The state of martial rule: the origins of Pakistan's political economy of defence

Abstract In 1947 India, as the "successor' state, inherited the colonial unitary central apparatus whereas Pakistan, as the "seceding' state, had no semblance of a central government. The book analyses the dialectic between state construction and political processes in Pakistan in the first decade of the country's independence and argues that the imperatives of the international system in the "cold war' era combined with regional and domestic factors to mould the structure of the Pakistani state. The author examines the way in which the senior echelons of the civil bureaucracy and military succeeded in tilting the institutional balance of power against parties and politicians and analyses the strategic concerns and economic constraints which prompted Pakistan's first military coup d'etat in 1958. The role of Islam in the balance between state and society, the recurring tensions between the Pakistan centre and the provinces, and the related problem of "ethnicity' are explored. The study concludes by placing the state and political developments in Pakistan from 1958 to the present within a conceptual framework. -from Publisher