This essay explores some of the reasons for Pakistan's failure to develop as a coherent nation state, despite the much simpler scenario it faced at independence as compared with India or Sri Lanka. Initially it seemed much more coherent as a country, being homogeneous in terms of the religion that had been its rationale. However, the failure to respect divergences within that homogeneity contributed to a process of disintegration, most obviously with regard to the hiving off of East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, but also in some Provinces that see themselves as marginalised by the dominant Punjabi majority.

Such disenchantment has been compounded by the failure to develop democratic principles or practices. The writer draws attention to the primacy of the military and the bureaucracy in the period after independence, a phenomenon assisted perhaps by the fact that the pressure for partition had come from forces belonging to areas that remained within India after partition. They were thus less inclined to trust the democratic will of the people, a diffidence that might explain Mohammed Ali Jinnah's desire to take on the appointed position of Governor General, rather than the elected post of Prime Minister, as happened with Jawaharlal Nehru, his counterpart in India. With his early death, the incentive for his unelected successor to see himself as in fact the supreme authority made the development of parliamentary democracy difficult. […]