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This essay examines Pakistan’s post-2018 political order as a tutelary hybrid regime in which ultimate authority rests with the military rather than elected civilians. While civilian governments remain electorally accountable, the army retains veto power over core political and security domains. The crisis following Prime Minister Imran Khan’s ouster in April 2022 appeared to destabilize this arrangement but instead accelerated authoritarian consolidation. The essay develops a dynamic framework distinguishing contingent military tutelage from tutelary institutionalization and argues that Pakistan has shifted toward the latter through repression of Khan’s Pakistan Movement for Justice (PTI), manipulation of the 2024 elections, constitutional constraints on the judiciary, and centralized military-command authority after the 2025 India-Pakistan crisis.
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