This thesis aimed at evaluating the progress of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), since its establishment in 1985. This study is significant because it has gone beyond the limited appraisal of SAARC in any particular area, such as economic integration, to present a detailed appraisal of cooperation under the overarching themes of economic cooperation, environmental security, human welfare, and cooperation in security matters (e.g. anti-terrorism). A detailed case study was pertinent for the purpose of presenting a critique of the Association's functionalist approach to regionalism vis-à-vis a basic assumption that cooperation in noncontroversial areas would pave the way for meaningful cooperation in sensitive areas, such as terrorism, and ultimately lead to regional security. As there is a plethora of literature available on SAARC, a new approach examining regionalism in South Asia was imperative. Apart from the reviewing of conceptual and empirical literature, and content analysis of official documents, this thesis is based on viewpoints from within SAARC extracted through interviews with officials and direct interactions with them while on an internship at the Secretariat. The external insights on the organisation were also collected through interviews of academics, researchers and journalists.

Over its 70 years of existence as an independent sovereign nation, Pakistan has failed to resolve the centrifugal issues that it began grappling with at independence. Significant disagreement about Islam's role and place in the state remains, ethnic and sectarian rivalries continue to challenge its unity, and the threat of military intervention is ever present. Since 1947, Pakistan has experienced four military regimes, spanning almost half its political life. This chapter presents the case that the roots of much of the conflict Pakistan continues to confront have a constitutional connection and are grounded in its constitutional history. Starting with the failure of the first Constituent Assembly to deliver a constitution after seven years of deliberations, the chapter proceeds to look at the three constitutions that followed in terms of their ongoing ambivalence towards Islam as the marker of Pakistani identity and statehood, their inability to deliver a working relationship between the centre and the provinces, and their lack of mechanisms to check executive overreach and keep the military out of politics. Pakistan serves as an object illustration of the importance of constitutional design and constitutional politics.

The book examines the various ways that fragile states (or states with limited statehood) in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas have adopted, and adapted to, the processes of liberal political governance in their quests to address the problem of political fragility. It presents the stories of resilience in the political adaptation to Western liberal conceptions of governance. In addition to singular or comparative country case studies, this project also examines the interplay of culture, identities, and politics in the creation of people-centric governance reforms. Towards these ends, this volume sheds light on weak states' often constructive engagement in the promotion of state governance with a variety of political conditions, adverse or otherwise; and their ability to remain resilient despite the complex political, sociocultural, and economic challenges affecting them. Through a multidisciplinary approach, the authors aim to counter the noticeable shortcomings in the discursive representations of fragility, and to contribute a more balanced examination of the narratives about and impact of political adaption and governance in people's lives and experiences.

Conventional wisdom on "governance and political adaptation in fragile states" has focused largely on the shortcomings of the governance models of fragile states. This volume tells another story: the story of resilience in the various ways that fragile states (or states with limited statehood) in Africa, South Asia, the South Pacific, and Central America have adopted, and adapted to, the processes of liberal political governance in their quests to address the problem of political fragility. These adaptive institutionalized creations have included public sector reforms, the adoption of gender responsive governance, the promotion of multiparty political participation, improved justice systems, stringent anti-graft laws, the empowerment of local/grassroots organizations and the broadening of civil society participation, and the ratification of international conventions on responsible governance, and interstate peer-to-peer governance mechanism. In addition to singular or comparative country case studies, this volume examines the interplay of culture (cultures that have been deemed antithetical to Western notions of governance) and politics in the creation of people-centric governance reforms. The theoretical foundations of this volume, which all contributing authors used in their examination of the multi-faceted dimensions of governance in their respective case studies, are the concepts of "political adaptation" and "state resilience."

It will be very sad news for his many friends and colleagues in the South Asian Studies Association of Australia (SASA) to learn that Dr. Denis Wright, another stalwart of the Association, died in Armidale on 7 December. Denis was one of those rare academics who shunned the limelight and was prepared to work tirelessly and unheralded behind the scenes as a productive scholar, highly-rated teacher and valuable colleague. It is therefore fitting that tribute be openly paid to the many contributions he made during his 35 years of service in the field of South Asian studies.

When it was first speculatively advanced in a 1993 article in 'Foreign Affairs', Huntington's 'clash of civilizations' thesis was roundly and at times roughly criticized by Western scholars ('Foreign Affairs' 1993; 'ASAA Review' 1994). Not only was his key argument, that future conflict would acquire a cultural dimension and be conducted between different civilizations, derided as advancing a totally fanciful model of international relations, but also his core prediction, that as historically colliding civilizations the West and a resurgent Islam were poised to launch this new kind of global war, was condemned as intrinsically flawed. Underlying this generally unfavourable reception was the apprehension that a madcap thesis - a 'gimmick' on a parallel with the 'War of the Worlds', as Edward Said categorized it in a 1998 lecture (Said 2001, 1998) - might progressively acquire paradigmatic status through repeated exposure and begin in a 'self-fulfilling' way to inform the West's policies towards Islam and Muslims in general ('ASAA Review' 1994; Decker 2002; Bilgrami 2003). Certainly the Huntington thesis struck a 'market' chord almost at once (Esposito 2002: 126). Expanded into a best-selling and widely translated book in 1996 - 'The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order' - his 'bright idea', as Huntington had called it earlier in a rejoinder to his critics (Huntington 1993b: 134-38), served to spark a string of international conferences and to inspire a substantial production of articles and papers. A decade into the twenty-first century this output has shown little sign of diminishing.

