Pakistan's apex bureaucratic structure was inherited from the colonial administrative system whose principal purpose was administrative control to stabilise and promote the imperatives of colonialism.
The cadre-based system that Pakistan, bureaucracy inherited was the legacy of the India Civil Service (ICS) that stood at the apex of the colonial administrative machinery.
Below the ICS were provincial-level services, and at the bottom of the hierarchy was the subordinate civil service. This structure came to be known as the All India Civil Service. Recruits from the ICS served in the central government and on important positions in the provinces also.
Much of the provincial service cadre only served in the province. However, there was some mobility of exceptional officers to other provinces or to the centre.
It was not until 1879 that 'natives' were inducted into the upper echelons of the bureaucratic service. After the formation of the All India Civil Service, almost the entire cadre of the provincial service consisted of Indians.
The induction of natives in the ICS gradually increased between 1887 and 1947. Unlike in the past, Indians were not barred from the ICS formally, but rigid recruitment rules based on criteria that were designed exclusively for British civil servants meant that significant entry barriers for the local population remained.
The establishment of a 'native' bureaucracy, however, did not mean that Indianisation in content and interests happened. According to Zafarullah, et al. (1997)
Indianisation of the central civil service remained far from being fully achieved. The bureaucracy continued to be closed to the majority, elitist in education and training, and articulative of the interest of the English aristocracy.
Because of the Imperial control over politics, the bureaucracy operated in a context of virtually complete domestic insularity. Countervailing institutions usually operational in an independent state such as a legislature, interest groups or local government-"existed only in an attenuated form". [Kennedy (1987), p.4.] As a result, the bureaucracy did not face nay political compulsion for accommodation of the public interest as such and was also insulated from domestic political pressures.
The immediate post-Independence period: 1947-58
Regardless of its imperial character, by the time the British departed in 1947, India and Pakistan inherited one of the most developed civil service systems in the world. The transition from personalised rule to a state and thence to a public and protected service was complete, at least in form if not in substance. Specifically in the case Pakistan, political power in the initial years was fragile because of the very nature of the state carved out of British India.
This logically meant that the non-elected arms of the state became dominant players.
The institutional ascendancy of the bureaucracy-especially when compared with India-with regard to the rest of the state structure was further strengthened by the political leadership of the time. According to Sayeed (1980:26) soon after partition, a number of bureaucrats - many of them still Britishers - complained to the leadership about political interference from ministers. According to Sayeed (op. Cit):
Jinnah could have drawn from this two conclusions: one, to place the politicians under bureaucratic tutelage; and two, to improve the [Muslim League] party machinery to eliminate some of the factions and accommodate others.
He [Jinnah] was after all a dying man and could think of only immediate short term remedies. In settling for the first alternative, he not only took care of the immediate problems but laid the foundations for future actions and policies of his successor governments that outdid him in establishing bureaucratic control over politicians.
Political instability in the 1947-58 decade further contributed to the ascendancy of the bureaucracy vis-à-vis the politicians. In terms of the criteria mentioned above, the bureaucratic structure was centralised, it was insulated, there was some level of internal accountability but political and/or judicial accountability was minimal.
Lack of clear objectives about running of the state form the political leadership enable the bureaucracy to determine its own agenda. Given its imperial training and ethos, its mode of administration remained colonial - at least so far as political representation was concerned.
Although there was development agenda that the bureaucracy appeared to pursue - that of industrialisation - the lack of stable political base meant that whereas statebuilding task was accomplished a great deal, it was at the cost of nation-building. The military also increased its influence on policy-making during this period, particularly after Pakistan joined the CEATO and CEATO military alliances. Thus a number of commentators have characterised the state structure being dominated by a bureaucratic-military oligarchy'.
In term of the bureaucratic structure, the most far reaching change brought about soon after partition in Pakistan was to abolish the provincial cadre. Thus emerged a centralised bureaucratic structure, which theoretically speaking may have been more efficient, but was also less accountable to politicians and thereby to the electorate.
The centralisation of the bureaucracy was given further fillip by the centralisation of the political structure itself in the mid-1950s through the institution of the One Unit. The upper echelons of the service remained virtually unchanged. The ICS was renamed the Civil Service of the Pakistan (CSP) and the functional character of the Pakistan Civil Service was also inherited without any alteration from the All India Civil Service.
The Ayub And Yahya periods: 1958-71
The 'bureaucratic- military oligarchy' remained at the helm of the at helm of the affairs for the entire decade of the 1960s.The military take-over of 1958 provided the bureaucracy enough space to take control of the policy-making process.
The bureaucracy played an important role in crafting a restrictive political environment prevalent at the time there were three important avenues through which bureaucratic control was strengthened during this period.
First, the bureaucracy was able to insulate itself from political interference by acquiring constitutional protection in the 1962 constitution. Moreover, the Basic Democracies system (thence BD) was structured to enhance bureaucrat powers at the local level over and above the politician [Cheema, et al. (2004)]. With a centralised bureaucratic structure in place, this allowed the bureaucracy to manipulate the political process at the local level.
Second, the interventionist model of development pursued at the time mean the CSP cadre was at the centre policy formulation and execution process [Nadvi and Sayeed (2003)]. Individual bureaucrats were also in a position to enrich themselves through the large rents created in the manufacturing sector [see Nadvi and Sayeed (2003)]. This created a stake amongst the bureaucracy as an institution to continue with the economic policies pursued at the time, in spite of its deleterious impact on distribution of resources both across income groups and across regions.
Third, as a consequence of the over-arching dominance of the CSP in the administrative system the issue of ethnic domination and interlocking ties amongst bureaucrats themselves and between the bureaucracy and the leading business groups came to the fore. Representation of Bengalis in the civil service-particularly the upper echelons-was miniscule, especially in comparison to their population share.
