The state-society interaction in Pakistan has a direct connection with the country’s political stability, governance structure, and economic development. This interaction has resulted in a multifaceted conflicting scenario in which the country’s political and social landscapes are passing through critical phases. The leading academic surveys from diverse directions of international intellectual communities have emerged, they have tried to underline the factor responsible for deterioration of the state-society interaction in Pakistan, where the historical, political, and social state dynamics cannot be ignored.
Thus, the mainstream intellectual investigations concerning the deteriorating state-society matrix generally emphasize upon the history of various political developments aligned with the varying patterns of socio-political behaviours. In this debate, the scholarly effort of Ghulam Mujadid cannot be overlooked, as it focused on the genesis of state-society relations in Pakistan and the reasons for its critical transformations under certain psychological pressures.
In his book State-Society Conflict in Pakistan, Mujadid points out the prevalence of critical political developments in Pakistan and their substantial impacts on the country’s traditional societal framework. The book aims to accentuate the root causes of the conflict between Pakistan’s state and society by examining the psychological dimensions of national societal attitudes, cultural values, and normative behaviours.
These societal features reflect the nature of state institutions and their substantial impacts on the general public. It is an exceptional analytical survey of a former Pakistan Air Force pilot who has become the country’s prominent intellectual figure based on his practical knowledge about the major defence affairs of the state. His wealth of practical knowledge gained from his experience as a pilot enabled Mujadid to invest in the country’s academic culture by expressing his rational and impartial opinion at diverse scholarly forums of national and international significance.
The quest for participating in the leading academic debate has propelled Mujadid to earn a PhD degree in the Strategic Studies from Quaid-i-Azam University in 2018. The book under review concerning the critical evolution of state-society relations in Pakistan is a glimpse of Mujadid’s intellectual properties, which have provided him a valuable position among his peers. The combination of practical and academic knowledge has led Mujadid to actively participate in the intellectual conversation of the Islamabad-based strategic community. His valuable feedback was centred on a pragmatic approach and tries to present a comprehensive examination of the tensions between the state and society in Pakistan while offering certain valuable insights.
The book’s primary debate is divided into seven main chapters, each of which contains logical sets of arguments under specific themes. After explaining the book’s central idea in the few introductory pages, the first chapter starts the discussion by underlining the evolution of the complex dynamics between state authorities under different political administrations and its inevitable impacts on the changing societal and political inclinations of Pakistan.
In other words, it is dubbed by the author as the persistent growth of the country’s socio-political tendencies, which are based on a particular psychological nature of the state and its influential impacts on the country’s conventional societal arrangements. The second and third chapters cover both contesting dimensions originating from the history of internal crisis and relentlessly emerging external threats from the intense South Asian regional security environment.
The interesting arguments emerge in the last chapter, which presents the conceptually robust and practically applicable resolution to the state-society conflict. The strengthening of civil society, enhancement of state-society interaction, development of peace structures based on the constitution, and creation of self-esteem and trust in the young generation are treated as the appropriate measures that provide solutions to the problem in the book.
The author’s pragmatic approach in formulating well-structured arguments under different chapters increases the legitimacy of his findings in the book’s concluding part, where he outlined eight different pathways to resolving the state-society conflict in Pakistan.
In this way, the book’s compelling arguments show that Pakistan’s post-colonial state structure retained authoritarian tendencies, perpetuating a structural disconnect between rulers and the ruled. The author’s interdisciplinary approach illuminates the deep-seated psychosocial factors shaping governance, institutional dysfunction, and societal fragmentation.
The interdisciplinary nature of arguments makes it an intellectual bridge between political science, sociology, and psychology, and this incomparable combination tries to provide a comprehensive account of substantial arguments related to Pakistan’s contemporary indigenous issues of political instability, societal disturbance, and governance challenges. So, the conceptual alignment of specific psychological patterns and their countrywide prevalence provides a persuasive lens in the book to overview the mainstream governance challenges impacting social behaviours in Pakistan. The mentioning of cogent historical facts and inclusion of persuasive contemporary examples in the book’s arguments mainly address the questions of upsetting the state’s authoritarian policies and societal resisting reaction.
Contrasting to the regular studies emphasizing the historical, religious, political, and economic accounts of Pakistan’s internal problems, this book explored a different perspective related to the psychological factors influential in creating a protracted conflict in Pakistan hindering the scope of perpetual societal peace and its appropriate application across the country. The author’s pragmatic approach makes the book an impartial critique consisting of balanced arguments, which strengthens the arguments’ rationality in logical contexts.
Therefore, the book is an essential read for scholars, policymakers, and students interested in understanding the internal power dynamics of Pakistan and its impacts on society, which is strictly aligned with certain ideological patterns and traditional cultural values.
This book’s unique perspective and comprehensive analysis make a significant contribution to the field of Pakistan’s political and social dynamics.
