Access to Power

Electricity and the Infrastructural State in Pakistan
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-0-19-754095-4
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 208 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 239 mm, Gewicht: 458 g

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Pakistan would desperately like to produce enough electricity, but it usually doesn't. Despite prioritization by successive governments, targeted reforms shaped by international development actors, and featuring prominently in Chinese Belt and Road investments, the Pakistani power sector continues to stifle economic and social life across the country. Why?

In Access to Power, Ijlal Naqvi explores state capacity in Pakistan by following the material infrastructure of electricity across the provinces and down into cities and homes. Naqvi argues that the national-level challenges of crippling budgetary constraints and power shortages directly result from conscious strategic decisions that are integral to Pakistan's infrastructural state. As he shows, electricity governance in Pakistan reinforces unequal relations of power between provinces and the federal center, contributes to the marginalization of subordinate groups in the city, and cements the patronage-based relationships between Pakistani citizens and the state that have been so detrimental to development progress.

Looking through the lens of the electrical power sector, Access to Power reveals how Pakistan actually works, and to whose benefit.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Naqvi, Ijlal

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Wirtschaftspolitik, politische Ökonomie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Entwicklungspolitik, Nord-Süd Beziehungen
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Entwicklungsstudien

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Acknowledgments

- Chapter 1: Introduction

- Part I: The National Level of Analysis

- Chapter 2: The Inter-Provincial Unevenness of the Infrastructural State

- Chapter 3: Pathologies of Development Practice

- Part II: The City

- Chapter 4: The Administration of Losses

- Chapter 5: Negotiating Formality in Islamabad's Katchi Abadis

- Part III: Individual Level of Analysis

- Chapter 6: Governance as an emergent compromise

- Chapter 7: Money, Violence, and Connections: The Culture of Power

- Chapter 8: Conclusion

- References

- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Ijlal Naqvi is Associate Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean for Curriculum and Teaching at the School of Social Sciences of Singapore Management University. He is interested in how states work on an everyday basis and draws on the fields of development sociology and urban studies in his research. Before becoming an academic Ijlal worked as a business consultant in the US and for the Pakistani government. Ijlal earned his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has a MA in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and a BA from Middlebury College.