Military Agency, Politics and the State: The Case of Pakistan

423 Pages·2010·2.46 MB·English

by  Ejaz Hussain

Military Agency, Politics and the State:
The Case of Pakistan

Inauguraldissertation

zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Dr. rer. pol.

im Fach Politikwissenschaft

vorgelegt von:

Ejaz Hussain, M.A.

Eingereicht an der

Fakultät für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften

der Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg

im Sommer Semester 2010

Prof. Subrata K. Mitra, Ph.D. (Rochester, U.S.A.)
Erstgutachter:
Prof. Dr. Aurel Croissant
Zweitgutachter:
ii

“…Whatever community, caste or creed you belong to you are now the [civil] servants of
Pakistan. Servants can only do their duties and discharge their responsibilities by serving.
Those days have gone when the country was ruled by the [civil] bureaucracy. It is people‟s
Government, responsible to the people…do your duty as servants; you are not concerned
with this political or that political party; that is not your business…you are not rulers. You do
not belong to the ruling class; you belong to the servants.” [italics mine]

M.A. Jinnah‟s address to the
Gazetted officers,
25 March 1948

“…I would like to take the opportunity of refreshing your memory by reading the prescribed
oath to you. “ I solemnly affirm, in the presence of Almighty God, that I owe allegiance to
the Constitution and Dominion of Pakistan (mark the words Constitution and the Government
of the Dominion of Pakistan) and that I will as in duty bound honestly and faithfully serve in
the Dominion of Pakistan [Armed] Forces and go within the terms of my enrolment wherever
I my be ordered by air, land or sea and that I will observe and obey all command of any
officer set over me…..”…if you have time enough you should study the Government of India
Act, as adapted for use in Pakistan, which is our present Constitution, that the executive
authority flows from the head of the Government of Pakistan, who is the Governor-General
and, therefore, any command or orders that may come to you cannot come without the
sanction of the Executive Head. This is the legal position.” [italics mine]

M.A. Jinnah‟s address to the
Officers of the Staff College,
Quetta, 14 June 1948
iii
Acknowledgements

When I was a kid, growing up in Punjabi culture where family values are highly esteemed,
my mother disclosed to me once that I have three fathers. I was simply non-pulsed. Having
seen my anxiety turning into suspicion, she, with a meaningful smile on her face, categorized
and termed the three-father syndrome as follows: 1) your biological father, 2) your (would-
be) father-in-law and 3) your teacher(s). To my surprise and amusement, the existence of the
phenomenon and practice of Doktorvater in Germany made me realize, on the one hand, the
reverence for a teacher and hence knowledge and, on the other, the beauty that such a title
carries even in a non-South Asian cultural setting.

Thus, in view of the above, it shall be morally akin to disrespect, if not disobedience, not to
pay my heartiest regards to my Doktorvater, Prof Subrata Kumar Mitra, who formally
introduced me to the domain of professional political science. Moreover, his logical emphasis
on the importance of the Rational Choice theory further strengthened my (rational) conviction
in the latter‟s explanatory utility. In addition, his timely guidance as regards the choice and
application of research methods further helped me a great deal in terms of ensconcing
empirical data with theory/model. Importantly, to me Prof Mitra is more than a Doktorvater.
In a purely South Asian cultural/intellectual jargon, he is my Guru- the one who made me
learn from him, both expressly and tacitly, the comparative difference between politics and
political science, political science and the politics of political science, reason and ignorance,
rationality and irrationality, the sacred and secular and respect for (other) people and
perspectives and bigotry, conceit and the negativity of ego. Not only this, the Guru made me
learn how to figure out possible similarity between two objects, at the minimum, and two
cases/cultures, at the maximum.

