Najam in Foreign Policy on Pakistan’s Constitutional Crisis
An analysis of Pakistan’s ongoing constitutional crisis, titled “The Many Trials of Imran Khan” by Betsy Joles published in Foreign Policy magazine on April 5, 2023, quotes Pardee School Professor and Dean Emeritus Adil Najam as suggesting that what we are now seeing in Pakistan is an implosion of all the major political institutions in the country, including the much-fabled ‘establishment’.
The Foreign Policy article quotes Najam as follows:
Adil Najam, dean emeritus and a professor at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, said the old understanding of the military establishment’s role in politics may no longer explain the situation in Pakistan. “History has been that once the signal comes from up top on the mountain, things happen very fast,” Najam said, referring to signals from Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies about political appointments and removals. “Clearly, the old script is not working.”
Read full article here.
This analysis from Professor Najam builds on an earlier analysis quoted in The New York Times, some days ago, which had similarly suggested a large multi-institution implosion in Pakistan.
Adil Najam is a global public policy expert who served as the Inaugural Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and was the former Vice-Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). Currently, while on sabbatical, he is a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University. His research focuses on issues of global public policy, especially those related to global climate change, South Asia, Muslim countries, environment and development, and human development. Read more about Professor Najam on his Pardee School faculty profile.