Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990; Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 1999The State of Martial Rule:
the Origins of Pakistan's Political Economy of Defence
When the British dismantled their Raj in 1947 India, as the 'successor' state, inherited the colonial unitary state apparatus whereas Pakistan, as the 'seceding' state, had no semblance of a central government. In The State of Martial Ayesha Jalal analyses the dialectic between state construction and political processes in Pakistan in the first decade of the country's independence and convincingly demonstrates how 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.
Using hitherto unpublished materials, Professor Jalal examines the way in which the senior echelons of the civil bureaucracy and military succeeded in tilting the institutional balance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. She also explores the role of Islam in the balance between state and society and sheds new light on the recurring tension between the Pakistan centre and the provinces and the related problem of 'ethnicity'. The study concludes by placing the state and political developments in Pakistan from 1958 to 1988 within a conceptual framework.
The book is of special interest to historians of South Asia as well students and specialists of comparative politics and political economy.
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