From Hybrid Democracy to Constitutionalized Tutelage: The 27th Amendment, Civil-Military Relations and the Institutionalization of Military Primacy in Pakistan

Abstract

The present article discusses the Constitution (Twenty-Seventh Amendment) Act, 2025 as a significant institutional change in the civil-military relations in Pakistan. Questions whether it is simply a reorganisation of defence and constitutional case law or a shift from the historical informal military tutelage to a more enduring constitutional system. It employs the qualitative constitutional-text analysis and historically informed process tracing methods based on the amended Constitution, institutional commentary and scholarship on the nature of hybrid regimes and civil-military relations. The analysis is on the position of the Chief of Defence Forces (CDF), the position and protection of five-star officers and the establishment of the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC). The outcome is that rank and legal protections for five-star officers is life tenure, and that the amendment has brought the five services closer together under the control of the army chief, who would also serve as CDF, while allotting to the FCC major constitutional powers that the critics say are more politically driven than in the current judicial appointments system. The article explains this as ‘constitutionalized tutelage': an analytical state of affairs in which the predominance of the military forces is maintained in both informal pressure and constitutional rules. Elections and civilian institutions are functioning, but are not fully able to check the use of coercive power and hold it to account. The results then reveal a shift from the traditional hybrid governance towards a more institutionalized civil-military hierarchy, while recognizing that the long-term impacts of the amendment will be determined by its implementation, adjudication and political contestation.