| The central puzzle of my dissertation is this: why are some states better able to democratically control their militaries than others? Specifically, it provides an answer to this question in the context of the wild divergence between military dominated, authoritarian Pakistan and civilian dominated, democratic India---two strategically crucial South Asian states with otherwise shared historical and colonial backgrounds. I find that military institutional norms, forged in the first decade after independence under varying conditions of external threat, have played a critical role in shaping the nature of civil-military relations. Over time, institutional norms have outlasted the initial conditions of their production though different mechanisms of self-reinforcement, including practices of military socialization, to structure military political behavior. My findings complement existing arguments about India-Pakistan divergence based on institutional capacity and military corporate interests, but add another layer of complexity by examining the historical evolution of military organizations in each state and showing how normative intra-military dynamics shape (and are shaped) by the larger political and strategic context in which militaries function. |
