The MDGs' fiasco in Pakistan presents an interesting comparative case study of performance of political regimes during the period 1990-2013. In a stylistic sense, political regimes reflect political will, political ownership and/or country ownership for wide ranging economic reforms and to attain targets in case of MDGs. Multilaterals' use of 'country ownership' incorporates a wider range of stakeholders, ie, politicians, bureaucrats, academia, grass root organizations and local level government, while in a narrow and strict sense 'political ownership' may only be inferred from the manifesto of the political party running the government.
However in the context of the present discussion we use political regimes in an inter-temporal sense with frequent reference to their political will or political ownership. It is also a matter of debate that whether in developing countries political ownership for any type of reforms or for that matter MDGs, however strong and sincere, is constrained by or can be divorced from the temporal socio-economic-politico national and international environment as well man-made and natural negative shocks. In a utopian setting, political will is an offshoot of a 'vision' of its political leaders unaffected by the worldly constraints.
The period from 1988-1998 in the political history of the country can be termed an era of 'musical chairs' when the two main political parties PPP and Muslim League-Nawaz each assumed power twice and were dismissed pre-maturely without completing their five year tenures. For statistical reasons and in line with the 25 year period to achieve Millennium Development Goals the selected period of 1990-2000 considerably overlaps the actual 1988-98 political decade. Although MDGs came on the horizon in the beginning of the millennium, the socio-economic performance of the countries including Pakistan during the period 1990-2000 served as a benchmark for setting the 2015 MDG targets. Thus implicitly the performance of MDG indicators during this period influenced the 2015 targets as well as their achievements. Generically, the indicators performance also is a case study of how political instability and short-tenure governments (policy discontinuity) impacted the achievement of MDGs.
The regime during 2000-2008 can be termed a 'quasi military-politico' regime led by Musharraf-Shaukat-PML-Q team, although strictly speaking Musharraf assumed power in 1999. This was followed by general elections in 2008 and the political government of PPP remained in power for its full term till 2013. Let us now analyze the performance of the MDGs during the 3 distinct regimes, ie, musical chairs regimes, quasi-military-politico regime and democratically elected regime.
The Table splits the performance of MDGs during the period from 1990-2013 into the three regimes defined as above. Out of 34 MDG indicators mentioned in the Pakistan Millennium Development Goals Report 2013, only 24 indicators that have data for at least 2 of the three regimes are included in the table. For readability and understanding, all the indicators in each regime are categorized as improvement (I), deterioration (D), unchanged (U) and data not available (NA), irrespective of the extent or percentage points of improvement or deterioration. The table also gives the percentage point change or ratio in each of the MDG indicator to identify indicators that performed well in percentage points or ratio towards achieving MDGs during any of the 3 regimes.
Irrespective of the extent of change in the indicators during each of the 3 regimes, 22 out of 24 indicators showed improvement in Musharraf-PML-Q regime as compared to 20 indicators in PPP and 14 in musical chair regime. Among many other factors including a drought in Sindh and Baluchistan, apparently the poor performance on Goal 1 during 1990-2000 reflect its sensitivity to the macro-economic instability inherent in the short-tenure governments. A priori one should assume a strong implicit if not explicit political ownership of Benazir Bhutto's as a first woman Prime Minister towards MDG 3, 4 and 5. However the poor performance of Goal 4 (ie, Reduce Child Mortality), in which 2 indicators deteriorated and 2 show improvements may be the net outcome of political ownership of PPP from a 'female' prime minister and a policy discontinuity due to the game of musical chairs.
However one needs to unearth reasons in terms of policy, donor programmes and institutional environment to justify why a similar outcome is not visible in case of Goal 4 and 6, where all indicators show an improvement in spite of short duration political regimes. A counter argument for better performance of indicators in Goal 4 and 6 is that political governments are busy fighting for their legitimacy and survival under musical chairs and there is a de-facto 'policy continuity' as well as 'donor funding continuity' emanating from their longer term country plans, which may have lead to consistent funding and thereby improvement during the period. Another interpretation is that performance of indicators dependent on interventions that are 'Governance intensive' are likely to suffer more under political instability than performance of indicators whose interventions are less 'Governance intensive'.
