In sharp contrast to neighboring India, the Muslim nation of Pakistan has been ruled by its military for over three decades. The Army and Democracy identifies steps for reforming Pakistan’s armed forces and reducing its interference in politics, and sees lessons for fragile democracies striving to bring the military under civilian control.

Politics in Pakistan has traditionally been understood in the context of civil-military relationship. In May 2013, for the first time in history, Pakistan saw an elected government complete a full term in office and transfer power through the ballot box to another civilian government. In view of such an important development, this book offers critical perspectives on Pakistan’s current democratic transition and its implications for national politics, security and foreign policy. It critically analyses the emerging political trends in the country, including their underlying sources, attributes, constraints, and prospects of sustainability. Drawing on history, diverse theoretical perspectives, and empirical evidence, it explains the dynamics of the democratic process, contested borders and spaces, and regionalism. Contributions are from 13 prominent scholars in the field, who provide a wide-ranging analysis of Pakistan’s contemporary national and regional challenges, as well as the opportunities they entail for its viability as a democratic state. Taking the debate on Pakistan beyond the outmoded notions of praetorian politics and security, the book explores the future prospects of civilian supremacy in the country. It will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian Politics, Political Sociology and Security Studies, as well as policy-makers, diplomats, security experts and military professionals.

Pakistani society continues to find itself in a state of upheaval because of the mad scramble for power in almost all sectors. This book presents a dialogue between eminent scholars and social activists, from which emerges a fascinating outlook on the underlying issues of the renegotiation of power in Pakistan.

In this book twelve respected specialists fully analyze the nation of Pakistan--looking at its external and internal powers-that-be, its people and its leadership. The frailties of this polyglot society and the tragedies of its uneasy democratic transition are put into perspective. The ethnic, ideological, and political characteristics of Pakistan are considered from a number of vantage points as the varied scholars relate the nation's past experiences with aberrations of Western-style democracy and ponder its prospects for the future.

How can civilians in newly democratized countries ensure their control over the military? While establishing civilian control of the military is a necessary condition for a functioning democracy, it requires prudent strategic action on the part of the decision-makers to remove the military from positions of power and make it follow their orders.

This book investigates the relationship between international security governance, democratic civil-military relations and the relevance of strategy, as well as of absolute and relative gains, in norms formation in hybrid orders. Highlighting caveats of the legacy of Huntington’s paradigm of military professionalism, the book applies a robust methodology and data collected in four sample regions in Pakistan. It gauges the effects of international and local actors’ support in the Security Sector Reform domain and examines instances of civil-military interactions and military transition. The book also analyses determinants and strategies that can influence them to demonstrate the impact of global governance in norms diffusion, as well as of absolute and relative utility gains and incentives in normative change. The author generates a new theory pertaining to international organisations and actors as determinants of transformation processes and consequently sheds new light on the issue of global security governance, especially its impact on civil-military relations and democratisation in hybrid orders. The book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in the field of global governance, civil-military relations, grand strategy and foreign policy as well as Asian politics, South Asian studies, peace, security and strategic studies, International Relations and political science in more general.

A Set of reasons have been attributed to the question why Pakistan has oscillated between democratic and military regimes? In Democracy and Authoritarianism in Pakistan: The Role of the Military and Political Parties the author has attempted to untangle this intriguing riddle. In this nuanced and detailed study of the process of democratisation and its correlation with the military and civilian regimes the book traces the evolution, deviation and reconsolidation of democratic process and institutions in Pakistan. It demonstrates the role of political parties and the military in shaping the nature of democracy in Pakistan. The study locates the centrality of political parties in Pakistan politics and demonstrates how civilian and military regimes have instrumentalised political parties for regime legitimisation and stabilisation. It engages in a comprehensive assessment of qualitative transformations of societal and political dynamics, changes within political parties, party system and military and their implications for democracy at various phases of Pakistani politics. The book also examines how individuals and ideologies have played determinative role in shaping the nature of democratic process in Pakistan.

Pakistan's difficulties with India help rationalize the continuity of an enormous defence establishment while significant areas like the judiciary, women's progress, education, health and press remain neglected, hampering the empowerment of civil society.

"The interaction between military and civilian courts, the political power that legal prerogatives can provide to the armed forces, and the difficult process civilian politicians face in reforming military courts remain glaringly under-examined. This book fills a gap in existing scholarship by providing a theoretically rich, global examination of the operation and reform of military courts in democracies. Drawing on a newly-created global dataset, it examines trends across states and over time. Combined with deeper qualitative case studies, the book presents clear and well-justified findings that will be of interest to scholars and policymakers working in a variety of fields"--