Book Reviews : Research on the Bureaucracy of Pakistan: A Critique of Sources, Conditions, and Issues, With Appended Documents. By RALPH BRAIBANTI. (Durham: Duke University Commonwealth-Studies Center, Duke University Press, 1966. Pp. xxiii, 569. $12.50.)

• DOI: 10.1177/106591296601900416
• Author: Robert Y. Fluno
• Date: 01 December 1966
• Published date: 01 December 1966
• Subject Matter: Articles

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Research on the Bureaucracy of Pakistan: A Critique of Sources, Conditions, and
Issues, With Appended Documents. By RALPH BRAIBANTI. (Durham: Duke
University Commonwealth-Studies Center, Duke University Press, 1966. Pp.
xxiii, 569. $12.50.)
It is a frequent failing of authors to find titles for their works which are more
ambitious than the content. In this instance, Braibanti pleasantly surprises his
readers by doing the opposite. Although this volume is intended as a handbook
for the study of administration in Pakistan, its uses are considerably wider. The
commentary provides many insights into Pakistan political life which are not spe-
cifically administrative. It is one of his purposes to stimulate ideas for research
on the bureaucracy of Pakistan. He succeeds at that and much more. His concept
of bureaucracy is broad enough to incite the reader to explore a wide variety of
questions, many of which are only remotely related to administration. One example
is the value of the book for anyone interested in the problems of scholarship, the
nature of university systems, and the role of the intellectual in the post-colonial
nations. Another is found in his discussion of judicial cases as part of the public
record available on the martial law period. His comments on the role of law under
that peculiar kind of dictatorship should be of interest to any student of constitu-
tionalism as well as to anyone concerned with the development of democratic
institutions in nations which have not yet achieved political stability.
The virtue of this book then, is that it undertakes a specific and narrow objec-
tive, fulfills it with thoroughness, but at the same time satisfies much wider uses.
The meticulous survey of biographical materials covers all sources which might
be even remotely...