ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the state of people knowledge in the social sciences of the role of the military in politics, with emphasis on the important gaps and why they merit attention in future research. A cursory review of developments in a number of Asian states reveals a pattern of vast and significant influence by military elites upon the course of political change. In Pakistan, despite some restoration of parliamentary procedure, General Mohammed Ayub Khan remains in control of the government, as he has been since the military coup d'etat in 1958. In most of the states of Asia, the size alone of the military offers one crude index of the capacity of this group for political influence. Nearly all Indigenous military establishments in Asia currently have a tremendous capacity to affect political change because of the key positions they occupy in the dual network of political communications.
