Viewed schematically, the political course of independent Pakistan can be seen in microcosm in its first years. Many of the internal structures and external pressures that have come to typify state and society were present at its creation. The uncertainties of its relationship with India – bound so closely in history, ruptured so profoundly while successfully achieving self-determination – deeply permeated the country's political psychology and created the basis for a politics of uncertainty that remains today. Contentious and unstable regional relations influenced the way Pakistan organized its resources, foreign alliances and domestic politics, and quickly created the foundations for a praetorian state. The predominance of the military, even under civilian rule, colored the development of the country's laws and political institutions and equally, the ways its citizens responded to the proclaimed imperatives of the state. Its geographic and economic maps were mismatched and unbalanced: natural resources, capital and infrastructure were organized to fit unpartitioned, colonial India rather than the new state; politics were an awkward overlay on this terrain of nascent centers and multiple peripheries.

Pakistan was truly a product of many imaginations, each with their own visions of political community and state structure.