ENGLISH 5 ANALYTICAL STUDY OF THE ROLE OF ETHNIC GROUPS IN ELECTORAL POLITICS:

A CASE OF PAKISTAN

Abstract

After post-colonial politics ethnic element emerged as a prominent tool of politics in different countries of the world. The marginalized groups also assumed politics as a system of power and they tried to use their collective approach as their identity is a major weapon during electoral process in authoritarian concept of democracy where the strength also plays an ideal role. Like other post-colonial countries, the plurality of groups became important and the multi-groups used their ethnic identity as their political power. In this modern era of democracy every group tries to survive in the existing political setup. Therefore, in multi-ethnic states the study of ethnicity has become a popular topic of electoral politics with democratic approach because the relation between ethnicity and politics is a widely studied phenomenon. Now for dominant groups, ethnicity is considered as a challenge to political system in Pakistan. After the creation of Pakistan, the dilemma of ethnic conflict could not be resolved. This paper highlights the nature of relationship between ethnicity and political development in Pakistan which has multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-lingual formation of society. Major ethnic groups inhabiting is divided on lingual, racial settlement bases as Baloch, Saraiki, Muhajir and Pashtoon. The relations between these groups have promoted the politics of ethnicity in the Pakistan.

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