ays has been for democracy, both in institutions and procedure, but the reality seldom reflected such aspirations" (Ziring, 1993, p. 1175). The political process was in fact often dominated by military rule and long periods of martial law. Despite the considerable amount of lip service given to the rule of law, the judiciary proved, on the whole, to be subservient to executive authority.
A new era of Pakistani politics seems to have begun after the crisis of the 1980s and thanks to the policies pursued by military ruler Mohammed Zia ul-Hag. He consciously set two forces in motion: Islam and political democracy. Ziring notices, "No one before Zia sought to seriously structure the interface between these two major claimants for the attention of the Pakistani masses. His predecessors either made token reference to one side or the other, and it was Zia who forced Pakistani society to come to grips with its fundamental contradictions" (Ziring, 1993, p. 1176).
After more than 40 years characterized by a political system which could be described as vice-regalism - - the obvious inheritance of the colonial period -- the juxtaposition of the civil-military bureaucracy and the politicians came to a critical juncture. Ziring concludes, "Zia's Islamic state could not function without a credible legislature that was reasonably representative of Pakistan's diverse society" (ziring, 1993, p. 1175). In December 1981 Zia created the majlis-i-Shura (advisory assembly), while the merging of Islamic politics and parliamentarism in the 1985 elections meant that the process of selecting the country's leaders was finally beginning in earnest. Zia promised a national election by 1988, but in May of that year he deposed the civilian prime minister, dissolved the national assembly and provincial governments and declared Islamic law supreme in Pakistan. But, when he died in an aircrash in August of that same year, leaving no clear successor, the ...