Governing from the Margins: Center-Periphery Accountability Asymmetries in Pakistan's Federal Design

Abstract

The Government of Balochistan has embarked on an unprecedented initiative of administrative restructuring from 2024 to the time of this writing in 2026, which includes the bifurcation of Quetta into Quetta-East and Quetta-West districts, the creation of new districts from existing territorial units, the upgrading of sub-district tehsils to full district status, the merging of divisions, and the promotion of municipal councils in identified urban centres. These measures have all been justified as a move towards citizens and services, as a result of the growth of population and as a reaction to long-standing ethnic and political demands. This paper argues that the restructuring has, on the contrary, produced accountability asymmetries of the kind that recent analytical work on accountability under multi-tier government predicts. Adapting the framework of Boffa, Piolatto, and Ponzetto on economies of scope in accountability, the paper develops an accountability-clarity model with three operationalisable components, jurisdictional clarity, resource–responsibility alignment, and enforceability of oversight, and applies it to Pakistan's federal, provincial, and district tiers. Drawing on Adeney and Boni's periodization of Pakistani de-centralization across military, civilian, and hybrid regimes, the paper traces center-periphery administrative relations in Balochistan from 1970 to 2026 and demonstrates that the 2026 restructuring multiplies tiers without a commensurate multiplication of accountability mechanisms. The idea is that a system of accountability linking each boundary to a binding accountability process would be more beneficial in the periphery, than announcing boundary changes as isolated acts of reform.

Keywords: Accountability; Balochistan; Federalism; Pakistan; Decentralization; Administrative Restructuring; Multilevel Governance.