Devolution in Pakistan: overview of the ADB/DfID/World Bank study

Pakistan's Devolution of Power Plan was introduced in 2000, creating a decentralised structure of district and sub-district governments , each with its own Nazim and Naib Nazim (mayor and deputy mayor), elected council and administration.

This report reviews the first 3 years of operation and finds uneven but encouraging progress on most fronts. There is evidence of genuine change, particularly in the opportunities that citizens have gained to make their concerns heard. At the same time, the assessment shows many entrenched practices and attitudes still impede efforts to meet those concerns with sustained, effective action.

This brief review of the full 3 volume study discusses the approach used to evaluate progress, summarizes the report's findings and lays out the proposed next steps. Modestly optimistic about the future of devolution, the survey is specific about the measures needed to insure and speed that future.

The report asks:

• Are the public heard?: there has been success in achieving a good turnout in elections and in creating recognisable public figures in the administration but there is still difficulty in assigning credit or blame to these representatives. the report suggests that:
  • overall, however, nazimeen are listening with new attention to citizens and to the councilors who speak for constituents and who elect the nazimeen. The study found that the exercise of citizen power on councilors as well as on nazimeen is manifesting itself in some significant achievements. For instance, it appears that doctors and teachers are now more likely to be at their posts. Drugs are more often available in clinics. Citizens undoubtedly appreciate the improved access they have to their political representatives. Councilors, both directly and through new dispute resolution arrangements at the local level, are now seen to be responding to people's needs and concerns. Where access and response are improving in this manner, devolution would seem to be promoting the accountability that represents one of its basic political objectives.
  • on the other hand, accountability to individual constituents or groups can open the door to special treatment that benefits parts of a community at some possible cost to the whole. Despite these strong incentives pulling local politicians toward narrow projects and priorities, the study did not find that devolution had exacerbated a problem that has long been noted in Pakistan. The evidence, instead, indicated continuing protection for the operation and maintenance allocations in district budgets.
  • Specifically in the health sector, the picture that is emerging suggests that the new powers to procure are being used well, and citizens are increasingly finding that health facilities have medicines available for them. Not only is the supply picture undoubtedly improved, but it is also noteworthy that the press has publicized few reports of corruption in contracting for medicines.
• Are the managers in a position to manage?: devolution has not yet in practice drawn new, clear lines of jurisdictional authority. Provinces remain jealous of their mandates and of the funds transferred from the federal government to carry them out. Employees who now report to district-level officials actually remain on provincial payrolls and, for career and other reasons, prefer that status. Politicians at one level who might have a stake in the quality of service to local constituents often find that higher-level officials set the governing policies and control the flow of funds. Where such distinctions blur, voters have difficulty dispensing praise or blame.
• Is efficiency rewarded?: incentives for efficiency in fiscal management are likely to operate more effectively when local government can rely on revenues they raise themselves and to count on substantial, predictable financial transfers passed to them with little or no provincial interference. Overall, devolution remains far from complete and the anticipated incentives do not operate with anything like full effect. Most funding for local government is the product not of set, predictable formulas, but of negotiations that tend to base current policy decisions on their likely impact on future resource transfers, rather than on their merits. As a result, the proportions of the Provincial Consolidated Funds that are transferred on a formula-basis is less than 25 per cent, although in most cases there is considerable predictability in transfers and local governments do receive only slightly less than what was budgeted.

In actual service delivery, where vertical programs (in particular) stifle local initiative, the impact of fiscal efficiency initiatives has been weak to negative in the fields of health, education and water and sanitation. Citizen power, on the other hand, has been exercised through monitoring committees (voice) to cut staff absenteeism in some clinics and in community-based management (client) to improve conditions in some schools and some water-and-sewer projects where CCBs were active.

The report concludes with a series of recommendations for further political action and institutional reform [adapted from author]