Increasing Social Conservatism in the Pakistan Army: What the Data Say

This essay interrogates popular beliefs about Islamization of the Pakistan Army officer corps and the polity from which the army recruits. It first assembles and synthesizes the extant secondary literature on Islamization of Pakistan generally, and the army in particular. As access to the Pakistan Army diminished after 1990 when numerous US sanctions on Pakistan limited defense cooperation and other forms of bilateral engagements, this secondary literature is generally truncated to 1990. To expand what is known about the Pakistan Army, this essay next presents the results of an ongoing quantitative analysis of district-level officer recruitment (and retirement) data. This ecological study finds that, as recently as 2002, districts that produce army officers are actually more socially liberal and urban than is commonly believed. This essay discusses the implications of the changes in the officer corps and concludes with a call for a robust research agenda on the Pakistan Army.