Abstract
The inside cover of the book states that this is “the first serious academic work to cover the economic and political development of Pakistan between 1947, the birth of the State, and 1985.” This is a much more precise and accurate statement of the contents of the book than the title of the book suggests. The book does not really deal with the political economy of Pakistan , in the sense that it does not analyse the economic development of the country within any formal theoretical framework of political economy. Nor does the book attempt to define such a framework in the Pakistani context. What it does, however, is to describe and analyse, quite separately from each other, the major developments in the political and economic spheres, in a methodical chronological order. It is certainly not the first work on the economic development of Pakistan, nor is it even the first on the political economy of Pakistan. This latter credit must go, if at all, to Ahmed and Amjad (1984). Even though that work was not political economy in a strict sense, it did attempt to synthesis politics and economic development, and tried to trace the path of the economy in a socio-political landscape. This present work is, however, the first that deals with the political developments in Pakistan in conjunction with the major economic developments that have taken place.
