Abstract
Civil-military relations in a democratic state should be conducted smoothly within the framework of
civilian supremacy. There is plethora of writing on the civil-military relations in Pakistan blaming the
military for all the wrong doings and evils in the state. It holds the military responsible for civil regime
change in the country while ignoring all political instability created by politicians. Little literature is
available on the current period starting from 2018 onwards presenting a contrary picture of civilmilitary relationship; therefore this study attempts to assess the dynamics of current civil-military
relationship in Pakistan. Uneasy and tense civil-military relations in past derailed the democracy in
the country many times but the state was also unable to attain the fruits of its independence. Though
during the era of Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif, democracy found opportunities to flourish and for
the first time in the history of the state two democratically elected governments completed their
consecutive tenure and the third elected government came into power peacefully. During this era
Pakistan was able to cope with the grave internal and external security challenges because civil and
military leadership mostly remained on the same page. Due to better understanding of the both elite;
Pakistan won the war on terror. A new chapter of civil-military relations started with a great pace in
2018 when Pakistan Tehrik-e Insaf came into power. The current study will investigate, explore and
analyze the civil military relations from 2018 onwards. The hypothesis of this study is that during the
above stated period under discussion, civil-military relations improved and brought about positive
results in Pakistan. Therefore, it is significant to explain how the civil-military relationship has
improved and why both civil and military top brass leadership took all the major political parties on
board regarding discussion on all important internal and external issues. Civil military relationship in
Pakistan has been in writing by many historians but there is dearth of work on the period under
discussion and therefore the current study has analyzed the nature of civil-military relationship in
Pakistan during the era of current government. Hopefully it will provide a clear picture of well
coordinated civil-military relations in Pakistan.
Muhammad Saleem, Kalsoom Hanif, , Rao Shahid Mahmood Khan, Naem Qazi. (2021) Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan: A Case Study of Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf from General Elections (2018) to Senate Election (2021), Journal of the Research Society of Pakistan, Volume-58, Issue-2.
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