Comparing the Discourses of Pakistani and Western Media’s Representation of the 27th Amendment and its Democratic Legitimacy

Constitutional amendments are pivotal moments in democratic governance because they recalibrate institutional power and renegotiate political legitimacy. The study examines how democratic legitimacy surrounding Pakistan’s 27th Constitutional Amendment is discursively constructed in the selected Pakistani and Western media through a comparative critical discourse analysis. The study investigates how media discourse frames constitutional change, institutional authority, and democratic norms. Guided by Fairclough’s three-dimensional model and van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach, the analysis focuses on strategies of discursive legitimation and delegitimation, including authorization, rationalization, moral evaluation, modality, and framing. The findings reveal a pronounced ideological divide between domestic and international media narratives. Pakistani media discourse is internally polarized: state-aligned outlets largely frame the amendment as a technocratic and procedural reform aimed at enhancing institutional efficiency, governance continuity, and national stability, relying heavily on authorization and rationalization. In contrast, elite independent media most notably Dawn advances a counter-discourse that delegitimizes the amendment by portraying it as a constitutional rupture that undermines judicial independence, the separation of powers, and democratic accountability. Western media coverage is predominantly critical and relatively uniform, framing the amendment as a consolidation of executive and military power. Through moral evaluation, warning-oriented modality, and appeals to external legal expertise, these narratives position the amendment as incompatible with liberal democratic norms and international rule-of-law standards. Overall, the study demonstrates that democratic legitimacy is not an objective attribute but a discursively produced outcome shaped by ideological frameworks, power relations, and media positioning. It highlights the mediating role of media discourse in constitutional politics by showing how the same constitutional event is normalized domestically while being delegitimized internationally.