Nonetheless, since knowledge-seeking is a continuous process than a product, it shall be
extremely inappropriate to exclude Prof Aurel Croissant from the list of my teachers. I am
deeply indebted to Prof Croissant for formally introducing me to an altogether different world
of civil-military relations. Also, the value of organization and participation that I learnt from
his colloquiums, which he allowed me to attend, shall serve as a practical guide. In addition, I
am thankful to him for becoming my second marker. Here, I would also like to pay my
deepest regards to Prof Dietmar Rothermund who took time to not only read parts of my
thesis but also blessed me with his valuable comments and practical guidelines- and that too
over a cup of coffee. Also, I appreciate the way he posted me his letters of recommendation.
To conclude the list of teachers, I would like to pay homage to Dr Ayesha Siddiqa who
remained, as always, a source of intellectual inspiration and struggle against authoritarianism,
both military and civilian.

Besides teachers, the list of colleagues and friends who helped me, one way or the other, is
very long. At its top sits (Dr) Jivanta Schöttli who, like a good South Asian, took the pain to
read a significant part of my thesis. Moreover, her timely comments and questions helped me
further improve upon the text. As regards comments and general observations, I also thank
David Kuehn, Mada Sukmajati, (Dr) Siegfried O. Wolf, Imran Iqbal (Leeds University),
Adeel Faheem (LUMS) and Farhan Sarwar (Lund University). Since moral encouragement is
much-needed during especially the write-up phase, I was lucky to have too many around me.
Hence, I would like to thank- besides my parents, sister and brother, and a coterie of cousins-
(Dr) Clemens Spiess, Dr Wiqar Ali Shah, Dr Inayatullah Baloch, Dr Thierry DiCostanzo
(Université de Strasbourg), Dr Kristina Jönsson (Lund University), Anna Løsnæs (Oslo),
Azhar Shah, Anja Kluge, Altaf Qadar, Abrar Bhatti, Ch Yunus, Lionel Koenig, Florian
iv
Britsch, Ivo Bielitz, Dr Khokhar, Markus Pauli, (Dr) Markus Franke, (Dr) Malte Pehl, (Dr)
Thomas Bauer, Sergio Mukherjee, Soumen Mukherjee, Bashir Ahmed, Lu Yang, (Dr) Ali
Qasmi, (Dr) Tahir Noor, Nasrullah Mirza, Dr Yousaf Khushk, Kashif, Khurrum, Gulfam,
Nafees, Rana Arshad, Ahmed, Amarah, Katharina, Kiran, Kathi, Nadia, Farida, Syed Arshad,
Malik Majeed, Dr Khalid Sanjarani, Yasir Bhatti, Sayyar Khan, Sarmad, Nisar, Faran, Uzair,
and Farah.

Besides, I would like to thank all the interviewees for their time and valuable input. In this
respect, the help from Adil Ali, Asim Ali, Yahya and Ch Yousaf is much appreciated.
Moreover, a special thank goes to Dr Farooq Ahmad Kiani who, despite being busy with his
post-doctoral assignments, took time to help me manage statistical data. Without his help, the
process would have taken much time. Hamza and Dr Sajjad deserve many thanks for their
assistance with graphics and design.

In addition, I would like to thank the library staff- of South Asia Institute as well as the
Heidelberg University- who took extra-care to provide me with much-needed books and
archival material. Also, the help that I got from the staff of Studentenwerk is much
appreciated. Furthermore, it shall be inappropriate here not to mention Barbara Neef who
helped me with the faculty related concerns. Finally, my special thank to Ursula Schmitt-
Köhler for helping me with Prof Mitra‟s letters of recommendation for the DAAD. I would
like to express my gratitude to DAAD for their financial support without which it would have
been almost impossible to accomplish my doctoral studies the way it is done.

Ejaz Hussain

Heidelberg, August 2010
v
Contents

Acknowledgements iii
List of Tables and Figures x
List of Abbreviations xii
Introduction 1
Objectives of the Research 2
Historical Overview 2
The Case of Pakistan 8
What is New? 9
Date and its Sources 10
Methodology 11
The scheme of the Thesis 17

