Centre–Provincial Coordination in Pakistan after the 18th Amendment: Evaluating Culture and Tourism Governance

Abstract

The 18th Constitutional Amendment (2010) devolved control of culture and tourism to Pakistan's four provinces by dissolving the Ministry of Culture and establishing the Ministry of Tourism in February 2011. This paper reviews how Centre-provincial coordination for culture and tourism evolved from 2010 to 2026. Based on Constitutions, provincial laws, planning commission reports and parliamentary committee records, and published research, this paper shows that most uneven in outcomes were the KP legislations and the World Bank investments attracted. In Sindh and Balochistan, policy implementation and the institutionalization of tourism languished. The Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) ceased to be an effective national tourism body, with over 39 tourism facilities caught in a protracted legal dispute between the federal and provincial governments; and the National Tourism Coordination Board (NTCB) established in 2019, lacks the legal and financial autonomous mandate for meaningful inter-governmental coordination. In the heritage sector, although the 402 protected archaeological sites were transferred to the provinces, most of the these lack basic departments of Archaeology, systems for the issuance of excavation permits and conservation budgets. The jurisdictional issues in Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu & Kashmir further complicated these coordination efforts. Pakistan's experiences illustrate a critical lacuna in federal theory, through administrative devolution of functions and programs without a corresponding institutional capacity at the provincial level, dysfunctions at the center are simply moved to the periphery. This paper establishes that the devolution of Pakistan's culture and tourism sectors is a critical starting point for the necessary institutional reforms and restoration of adequate governance. This paper proposes a statutory inter-governmental framework for culture and tourism, based on Canadian and Indian Cooperative Federalism, among other things.