On a more sinister note, by the late 1960s the bureaucracy was seen as having acquired tremendous social and economic power through interlocking relationships with other elite groups in society. Sayeed (1980, p. 73) descrides the extent of such interlocking:
In the years 1965-66, the secretary of foreign affairs, Pakistan 's ambassador in Washington and the secretaries of Home and Kashmir
Affairs and the Economic Affairs Division were related. Similarly, some of the senior civil servants were linked by family ties to members of the military hierarchy. And civil service, military and business hierarchies were becoming interrelated through new matrimonial ties.
In terms of our model, the period of the 1960s shows that some important conditions outlined in section during this period. In a relative sense, the Ayub regime had a more clearly defined objective function. Economic development and repression of the political process were the principal objectives. The bureaucracy was centralised and the political process did not display any overt signs of clientelism [Sayeed (2002)].
With regard to monitoring and accountability of the bureaucracy, the results seem mixed. While the bureaucracy was paid well during this period, it is not clear whether bureaucratic malfeasance was being detected and sanctioned. However, the corporate ethos of the bureaucracy (especially the CSP) as well as the lack of evidence of pervasive corruption means that this condition was more or less met. The bureaucracy however was not accountable as such to higher level political leadership and in that sense its character of a colonial bureaucracy had not fundamentally altered.
THE BHUTTO AND POST-BHUTTO PERIODS:
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's 1973 Administrative reforms mark a major structural break in the institutional development of Pakistan's civil bureaucracy, Key changes brought about by these reforms include:
-- The removal of constitutional protections specified by the 1962 Constitution, which granted protection to the civil bureaucracy in relation to remuneration, as well as for appeals against a disadvantaged alteration or interpretation, of rules affecting the terms and conditions of service [World Bank (1998)]. Elaborate Constitutional safeguards provided for members of the CSP cadre pre-1973 reduced political control over this cadre and somewhat insulated the bureaucracy form political interference. The removal of these constitutional protections meant that bureaucratic protection was left to the terms and conditions of service defined by organic law and spelled out by the Civil Servants Act, 1973 and the rules framed under it.
-- "The CSP, the lineal descendent of the ICS cadre, was abolished" [Shafqat (1999)]. Instead, members of the CSP cadre were regrouped into the newly created District Management Group (DMG), Tribal Administration Group (TAG) and the Secretariat Group.
-- The creation of the All Pakistan Unified Grade System ended the distinction between CSP, PSP and others. This meant that the approximately 500 CSPs who had stood at the helm of the administrative machinery of over 500,000 members were amalgamated with other cadres into a hierarchical but mobile frame work of 22 pay scales, and the separate provision for entry into an elite corps was terminated [Noman(1988)].
-- The long-standing practice of reserving posts in the top Federal and Provincial Secretariats for the CSP was discontinued.
-- The creation of the Accounts group through the merger of the Pakistan Audits and Accounts (PAAS), Pakistan Military Accounts (PMAS), Pakistan Railway Accounts (PRAS).
-- The well -knit hierarchy of the CSP cadre was broken by new provisions that allowed lateral entry and vertical and horizontal movements between cadres [Cheema (2003)]. Zia-ul-Haq used these provisions to institutionalise the induction of armed forces personnel in the civil service. This was done by instituting a 20 percent quota in the Civil Services for the Armed Forces-10 percent to be recruited from grade 17 (ie Captain level) and the other 10 percent from Major level and above [Shafqat (1999)].
These provision enhanced political control over the bureaucracy and curtailed the influence of the CSP cadre within the central bureaucracy. "In 1969 CSPs held 93 percent of all post of joint secretary level and above, however, by 1973 CSPs accounted for only 43 percent of these posts and this number fell to 36 percent by 1982" [Cheema (2003) argues that the main beneficiaries of this opening up were members of the army and the Federal Unified Grades. These changes fragmented the internal cohesion of the bureaucracy and ensured that it to longer remained a tight-knit, insulated and exclusive body.
Noman (1988) argues that these reform not only ensured that the power of the elite CSP became circumscribed but the new recruitment to the bureaucracy became an instrument of political patronage for PPP supporters, which changed the nature of the bureaucracy.
There appears to be some evidenced for this in that 17 percent of the lateral entrants recruited in 1973 had not been assigned posts as late as 1975. Furthermore, once General Zia assumed power he dismissed 40 percent of Bhutto's lateral recruits on grounds of irregular appointments. These examples give a flavour of the importance political patronage had assumed in the running of the bureaucracy during the seventies.
The opportunities to use bureaucratic employment as a patronage mechanism also increased during the Bhutto period because of the expansion in the size and purview of the state [Haque and Montiel (1992)]. Noman (1988) shows that as a result of these changes between 1973 and 1977, the Establishment Division accepted 1374 officers into the bureaucracy, approximately three times as many as would have been accepted through the CSP channels.
Imperatives of political control over the bureaucracy during the seventies also fragmented the state structure in key functional areas. For example, political control imperatives vis-à-vis financial regulation were achieved by weakening State Bank of Pakistan's (SBoP) regulatory and supervisory role through the creation of the Pakistan Banking Council (PBC), which became the operational controller of banks.
The Federal government retained the right to select the members of PBC, and through the PBC it had effective control over the appointments to the boards of individual banks. More importantly, this change fragmented the state structure as the regulation and supervision of financial institutions and banks was shared by three agencies, the Ministry of Finance, PBC, and the SBP, each with overlapping jurisdictions with regard to some important functions.
The fragmentation of the state structure was heightened with the proliferation of the number of ministers and ministries, which proliferated after the return of elected governments in 1985 [World Bank (1998)]. This resulted in conflicting interests and perverse incentives associated with a fragmented state structure.
(To be concluded)