The Lost War for Specialization: Pakistan’s Higher Bureaucracy in the 1960s and 1970s

Abstract

During the 1960s, while the world lauded Pakistan’s development
trajectory, a debate raged within the higher bureaucracy on the subject of
institutional design. Those engaged in this debate fell, broadly speaking,
into advocates of a specialized higher bureaucracy selected on the basis of
subject-knowledge and technical competence, and a general-administrator
dominated higher bureaucracy chosen for leadership ability. This debate
was lost by the former and won by the latter leading to an enormous
concentration of responsibility within the Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP)
cadre of the higher bureaucracy. It also led to polarization within the
bureaucratic elite and made them vulnerable to reforms that in the 1970s,
diminished civil service autonomy, pay, and services conditions, and
increased politicization. With the case for specialization having been lost,
the reforms advanced since the 1980s assumed that no transition to a
specialized ministry-based civil service structure was possible. This paper
examines this debate and draws out its imp