the debate over whether it needs new provinces or stronger local governments. It needs both. Effective local governments can bring public services and everyday administration closer to citizens, while appropriately structured provinces and administrative units can bring political authority, development planning, and decision-making closer to the regions. In order to undertake this exercise, consensus must be made at provincial level as warranted in Article 239(4) of the Constitution of Pakistan.
Ultimately, better governance requires governance at the right level. Where functions are local, they should be entrusted to empowered local governments; where political and developmental authority is regional, it should be exercised by appropriately sized provinces or administrative units. A carefully designed system of decentralization can make the state more accessible, responsive, accountable, and equitable.Appropriately sized provinces can make governance more manageable, responsive, and accountable. New provinces and empowered local governments are not competing alternatives; they address different levels of governance and are therefore complementary. Local governments improve how services are delivered, while new provinces strengthen a region’s political voice and authority within the federation. Pakistan needs both: effective local governments to bring services closer to citizens and appropriately structured provinces to bring political and developmental decision-making closer to regions.
The debate over new provinces in Pakistan should, therefore, be viewed not merely as a question of territorial reorganization, but as part of a larger national effort to improve governance, strengthen the federation, reduce regional disparities so that all citizens should be benefitted.
— The writer is Professor of Politics and IR at International Islamic University, Islamabad.
