Foundations of Civil-Military Imbalance
Civil-military relations is the umbrella term for how an elected government and an armed forces leadership share power, exercise authority and resolve disagreements. In stable democracies, the principle is civilian supremacy over a professional, apolitical military. Pakistan's history is the story of how this principle has been repeatedly inverted.
The pattern of interaction between elected civilian institutions (parliament, cabinet, judiciary) and the armed forces of a state, covering control over defence policy, foreign affairs, budgets and — at the extreme — the survival of constitutional government itself.
Why this topic matters
Pakistan has spent over half its post-1947 existence under direct military rule — under Ayub Khan (1958-69), Yahya Khan (1969-71), Zia-ul-Haq (1977-88) and Pervez Musharraf (1999-2008). Even in periods of formal civilian rule, the military has retained dominant influence over national security, foreign and nuclear policy. Understanding why this imbalance set in so early is essential for almost every CSS Pakistan Affairs paper.
Roots of the imbalance — five structural factors
- Weak founding institutions: Pakistan inherited a fragmented civil bureaucracy and almost no industrial base, while the military arrived as a relatively organised institution.
- Security threat from India: the trauma of Partition, mass migration violence and the 1948 Kashmir war created an immediate, existential security frame that elevated the army's role.
- Early death of political leadership: Jinnah died in September 1948 and Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated in October 1951, leaving no leader of comparable stature.
- Ethnic and provincial fragmentation: the Bengali-West Pakistani divide and disputes over the national language strained civilian politics from the start.
- Bureaucratic-military alliance: the "viceregal" tradition of strong administrative officers, inherited from the Raj, fused with military authority in the 1950s — long before Ayub Khan's coup.
The 1947-58 decade
In its first eleven years, Pakistan had seven prime ministers and no general election on a national level. The 1956 Constitution was scrapped within two years. The two key non-elected institutions — the bureaucracy and the army — grew in stature while political parties weakened.
Ghulam Muhammad and Iskander Mirza
Governor-General Ghulam Muhammad (a former civil servant) dismissed the Constituent Assembly in 1954 — a move upheld by the Federal Court in the Federation of Pakistan v. Maulvi Tamizuddin Khan case under the doctrine of necessity. This legal principle would haunt Pakistan for decades.
Iskander Mirza succeeded him as the first President in 1956 and then, on 7 October 1958, abrogated the Constitution and declared martial law — handing power to his army chief, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, who deposed Mirza twenty days later.
We have lived through a critical period of our history. The army is now firmly in the saddle. Let no one feel that the army is going to be a party in this conflict of parties. We are all servants of Pakistan.
The "1958 Settlement"
Scholars often describe what followed Ayub's coup as a settlement, not a single event — the army, senior bureaucracy and a section of the propertied class arrived at an arrangement in which:
- Defence, foreign policy and Kashmir policy were de facto military domains.
- Elected politicians, when permitted, managed domestic governance, patronage and rhetoric.
- Constitutional change (1962 Constitution, Basic Democracies) was used to legitimise this division.
This settlement was disrupted in 1971, restored in modified form in 1977 under Zia, and again in 1999 under Musharraf — but its underlying logic persisted.
Why it endures
Three explanations dominate the academic literature:
- Garrison-state thesis: chronic conflict with India institutionalised the army's centrality. The 1965 and 1971 wars, the 1999 Kargil conflict and the 2001-02 standoff each reinforced its budget and prestige.
- Institutional asymmetry: the army's training, internal cohesion and corporate identity outclass those of fragmented political parties.
- Failures of civilian governance: corruption, weak service delivery, dynastic politics and provincial mismanagement repeatedly handed the military a justification (real or pretextual) for intervention.
For exam answers, avoid one-sided blame. The strongest essays show how military dominance and civilian failure feed each other — a "vicious cycle" rather than a simple villain-victim story.
Looking ahead
The next lesson traces the four direct military regimes — Ayub, Yahya, Zia and Musharraf — and asks whether Pakistan's hybrid arrangements since 2008 amount to genuine civilian supremacy or merely a "managed" democracy under continued military supervision.