There are many accounts by now of the military’s role in politics in Pakistan. Ejaz Hussain’s volume is a welcome addition to that. The primary objective of the volume is to build a model of civil-military relations applicable to the case of Pakistan which should explain the causes and mode of military intervention as well as the nature of military rule. According to the author, there are many scholarly studies on the subject but none has managed to rigorously address the question why the military intervenes in politics in the first place.
The study highlights the theoretical as well as empirical weaknesses in the existing accounts on Pakistan’s civil-military relations. In critically reviewing the existing literature the author has placed it in six categories. First, the legitimist point of view which looks at the military as a modernizing force.