Federalism after the 18th Constitutional Amendment: A Critical Evaluation of Centre–Province Relations in Pakistan

Abstract

The 18 th Constitutional Amendment 2010 was a landmark reform initiative in the federal organization of Pakistan that decentralized widespread authority of the federal government to the provinces. This paper is a critical review of the development of centre-province relationship in the ten years since the amendment. The analysis concludes that the 18th Amendment enhanced provincialism and redistributed legislative and fiscal authority to the federating units, which resolved the historical grievances of smaller provinces. It removed the Concurrent Legislative List, increased the provincial contribution to the national coffers, and augmented forums of intergovernmental coordination like the Council of Common Interests. These reforms have created a more inclusive federal system, which, however, has shown new problems in implementation. The provinces had increased influence in the policy and resources and imbalance in administrative capacity has resulted in disparity in service delivery. The relationship between the center and the provinces has continued to experience tensions especially in the sharing of resources and harmonization of policies, and this raises some concern about the ability of the nation to maintain itself and the quality of governance. Overall, though the 18^th Amendment was an important move towards true federalism in Pakistan, as pointed out in this study, there is a need to build intensive cooperative systems and capacity building to achieve the full potential of the 18^th Amendment.