Politics and Terrorism: Case Study of Pakistan (Published)
Pakistan is facing a wave of terrorism and political actors and its policy makers are trying to find solutions to effectively execute counter terrorism strategies and bought peace back in Pakistan. Pakistani politics lacks consistency where its political culture is weak and political systems keeps on changing that effects the working and performance of formal politics and government. This research study intends to find a relationship of formal politics on the terrorism in Pakistan. The case study for the research study is Pakistan but it is reviewed in both Pakistan’s terrorism history and global patterns of terrorism. It also considers the politics of Pakistan through history and patterns of formal politics that includes political culture and political systems in Pakistan. One of the major research objective was to elaborate on the causes and effects of the relationship between politics and terrorism in Pakistan. World have seen four major waves of terrorism, where Pakistan was affected maximum by forth wave of terrorism also known as religious wave of terrorism that came in 1980s. Pakistan have seen two major political systems i.e. dictatorship and democracy, where in authoritarian regimes political culture diminished and decisions and policies were made without political involvement from elected members. Democratic regimes promote political activism and inclusive culture, which in turn enable government to understand needs of people and execute policies in better manner. Evolving democracy have flourished national and grass root level politics due to which they have taken comprehensive measures to eliminate terrorism in collaboration with military establishment like military courts and counter terrorism operations. Qualitative research, analysis and systematic data analysis shows that Formal politics, active political culture and democratic system can play positive role in elimination terrorism to spread and eliminating it from Pakistan. The result outcomes of this study will benefit all the researchers whose aim is to pursue their research on the relationship of politics and terrorism. It provides policy recommendations for different stakeholders so that they can perform better policy making.
Keywords: Case Study, Pakistan, Politics, Terrorism