Labeling the State in Contemporary Pakistan and the Scholarship of Will-o-the-Wisp

Abstract

The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World. By T.V. Paul New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 272 pp., $27.95 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-199-32223-7). There is much to admire in The Warrior State . The mixture of journalism and personal recollection that dominates much of contemporary Pakistan scholarship compares poorly with this academic study, with its scholarly blend of theory and evidence. Too often scholars of Pakistan tend to bunker down (like the sandbagged soldiers pictured on the book's cover) to write about Pakistan, using only Pakistan-related scholarship. Here, big theories relating to the state and war making, institutions, democratic transition, and international relations are blended in the most eclectic bibliography I have seen in a Pakistan book for a long time. The main problem with this volume is that, perhaps inevitably given the weaknesses of much of the existing literature, this book tries to do too much. We are introduced to Tilly on war making and the state, to Leftwich on the developmental state, and others on the resource curse, or failed states, or other big ideas. Often when wading through the long historical evidential narrative, I wondered what theory exactly was all this information engaging with? In particular, the book fell between two central ideas: Was this a study of the role of the military, state, and democratization, which then honed in on a Pakistan-specific case study? Or was this book introducing us to a new organizing concept, that of the “Warrior State,” through which we can better understand contemporary Pakistan? In Chapter 1, the book is clear that it will focus on “the role of war and war making in the development of nation states” and will answer the paradox, that war making contributed to the growth of strong nation states in the Europe of an earlier age, in Pakistan war making has created only a “‘failing state’” (p. 2). The book explains this paradox in two ways: Firstly, it argues …