Bureaucracy and clientelism in an authoritarian context: a case study of local government reforms (2001-2009) in Pakistan

The chaotic political history of Pakistan is riddled with frequent changes in government that includes three major military regimes. Since independence in 1947, Pakistan’s civil-military bureaucracy has been at the forefront in administering most of the state’s institutions. Decentralisation of political and administrative authority is reckoned as one of the most effective political strategies for dealing with the predominant ethnic identity problems as well as issues related to the over-centralised administration. In Pakistan, various programmes of decentralisation have been implemented by authoritarian regimes. Concealed under the façade of democratising local governance, the core objective of those military regimes was the quest for securing a local collaborative political base. In such context, the local governments’ functional autonomy and political influence has largely been nominal. With a particular focus on the local government reforms implemented in year 2001, this thesis investigates a range of political and administrative issues in Pakistan’s local governance. The study elaborates Pakistan’s post-independence political history to explain why the process of democratisation in general and decentralisation in particular has not been successful. Besides, international political economy perspectives are also evaluated in order to identify the hurdles that have obstructed the process of institution-building in Pakistan. In order to examine the factors that affect the inter-institutional and inter-governmental working relationships, the study is divided into two main analytical spheres. First, the organisational character and behaviour of civil bureaucracy is evaluated as one of the main reasons affecting the performance of local governments. Secondly, the thesis investigates the extent to which political clientelism is ingrained in the local political organisation of Pakistan. More specifically, it probes to find out how the nature of citizen-politician relati