Chapter 1 20
Conceptual Framework 20
1.1 Puzzle 21
1.2 The Core Question 21
1.3 Analytic Narratives and Variables Selection 22
1.3.1 Dependent Variable 27
1.3.2 Independent Variables (IVs) 28
1.4 Theoretical Paradigms 30
1.4.1 „Sociological‟ Perspectives 30
1.4.1.1 Huntington- between „Professionalism‟ and „Praetorianism‟ 31
1.4.1.2 Janowitz: Portraiting the „Professional‟ 34
1.4.2 The Comparativist Literature 36
1.4.2.1 The Men on Horseback 36
1.4.2.2 Soldiers in Politics 38
1.4.2.3 Perlmutter- Praetorianism Revisited 39
1.4.3 The Structuralist Thought 41
1.4.3.1 Desch- The Structural Theory of Civil-Military Relations 42
1.4.3.2 Is Desch‟s Model Applicable to the Case of Pakistan? 43
1.4.4 The Actor-oriented Work 44
vi
1.4.4.1 Peter Feaver – The Agency Theory (AT) of Civil-Military Relations 45
1.4.4.2 Agency Theory‟s Assumptions and their Advantages 47
1.4.4.3 Summary of Agency Theory‟s Assumptions 49
1.4.4.4 Advantages 49
1.5 Is Feaver‟s Theory Applicable to Pakistan‟s Case? 50
1.5.1 Contextualization of the AT‟s Assumptions 51
1.5.2 Actors and Agency: Rationalization of AT‟s Assumptions 53
1.6 Designing the Model 56
1.7 Hypotheses 62
1.7.1 Primary Hypothesis 62
1.7.2 Secondary Hypotheses 63
1.8 Conclusion 65

Chapter 2 69
Literature Review 69
2.1 The Legitimist Point of View 70
2.2 Conspiracy Theorists 76
2.3 The Generalist Accounts 77
2.4 The Instrumentalist Work 82
2.5 The Structuralist Literature 82
2. 6 The Path-Dependent Perspective 91
2.7 Conclusion 94

Chapter 3 99
Politics and the State: From Construction to Military Intervention 99
3.1 The Structured „Structure‟ of the ((Post) Colonial) State 100
3.1.1 Non-Overdeveloped State 101
3.1.2 „Legitimacy‟ Thesis Exposed 103
3.2 Actors, Interests and Preferences: The Institutional Construction of the State 105
3.2.1 Actors, Interests, Preferences: The Physical Construction of the State 106
3.3 Civilian Principal- The Perceiver of Threat 109
3.4 Politics- Principal and the Agents 112
3.4.1 Religion, Politics and the State 115
3.5 Agency and Rationality- The Case of Civil Bureaucracy 120
vii
3.5.1 Principal Bureaucracy, Agent Judiciary and Politics 124
3.6 Conclusion 130

Chapter 4 133
Military Agency: CMR under Generals Ayub and Yahya 133
4.1 Actors and Agency: Explaining the First Coup 134
4.2 An Analytic Narrative of the Coup 139
4.2.1 Law and Order Variable 139
4.2.2 Economic Variable 143
4.2.3 Democratization Variable 151
4.2.4 Securitization Variable 157
4.3 Military Agency: Causing the Coup 161
4.3.1 Maximizing Economic Interests 163
4.4 Actors and Agency: Explaining the Second Coup 168
4.5 An Analytic Narrative of the Coup 169
4.5.1 Law and Order Variable 171
4.5.2 Economic Variable 173
4.5.3 Democratization Variable 175
4.5.4 Securitization Variable 179
4.6 Military Agency: Causing the Coup 181
4.6.1 Maximizing Economic Interests 183
4.7 Conclusion 184

Chapter 5 189
CMR in ‘New’ Pakistan 189
5.1 Agency and Rationality- The Change in Principal 190
5.2 Politics of Interests- The Case of Bhutto 192
5.2.1 Bhutto and the Opposition 192
5.2.1.1 Negotiating Rules of the Game 194
5.2.1.2 Politics under the Rules 195
5.2.2 Oversighting the Agents? 197
5.2.2.1 The State of Agent Judiciary 203
5.3 Politics of Interests Revisited 203
5.4 Actors and Agency: Explaining the Third Coup 206
viii
5.5 An Analytic Narrative of the Coup 209
5.5.1 Law and Order Variable 211
5.5.2 Economic Variable 214
5.5.3 Democratization Variable 219
5.5.4 Securitization Variable 226
5.6 Military Agency: Causing the Coup 230
5.6.1 Maximizing Economic Interests 232
5.7 Conclusion 235

