Hamza Alavi's groundbreaking study of the 'overdeveloped' post-colonial state represented the first major attempt in the Marxist tradition to capture the specificity of the post-colonial historical experience. Alavi's empirical focus was Pakistan, but sadly the majority of the literature dealing with the state in the Pakistani context has tended to engage with Alavi's theoretical formulation in a very descriptive manner. This thesis is an attempt to address this gap within the literature.

Pakistan came into being in August, 1947 with the marginal characteristics of a developed polity. Despite the apparent existence of disagreeable political phenomena all the components of Parliamentary democracy, and for that matter a developed polity, were beginning to surface in Pakistan as the year 1958 wore on and a general election was becoming imminent. The first significant index of political development was Pakistan's achieving a general ideological consensus and resolution of regional cleavages in the country. On the question of integrative institution - building, the amalgamation of all units of West Pakistan into one unified province was a political landmark. The formula of parity between the two wings in all matters and the machineries for implanting it were am. The period 1956 - 1958 witnessed further strengthening of institutions which were created. The one-unit scheme was further solidified. The edges of centre fugal forces were blunted, and the grievances of the former smaller units of West Pakistan were attended to. The regionalism of East Pakistan, comparatively. speaking, was dwindling. The controversy over was also finally solved with the ushering of a joint electorate system. It can he thus maintained that within the period 1954- 1958, the regional and ideological cleavages were greatly resolved paving the way for a " Common value orientation " - the desideratum for a developed polity. Also there occurred significant change in the political-system, in that the early domination of the Services was: on the wane. The Hindus which were looked upon with jaundiced eye in the early period were given a sense of partnership with the majority community in the use of political power. Similarly, the parliament in the period 1956-1958 made some headway towards the right direction. What is more, the trends, were identifiable in that, the two parties namely, the M.L. and A.L. were emerging as the two major political parties of Pakistan. Despite all these achievements towards political development, Pakistan could not retain the parliamentary apparatus on the Westminster model, for ; some small | group of people who happened to have their fingers on the triggers of power, had no loyalty to democratic institutions and sabotaged the working of the parliamentary government in Pakistan.

This thesis is concerned with the principles of federalism and practice of federation in Pakistan, Baloch nation/nationalism and the politics of separatism. Since its inception, Pakistan adopted federalism as a system of government to manage a new country consisting of various ethno-national and linguistics groups. The purpose was to acknowledge diversity but discourage separatism. However, the history of Pakistan, including the creation of Bangladesh out of East Pakistan in 1971, shows its failure to fulfil this purpose of avoiding separatism. A key challenge faced by Pakistani federation for many years has been the conflict in its largest province of Balochistan. The conflict has multiple dimensions including a strong movement for separation of Baloch lands from Pakistan. This thesis investigates various phases of the Baloch conflict with Pakistani federation and analyses different strands of Baloch nationalism. It also explores the shifting power and relation of these strands – federalist and separatist - with the crises of federalism in Pakistan. It argues that the primary driver affecting Baloch nationalism is the failure of Pakistani federation to be genuinely federal. This thesis suggests that the Pakistan federation needs to revisit its constitution to make it more federal in a way wherein each ethno-national group feels the ownership of the country and can be convinced that its identity and language is protected and its land and resources utilised for welfare of the local inhabitants.

This thesis provides a critical analysis of Pakistan's geopolitics. It examines why Pakistan remains preoccupied with a state-centric view of conventional security, based on military defense of territorial security/integrity against external threats. It questions why the ruling elite of Pakistan perceive and interpret this geopolitical order as a given, unproblematic and therefore natural condition. Drawing on critical insights — in particular, critical perspectives on geopolitics and ideology — the research explores how the ruling elite, during successive regimes in Pakistan, have employed a confluence of ideological and strategic 'imperatives' to rationalize and naturalize the state-centric view of conventional geopolitics. In this regard, the thesis makes a significant contribution to the existing body of literature on power-elites, the 'construction' of security threats, and the ideological character of Pakistan's geopolitics. In examining the ideological and strategic orientation of the ruling-elite of Pakistan, this thesis explores four major and self-contradictory ideological projects in Pakistan: Islamic- Democracy of the 1950s, Islamic-Socialism of the 1970s, Islamisation of the 1980s, and Enlightened-Moderation of the 2000s. In so doing, it considers if the ruling elite constructed ideological rhetoric into the strategic environment of Pakistan in order to conflate it with the changing contours of international and regional geopolitics. The thesis argues that this enabled elite to rationalise and justify the state-centric view of conventional geopolitics in the service of a number of interests. In particular, elite used this geopolitical order to draw legitimacy, economic, diplomatic and military support and to claim an exclusive and dominant role in the realms of domestic and strategic decision making. The research mainly relies on qualitative methods that include interviews and text-analysis of both primary and secondary sources.

Pakistan is regarded widely today as a country continuing turmoil, in which multiple centres of political and armed power compete with each other, using violence as much as due democratic processes to settle their differences. And yet, as this dissertation seeks to show, there is also a tradition of democracy that has been fought for and won in ongoing nonviolent movements For almost half its life since its creation in 1947, military dictators, of whom there have been four in all, have ruled Pakistan. Amongst these, General Zia-ul-Haq ruled the longest at more than eleven years from July 1977 to August 1988. He not only executed Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan former Prime Minister but he was also able to bring about fundamental changes in the legal, political, religious, social and cultural affairs of the country. His rule is often considered a ‘dark age’ in the history of Pakistan. Two movements – the campaign to save Bhutto 1977-1979 and the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) 1981-1988 – were launched and led by political parties, of which the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) was leading member, against Zia’s rule. Historians have generally considered both these movements to have been a failure. In this dissertation, it is argued that although MRD took much longer than the originally-envisaged three months to achieve its aim, it did not in the end fail. It should, rather, be seen as a gradualist democratic movement, which eventually brought the country back to democracy in 1988. The process took longer than expected for several reasons, the most important of which were a lack of unity amongst the leaders of its constituent political parties, particularly the PPP, the absence of an operational corps, and Zia-ul-Haq’s ruthless response to the nonviolent resistance to his rule. Additionally, Zia’s regime was supported for many years by international powers of the Western bloc, due to the war against Soviet Union in Afghanistan.