The civil service challenge

EDITORIAL: Pakistan does not lack ideas for civil service reform; what it has long lacked though is the political resolve to change the system that has resisted it.

The latest package for civil service reforms, unveiled on September 19 by Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal proposes several worthwhile changes, from specialised professional cadres to linking career progression and rewards more closely to performance.

But the real test lies beyond these structural changes: whether the government is prepared to confront the politicisation and patronage that have distorted the bureaucracy for years.

Successive governments have attempted civil service reforms, with little lasting impact. Bureaucratic resistance, an incomplete diagnosis of the problems afflicting it and the political costs of upsetting established interests have repeatedly frustrated such efforts.

Yet reform remains imperative: the civil service is a foundational pillar of governance, and an ineffective bureaucracy inevitably weakens the state’s capacity to formulate and implement policy.

The latest package does address some long-standing weaknesses. Its proposed 11 professional cadres, spanning law, engineering, science and technology, IT, energy, climate, agriculture, education and health mark a welcome move towards specialisation. Pakistan needs officials with genuine expertise in these fields rather than a system in which generalists move between highly specialised portfolios.

Linking recruitment, career progression and financial rewards more closely to performance is also welcome, as are changes to the CSS examination and recruitment process aimed at improving the quality and transparency of selection. But while these measures address important structural weaknesses, their success will ultimately depend on whether the wider institutional environment and culture are conducive to merit, accountability and professional independence.

The problem here is not simply that politicians sometimes interfere in administrative matters. Over time a system has developed where postings, transfers and promotions have become instruments of political patronage, with coveted secretariat positions and foreign assignments sought for officials deemed politically reliable or personally favoured.

When career advancement depends, even partly, on cultivating political connections, professional independence is inevitably compromised. A culture of compliance takes root, where telling a minister what he wants to hear can be safer than telling him what he needs to hear.

Merit, seniority and competence are consequently pushed aside, allowing a cadre of ‘yes-men’ to emerge and leaving a bureaucracy more responsive to political patrons than to the impartial exercise of its duties.

This is also where the proposed performance-based system could falter. Performance-linked pay and promotions can strengthen accountability only if performance is assessed independently against objective criteria. If political influence continues to shape coveted postings and career advancement, the new system could simply become another means of rewarding those with the right connections.

Merit must also remain central to recruitment. Much of the civil service is recruited through regional quotas that take population size and the relative backwardness of regions into account.

There is a legitimate rationale for ensuring representation from less-developed areas, but this should not mean abandoning merit within those categories. Candidates competing for positions allocated to a particular region should still compete against one another on transparent merit-based criteria.

The government should also resist the temptation to treat the package as an internal administrative exercise simply because it requires no constitutional amendment. Its implications for governance warrant serious scrutiny in parliament and wider debate among the media, academia, think tanks and other stakeholders.

The harder question, however, is whether the government will enforce the principles it is proposing. Merit cannot be upheld selectively nor can professional independence coexist with political patronage. Unless the government is willing to confront both political interference and bureaucratic resistance, the reforms risk altering the bureaucracy’s structure while leaving its culture of politicisation intact.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026