18th Amendment and the Federation of Pakistan: Factors behind the Ethnic Conflicts and its Implications

Abstract

The federation having a weak democratic, economic and socio-political structure always struggles to keep the national integrity intact which is a very complicated process especially in the heterogeneous societies having multiple ethnic groups. Pakistan having a complex federal structure, facing the same challenges by creating integrity within its units. This paper investigates the factors behind the ethnic conflicts in Pakistan and its implications for national integration. According to the study design qualitative methodology is adopted in order to understand the conflicts in society as social and political phenomenon. The research mostly relied on secondary data sources for data collection incorporating the evidence from the analysis of secondary data. While the primary sources including the interviews from expert also included. This study highlights the impacts of ethnic conflicts on national integrity of Pakistan and the role of 18^th Amendment through which federation of Pakistan goes through the key transformation which decentralized the centralized federal setup of Pakistan by granting autonomy to the provinces. But the amendment also brought unintended challenges and provoked the various ethnic groups who started movements for the creation of a new province in order to preserve their ethnic identity.

   Keywords: Federation, ethnic conflicts, national integration, 18^th Amendment.