Chapter 6 240
Actors and Agency: Explaining the Civilian Circularity 240
6.1 Back to Barracks: Rationality Prevails 242
6.2 Actors and Agency: Explaining the Civilian Circularity 243
6.2.1 Politicians- in Parliament or Power? The Bhutto Government (1988-1990) 243
6.2.2 Politicians- in Parliament or Power? The Sharif Government (1990-1993) 249
6.2.3 Politicians- in Parliament or Power? The Bhutto Government (1993-1996) 253
6.2.4 Politicians- in Parliament or Power? The Sharif Government (1997- 12 Oct. 1999) 261
6.3 Conclusion 267

Chapter 7 271
Military Agency Revisited: CMR under General Musharraf 271
7.1 Actors and Agency: Explaining the Fourth Coup 273
7.2 An Analytic Narrative of the Coup 277
7.2.1 Law and Order Variable 279
7.2.2 Economic Variable 281
7.2.3 Democratization Variable 286
7.2.4 Securitization Variable 294
7.3 Military Agency: Causing the Coup 297
7.3.1 Maximizing Economic Interests 298
7.4 Actors and Agency: Explaining the Fifth Coup 304
7.5 An Analytic Narrative of the Coup 313
7.5.1 Law and Order Variable 314
7.5.2 Economic Variable 316
7.5.3 Democratization Variable 317
ix
7.5.4 Securitization Variable 321
7.6 Military Agency: Causing the Coup 322
7.6.1 Maximizing Economic Interests 324
7.7 Conclusion 330

Chapter 8 336
Conclusion 336
Hypothesis Revisited 365
Contribution of the Study 366
Appendices 368
Talking Points for an Interview 368
Sample Interview Transcript 369
Bibliography 390
x
List of Tables and Figures

Flow Matrix 1 Four Actors: Principal-Agent Relationship at Partition 52
Flow Matrix 2 Principal-Agent Relationship in Pakistan 53
Flow Matrix 3 Four Actors‟ Strategic Interaction 55
Agency Model of Pakistan‟s Civil-Military Relations 61
Organigram of the Army Command & Control 202

Table 1 Chronology of Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan 7
Table 2 Coup Occurrences in Pakistan 12
Table 3 „Civilian control of the Military as a Function of Location and Intensity of
Threats‟ 43
Table 4 Summary of Desch‟s Model 44
Table 5 Application of Desch‟s Model to Pakistan‟s Case 44
Table 6 Decisions for Conventional and Tribal Attacks by Pakistan 1947-1971 111
Table 7 Murders and Riots per Million Population 141
Table 8 Defense Expenditure: 1949-1958 145
Table 9 Index of Disparity in per Capita Income (West minus East, divided by West) 146
Table 10 Annual Growth Rate, 1950-58, at 1959/60 Factor Cost (% per annum) 147
Table 11 Annual Growth Rate, 1958-70, at 1959/60 Factor Cost (% per annum) 148
Table 12 Index of Real Wages of Industrial Workers: 1967-68 (Base Year 1954=100) 149
Table 13 Land Allotment to Military Personnel: 1965-2003 164
Table 14 Land Entitlement for Military Personnel 165
Table 15 Murder and Riots per Million Population 172
Table 16 Per Capita GDP in East and West Pakistan at 1959/60 Constant Prices 174
Table 17 1970 Elections: National Assembly Results 178
Table 18 Defense Expenditure: 1972-1977 201
Table 19 1977 Elections: National Assembly Results 205
Table 20 Murder & Riots per Million Population 212
Table 21 Crimes in Pakistan: 1978-1987 214
Table 22 Nationalization under Bhutto: 1972-77 214
Table 23 Bhutto: Natural Catastrophe as Contextual Constraint 226
Table 24 Defense Expenditure: 1978-88 228