The Nature and Direction of Political Change in Pakistan

Abstract

Politics in Pakistan: The Nature and Direction of Change by Khalid BinSayeed, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1980, pp. 194, price US. $21.95.In many respects, this is a significant work-and a controversial one.In terms of the data presented, analyses attempted, insights providedand conclusions drawn, it represents long years of research andreflection. And, it is not an easy book to review.In this reviewer’s view, any discussion on this work must necessarilybegin with a flashback to the author’s background and his earlier workssince it would help put the present work in perspective. Khalid binSayeed is not only the most widely known Pakistani writer on Pakistanpolitics, but also the foremost Pakistani political scientist, havingauthored numerous papers in journals and compilations, and two majorworks-Pakistan: The Formative Phase (1960) and The Political Systemof Pakistan (1967). Being original and analytical, they achieved instantfame, acquiring, in the process, the distinction of being the most frequentlycited works on Pakistan’s historical and political development.In the first work, a political history of Indian Muslims since 1858 andof Pakistan till 1958, Sayeed interpreted Pakistan in terms of Muslimnationalism and Jinnah’s charismatic leadership, and the interplay ofpolitical forces and the course of politics in Pakistan’s early years wereexplained in terms of the “viceregal system” of undivided India. Set inthe tradition of the developmental theorists, his second worknqxploiteddextrously the idiom and formulations of the behavioralists.Now, in this third major work, Sayeed turns his back on all this andsettles for a (modified?) Marxian approach. Page two alone features fourquotes from Marx and one from the Marxist Geoffrey Kay; in particular, ...