Is Pakistan the ‘Islamic’ Republic it claims to be? How has it sought to resolve its Islamic identity? What role have its constitutions played in addressing this contested and contentious problem? What issues have different ‘Islamic’ constitutional innovations produced? What issues need be considered in order to resolve the problem of reconciling the role and place of Islam in the state? This thesis addresses these related questions and provokes the reader to reconsider the conventional wisdom held about Islamisation as a means to render Pakistan suitably Islamic.

This thesis charts new territory by mapping the origins and evolution of constitutional ideas pertaining to Islam. It demonstrates that Islamic constitutional reforms were geared to address pertinent political problems in Pakistan and respond to new challenges, ideologies and historical contingencies. It historicises the process that has led to the belief that Islamisation, as it is understood today, is the preeminent and exclusive method of creating an Islamic political order in Pakistan.

This thesis demonstrates that the important and contentious issues pertaining to Islam possess a close constitutional connection. It investigates the question of why Islamic provisions in Pakistan’s constitutional texts assume the shape they do. It demonstrates that the idea of an Islamic Pakistan has been an evolving concept driven as much by politics as it is by historical contingencies. It explains that the nature of the legal and sovereign imaginaries of the nation-state itself is a key to understanding Pakistan’s inner ambiguities and the country’s struggle to resolve its Islamic identity. It argues that answers to the question of what it is that makes a political and legal order Islamic remains unclear and suggests that perhaps more insoluble and intractable issues need to be considered when constituting religion within the framework of the nation-state. This thesis also proffers insights into potential opportunities and pitfalls which constitution-makers may encounter in relation to the constitutionalising of Islam

Finally, this thesis is a Thesis by Publication and its five substantive chapters are in the form of self-contained papers – four of which have been accepted for publication and the fifth chapter is at present under review.

The impetus for this thesis was based on a premise that the Provincial Governors of British India have been given too little credit by history for their involvement in the development, in particular, of all-India governmental policy and for the consequential effects. In order to explore this view and to determine the nature and impact of the Governors' contribution it was necessary to select major, discrete policy areas for examination. Lord Irwin's era was chosen because of its importance in the evolution of India's constitutional development, and thus that it permitted an analysis of the Governors' attitude towards and influence on Indian nationalism. The policy areas selected, under the heading of Government and Administration, for this examination and analysis were the Montford Reforms and dyarchy, the Simon Commission, Irwin's Dominion Status Declaration and the first Round Table Conference. Under the heading of Nationalism and Emergency the Governors' contributions to British policy responses towards communal tensions, the detenu issue, Communism, terrorism, Bardoli, Gandhi, civil disobedience and insurgency were identified. This work is introduced by an exposition of the Governors' constitutional, legal and personal standing in India. The research and analysis has confirmed the critical and extensive nature of the Governors' contribution to all-India policy, and hence to the decisions and actions decided upon at the Viceregal and metropolitan levels. The degree of influence over Lord Irwin exercised by the Indian Civil Service Provincial Governors in contrast to the Presidential Governors was noted. Some Governors exercised more influence than others. The importance of the ICS Governors to Irwin stemmed to a significant degree from their expertise developed through long Indian experience. It was identified that following the liberal Montford Reforms there was a power shift towards the Provinces, that the Governors were established as key interlocutors with Indian nationalism and formed a vital link between it and the Government of India. Some Governors in their interaction with nationalism reflected a progressive attitude consistent with the intent of the Montford Reforms. This thesis establishes that Irwin alone did not rule British India, which in many respects can safely be described as a Governors' Raj.

Studies on the impact of terrorism on an affected country's economy tend either to be discussed from a comparative cross-country perspective in development terms, a method considered unreliable and highly speculative (Sultan, 2013), or related more to the counter-terrorist measures adopted by developed (rather than developing) countries where detailed economic data is more readily available. Typical of the former approach is the World Bank's 2011 Development Report: 'Conflict, Security and Development', which broadly canvasses the ways conflict, violence and insecurity have impacted on and impeded the economic development of 'fragile' states. These are states that are deemed institutionally incapable of protecting their citizens from violence and oppression, and constitute, ostensibly in the World Bank's perspective, most of the non-developed world (World Bank, 2011). While the violent situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan is alluded to as 'consuming the attention of global policy makers' (World Bank, 2011), the report's focus is more on Africa than Asia. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan simply figure as a statistic in the selected World Development Indicator tables of comparative socioeconomic data for 135 economies (World Bank, 2011). In so far as terrorism is mentioned, it is undifferentiated as one of several 'new forms of violence' characterizing twenty-first century conflict.

A fundamental problem in the analysis of the 'war on terror' is a general predisposition in the West towards reflecting on violence as cause and violence as solution. In other words, a militant version of political Islam is treated as the problem, and a war to eliminate it is viewed as the appropriate response. My approach, which suggests a different way, breaks down the problem into two parts. Firstly, I investigate the history of West-Islam relations in order to gauge the impact of Western discourses on the development of political Islam and its causal impact on the 'war on terror'. Secondly, I extend this approach to examine the conflict in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan for an indepth analysis of the intractable and protracted nature of this conflict in that setting and a new way to deal with it. The thesis argues that the construction of 'otherness' in the Christian-Western discourses played a critical part in the defining of Muslim identity, and resulted in a dehumanising and demonising tradition of viewing Muslims down the ages and reacting to them. It further argues that Muslim responses to these discourses produced movements and organisations whose worldviews were influenced by the West itself. The emergence of reformists, revivalists, fundamentalists, Islamists, radicals, extremists and Jihadists all, in varying degrees, took note not only of the long history of encounter between the West and Islam but also the way that those encounters were framed.