The only indicator that deteriorated in the quasi military-politico regime of Musharraf-PML-Q was "Completion/survival rate Grade 1 to 5". Although, its apparent comparative deterioration may be more of a statistical artifact as sources of data are not common for the 2 regimes, it is correct to insist that this indicator is more a reflection of education quality than access (quantity) to education. The demand (higher incomes) and supply (private sector entry) push factors during this regime may have been more conducive in rapidly increasing quantity at the cost of sacrificing quality, as the latter requires better governance in shape of strong political will and monitoring.
During the PPP rule, the 3 deteriorating indicators were not concentrated in any single goal. The marginal deterioration in GPI Secondary education and access to improved water can be attributed to man-made conflict and floods/earthquake rather than to any lack of political ownership. It would not be an exaggeration to state that by the time PPP came into power in 2008, the political and country ownership of MDGs reiterated in speeches and statements proved to be hollow in the face of rising security concerns and domestic macro instability and international financial turmoil.
The above categorization gives equal weight to the changes (irrespective whether it is large or small change) in all MDG indicators across regimes. However one can consider the extent of changes in specific regime and across regimes to assess whether better performance in a goal or indicators can be linked to political ownership or will. In terms of extent of percentage or ratio improvements, it is clear from the comparison of numbers from the 3 regimes that the improvements in most of the indicators in PPP regime remained at best marginal. Among the improved indicators except one, ie, "Prevalence of Underweight children under 5 years of age" none others showed a higher improvement than in the previous 2 regimes.
Interestingly, a comparison of the extent of improvement in indicators between the musical chair and quasi military-politico regime reveal that 11 out of 14 indicators in the musical chair regime had the highest improvement as compared to 7 out of 22 indicators in the quasi military politico regime. At the same time, musical chair regime also had the distinction of 4 indicators (Goal 1 and 4) out of 6 with highest deterioration among the 3 regimes.
While comparing the performance of 3 regimes in achieving MDGs, one should also not be oblivious to another statistical phenomenon. Starting at a low base value of social indicators in 1990 it was much easier for musical chair regimes and quasi military-politico regime to record higher percentage and ratio improvements with a rupee of investment than it was for the pure political regime of PPP with the same rupee of investment. Thus latter regimes would require a higher amount of investment per unit of improvement in MDG indicators. However, if a strong political ownership and effective governance is recognized internationally, it is doubtful whether scarcity of funds can be a binding constraint.
So does the above evidence from the 3 political regimes singularly bring out political ownership of any one or all the regimes in achieving MDGs or even achieving any one or more specific MD goals. As numerical targets had to be achieved by 2015, it makes sense to consider the extent of percentage or ratio improvement rather then counting the number of indicators that improved as a criteria for some kind of 'political' or 'country' ownership. Unfortunately the improvements have been random and do not follow a systematic pattern across the 3 regimes or goals to indicate unambiguously any political ownership during the period in spite of loads of commitments and announcements made by the political parties at the national and international level. In fact among the 3 regimes, the 'Goalless and target-less" musical chair regime of 1990-2000 comes out best with 11 out of 14 indicators showing the highest increase. It is difficult to digest that even if the 2 parties during that period had a political will to improve social indicators on a war footing, they could have made any meaningful headway during their ill-fated short-tenures. However, one may give some credit to implicit stable 'bureaucratic ownership' in times of political uncertainty in achieving these highest numbers. Thus the highest improvements during this period can be attributed to much maligned financially supported donor driven Social Action Programme I and II, rather than to any political ownership.
Another provocative explanation is that the donors are eager to maintain a strong leverage with fast changing and uncertain political scenario rather than align with a stable political government whose lack of 'governance' acumen and weak ownership begins to unfold in its first year. In the quasi military politico regime increases in incomes and derived increase in revenues (not structurally led increase in revenues) complemented once again by inflow of external resources lead to highest improvement in 7 out of 22 indicators. In conclusion the improvement in social indicators in Pakistan as the above quarter century experience suggest is mainly driven by the availability of resources and conscientious oversight at the programme/project level rather than per se by any 'political commitment' or 'vision' of the major political party in government.
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