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This paper examines the reasons for the early dominance of the bureaucratic élite in Pakistan and the downsizing that was brought about by the administrative reforms of 1973. The perceptions of bureaucrats and ministers indicate that loyalty to political establishment is now regarded a crucial requirement in a bureaucrat. This shift from the principle of political neutrality to the practice of political allegiance has affected both the development agenda as well as the institutions of the country.
JEL classification: H11, D73
Keywords: Bureaucracy, Political Neutrality, Politicisation, Governance, Weber
the first thing I want to tell you is that you should not be influenced by any political pressure, by any political party or individual politician......governments are defeated, prime ministers come and go, ministers come and go, but you stay on, and therefore there is great responsibility placed on your shoulders. You should have no hand in supporting this political leader or that; this is not your business....1
The Pakistani state has been regarded as 'a weak state' for the last three decades on account of the inability of the elected government to successfully broker political stability. The development literature locates this weakness in the political and ministerial machinations rather than attributing it to any inherent characteristics of the bureaucracy as an organisational structure. In the 1990s, the literature emerging from international institutions and academia located Pakistan's failure to develop in the malfunctioning apparent in the Pakistani bureaucracy. This shortcoming was linked to the increasing politicisation of the bureaucracy and its growing and explicit links to the ministerial structures [World Bank (1998)]. In particular, there was a focus on the inability of individual bureaucrats to follow the organisational rules due to a set of perverse incentives that were misaligned with the development objectives of the bureaucracy. Such an organisational shortcoming came to be regarding as a lack of capacity with regard to governance functioning within the bureaucracy [Khan (2000, 2001)]. In more recent years, the inability of the Pakistani state to ensure development and to maintain the peace has marked it out as a fragile or failed state [Kaplan (2008)]. There is now a growing concern that the inability of the Pakistani state has been due to an excessive politicisation of the Pakistani state.
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