Asian Research Thesis Index

Abstract

Military commanded civilian authority in Pakistan in three historical phases, 1958-1971, 1977-1988 and 1999-2008 approximately 32 years. During these historical phases military practiced diverse local government systems simply to acquire civilian legitimacy through civilians-military support vote bank for perpetuation of military rule. This gradually promoted military image and influence over civilian institutions of Pakistan. This dissertation is an academic attempt to extract viable techniques and methods for symmetrical civil-military relations for sustainable democratic order in Pakistan. Apart from defense and security affairs, military has been rendering multiple other tasks of national construction and development, therefore to analyze civil military nexus accurately, it is necessary to assess how both civil and military leaders handle policy discrepancy between them. The overall civil military nexus is broadly based on the fact how to establish civilian control over the military. The foreign policy formulation and implementation is civilian mundane, but military interference in civilian affairs with assertive designs directly alters Pakistan`s diplomatic interaction with neighboring and regional states. Classical idealistic theory of state has been applied in this dissertation to justify the role of the military to safeguard the geographical jurisdictions of the state. Civilians are morally and politically competent to make the decisions, even if they do not possess the relevant technical competence in the form of security expertise. In the civil-military context, this means that the military may be able to identify the threat and generate an appropriate response to threat for a given level of risk.Being guardian of the constitution Judiciary is an important institution of a government with core function to maintain rule of law for good governance and democracy. However in Pakistan during military regime judiciary took decisions on priority basis which paradoxically alter the course of civilian democratic order therefore this thesis applies qualitative analysis to the factors of civil military relations to ensure viable solutions and alternatives for promotion of civilian democratic supremacy under constitutional mechanism of Pakistan.

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