Ahsan Y. Chaudhary

By all appearances, the modern state is a rational actor, responding to costs, benefits, incentives, and competition like any other player in the marketplace. From this assumption flows a dominant intellectual orthodoxy: that political order can best be understood—and improved—through economic reasoning.

By all appearances, the modern state is a rational actor, responding to costs, benefits, incentives, and competition like any other player in the marketplace. From this assumption flows a dominant intellectual orthodoxy: that political order can best be understood—and improved—through economic reasoning. But this view, seductive in its simplicity, is not only analytically flawed, it is politically dangerous as well.

In the wake of Turkey’s failed coup, a relatively obscure movement called “Move on Pakistan” hung posters of country’s chief of army staff (COAS), General Raheel Sharif, urging the general to take over the government.