We are pleased to announce that on Friday 7 July 2023, Asma Akbar successfully defended her PhD thesis on Pakistan’s national security paradigm: a human security analysis. The defence took place online. The committee consisted of PhD co-promoters Prof. Dr. Luk Van Langenhove and Prof. Dr. Khawaja Alqama, while the jury members were the following: Prof. Dr. Alexander Mattelaer, who served as a Chairperson, Prof. Dr. Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh (Doctoral Committee member), Prof. Dr. Richard Higgott, Prof. Dr. Olesya Tkacheva, Prof. Dr. Philippe de Lombaerde, Dr. Stephen Klose (Doctoral Committee member) and Dr. Giulia Tercovich. The Brussels School of Governance would like to congratulate Dr. Asma Akbar on this wonderful achievement! Below you can read more about her PhD thesis.
Pakistan’s national security paradigm: a human security analysis
This research examines the tension between Pakistan's national security paradigm and nontraditional security challenges of Pakistani people, in the post-9/11 era, through the human security perspective that defines security as safeguarding everyday needs and challenges of people. In the theoretical part of the study, strengths and pitfalls of the human security perspective vis-à-vis other non-traditional concepts of security and different versions of the human security perspective are discussed. A nine-dimensional conceptual framework and a bilevel methodological framework are presented that serve as the analytical framework for the study. The empirical study is inspired by social constructionism. It adopts an eclectic approach by incorporating a discursive analytical angle to the Critical Human Security (CHS) approach and engaging with the "What's the Problem Represented to be?" (WPR) approach and Positioning Theory (PT) in unison with qualitative content analysis. For the empirical data collection, Pakistan is considered an intrinsically embedded single-case, providing an analysis at national and local levels. The national level includes the external and internal dimensions of security. The local level refers to people and marginalized communities at the state level: the Provincially Administrated Tribal Areas (PATA) of Punjab or the Koh-e-Suleman range of South Punjab in this study. The findings regarding the juxta-positioning of both levels revealed that the divergence and contradictions along threat characterization, actor characterization, conditions and conceptualization of security exist between the state's representation of security and people's perception of it. The findings manifest that the state at the policy level overlooks the everyday needs and challenges of people in marginalized communities and potentially violent areas and delinks political security with economic security at both levels. Political security and different actors' roles concerning civil-military relationships at the national level and clan-based politics at the expense of other actors and dimensions at the local level are significant missing dimensions. The study suggests repositioning human security as a central endeavor in its own and traditional and economic security as means geared to it. This can be achieved by focusing on (i) a balanced civil-military relationship with civilian ascendancy, (ii) equitable redistribution of resources, (iii) a robust mechanism for a divisible financial pool, and (iv) a pro-people state as an instrument of ensuring human security as an end and means. People should thereby always act as ultimate referents and an agency of human security in Pakistan's national security framework.