ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that both political and economic developments have helped to make the civilianisation of Sudanese politics and the creation of a new political order hard to contemplate. Sudan has long been noted as a country of paradoxes. Sudan’s establishment of a new military regime in 1969 came after two periods of civilian parliamentary government and one previous period of military rule. A major strand of the new regime was provided by the most influential organisation among those radical civilians who had actively criticised the deposed parliamentary system, the Sudan Communist Party. The bureaucracy in Sudan, as in many new states, is the oldest established governmental institution. Whatever the political order established after Numairi leaves office, it seems unlikely at present that the civilian institutions or the possible future civilian politicians will be in a position to prevent the military continuing to be a significant force in national politics.
