Pakistan’s Military Elite Paul Staniland University of Chicago
[email protected] Adnan Naseemullah King’s College London
[email protected] Ahsan Butt George Mason University
[email protected] DRAFT December 2017 Abstract: Pakistan’s Army is a very politically important organization. Yet its opacity has hindered academic research. We use open sources to construct unique new data on the backgrounds, careers, and post-retirement activities of post-1971 Corps Commanders and Directors-General of Inter-Services Intelligence. We provide evidence of bureaucratic predictability and professionalism while officers are in service. After retirement, we show little involvement in electoral politics but extensive involvement in military-linked corporations, state employment, and other positions of influence. This combination provides Pakistan’s military with an unusual blend of professional discipline internally and political power externally - even when not directly holding power. Acknowledgments: Michael Albertus, Jason Brownlee, Christopher Clary, Hamid Hussain, Sana Jaffrey, Mashail Malik, Asfandyar Mir, Vipin Narang, Dan Slater, and seminar participants at the University of Texas at Austin have provided valuable advice and feedback. Extraordinary research assistance was provided by Yusuf al-Jarani and Eyal Hanfling. 2 This paper examines the inner workings of Pakistan’s army, an organization central to questions of local, regional, and global stability. We investigate the organizational politics of the Pakistan Army using unique individual-level