Action for Empowerment and Accountability Research Programme: Understanding Social and Political Action: Pakistan: Country and Intervention Scoping Report

Abstract

This paper provides an approach to political and social action for empowerment and accountability in Pakistan. It is based on a review of the landscape of social and political action undertaken by the author in the third quarter of 2016. The aim of the Scoping Paper is to identify some of the key themes and topics for research on social and political action. The paper opens with the country context which pays special attention to the formal institutional setting within which social and political action takes place (Section 2). It then moves on to interpreting and defining key concepts as they might apply to the country (Section 3). Section 4 provides a brief landscape of social and political action, and the role of external players is summarised in Section 5. Section 6 outlines a number of promising areas of research, research questions, methods, outputs and likely approaches to research uptake. This scoping study was conducted as part of the inception phase for the DFID-funded Action for Empowerment and Accountability Research Programme (A4EA)