Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: The Psychodynamics of his Rise and Fall by Shamim Ahmad

Of all the leaders who came to rule Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has been only second to the Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah in terms of receiving attention from authors of different types—biographers, journalists, researchers, and professional historians. While many prime ministers of the country have remained in oblivion even though some of them deserved to be studied seriously given their contribution to the country’s political development, Bhutto was regularly made the subject of studies both within the country and abroad. A number of Ph.D theses have been done on him and his rule. The number of books written by various authors expressing different shades of opinion are simply uncountable. Being the founder of the nation, Jinnah was treated by and large, over an extended period of the country’s history, and by a majority of writers, as a national hero whose role in history was highlighted in the manner in which the nationalist historians write about the national heroes. It was much later that Pakistani historians took to writing more professionally about the Father of the Nation. Quite interestingly, the Jinnah that emerged from these objective histories proved to be a more original and powerful historical figure as compared with his previous representation as a straightjacketed national hero. As compared to him, Bhutto became the subject of objective historical works right from the beginning. Of course, there have been books of hagiography written in his honor, but these are mainly from the pen of people belonging to his own political party or the ones who were overly inspired by his charisma. Then there are numerous books written by his diehard opponents, who leave no stone unturned in demolishing his image. Despite the diverse writings about him, ranging from one extreme to another, it is good, from the point of view of historical political writings on Pakistan, that with the

Exploring Patterns in Conceptions and Enactment of Democracy by Secondary School Teachers in Karachi, Pakistan

The concept of democracy is a set of contestable yet elastic notions about human interaction in a diverse and ever changing socio-political set up. Like many other socio-political concepts democracy has also been used ambiguously by political as well as non-political elements to serve their own vested interest. However, there is a general agreement that the democratic practices of deliberation and participation by the people can be strengthened through education. In this study, I focus on the school as an institution that has been used as an instrument to promote certain ideologies and forms of regimes ranging from democratic ideals and participatory norms to orthodox military and religious ethos. The basic purpose of this study is a critical examination of teachers' conceptualisation of democracy and its enactment in secondary schools in the context of Pakistan. In other words the study attempts to unpack and explain the teachers' theoretical and practical positioning' about democracy and how such positioning is mediated by curriculum directions and pedagogical trends in government and private sector schools. The study involved a multi-method design of data collection and analysis, starting with a survey method and then to deepening understanding by using critical ethnographic methods. For the purpose of the survey a questionnaire was developed using a 5-point-Likert scale ranging from 'strongly disagree' through 'neutral' to 'strongly-agree' along with five open-ended questions. The survey study spread over a period of two months covering 80 secondary schools from government and private sector in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. The overall response rate was 80% as 320 teachers out of targeted 400 completed the questionnaire. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to extract 'factors', which were interpreted by computing factor loadings, mean score, and standard deviation values. In addition, responses to the open ended questions were analysed using frequency distribution and percentage scores to identify major trends. During the second phase of the study, critical ethnographic methods of semi-structured interviewing, observations, and document analysis were applied to generate data with the participation of four teachers from selected government and private sector schools. The study was completed in three stages; first compiling the primary records for preliminary reconstructive analysis and second a dialogical data generation and reconstruction of theories. At a third stage, results obtained from the survey and the ethnographic interviews and observation were synthesised to elicit findings and conclusions. The study demonstrates that the teachers' conceptualisation of democracy