Pakistan in 2026: Beyond Crowd Control
Date: January 8, 2026
Nyle Murad
Program Officer, Jinnah Institute
The coming year is likely to test Pakistan’s governance, as economic pressure and shrinking civic space converge to risk pushing some forms of political contestation beyond formal channels. This is not an aberration unique to Pakistan. Across regions, weak governance has increasingly translated into street-level confrontation, producing cycles of escalation rather than reform.
In South Asia, this dynamic has already played out with unsettling speed. The collapse of governments in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal over the past few years was not driven by ideology or generational revolt alone, but by long-standing governance challenges ranging from fiscal mismanagement to elite capture. In each case, moments of crisis exposed the same pattern: when institutions lose credibility, public anger seeks expression outside constitutional boundaries, often violently.
Pakistan enters 2026 with several of these pressures evident. The security situation deteriorated sharply in 2025, with militant violence concentrated in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. More than 4,000 people were killed in militant attacks, while armed groups demonstrated evolving operational sophistication and geographic reach. At the same time, political polarisation and repeated ongoing disruptions to electoral and judicial processes have affected trust in civilian institutions.
Governance responses have prioritised immediate stability. Preventive detentions, internet shutdowns, and expanded security powers may contribute to short-term order, but they also deepen the perception that the state lacks non-coercive tools to manage political disagreement. This gap between coercive capacity and political legitimacy is increasingly visible not only on the streets but in Pakistan’s economic outlook. As Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb candidly acknowledged in a media briefing in Washington last year, investor confidence and long-term growth are now inseparable from domestic peace and political cohesion.
The risk ahead is not of a single mass uprising, but of emerging patterns of algorithm-driven mobilisation, where outrage travels faster than verification, further compressing the state’s response window.
The central challenge for 2026 lies as much in governance capacity as in crowd control. Sustaining space for lawful dissent, ensuring credibility to constitutional processes, and aligning security policy with economic governance. In the year ahead, Pakistan’s stability will hinge on whether governance reform is treated as a security imperative or whether rising frustration continues to be managed primarily at moments of escalation.
