Neoliberal economists call for a “smaller” government and minimal state interference in most social sectors. The state, according to neoliberal thought, hinders the expansion of markets and hence impedes economic growth. Decentralisation of authority and state institutions to local levels is therefore considered critical for vitalising communities, ensuring accountability and transparency, and promoting democratic citizenship.

However, one must examine the context in which neoliberalism emerged as a political and economic philosophy. Schools of political and economic thought like the Chicago School of Economics and similar Western academic institutions were at the forefront of promoting free markets and concepts like the “efficient market hypothesis”, which view market institutions as the optimal provider of all services to the public. However, it was assumed a priori that the underlying frameworks for governance structures were strong formal institutions.

A central component of the neoliberal paradigm is long-term structural reforms which promote decentralisation of the state apparatus, deregulation of markets, foreign investments and privatisation. Neoliberalism calls for decentralisation of all policy areas — health, energy, education, housing, banking institutions, etc. — coupled with removal of subsidies, regulation and other forms of state interference. The neoliberal argument contends that market forces will emerge and compensate in lieu of the state.

However, this central tenet of neoliberal reform implicitly assumes that state structures are initially strong and have the informal and formal design principles embedded within to operate. In the context of Pakistan, formal state institutions are weak (or on the verge of failure) and informal institutions are powerful. Policy-making and the distribution of financial, political and power resources is mediated through interpersonal, informal relations between select individuals. Informal structures, particularly a well-entrenched patriarchal social structure, operate freely and actively within this country. A small elite minority captures the majority of resources at the detriment of the rest of the population. One particular form of an informal institution that is pervasive throughout Pakistan’s governance system is clientelism. Clientelism is defined as the personal relationship between unequal individuals: a hierarchal superior patron with access to goods and services and a hierarchically inferior or politically subordinate client who surrenders his or her status as an independent political actor in order to receive benefits from the patron.

Neoliberal thought is premised on the basis that state institutions are strong; power and policy-making therefore can be decentralised to lower levels of governance to ensure more effective delivery of services. However, if state institutions are weak and decision-making structures already operate through informal networks, then it is highly questionable whether and how decentralised and devolved political structures will strengthen the state and promote local community development. Rather they strengthen and further entrench the patron-client social structures.

Examining governance structures in Pakistan reveals that devolution has created another class of elites at the district level and has further entrenched district level clientelism, corruption and political influences in the education sector. Such elites have a stranglehold over power, financial and political resources, which they utilise for their own personal gain. Moreover, informal and hierarchal social structures have increased in strength, thus resulting in more systematic marginalisation of certain groups due to race, caste, tribe, ethnicity and gender.

Informal networks based on the aforementioned social categories form the basis for decision-making and the transaction and flow of information. Notions of “accountability” and “transparency” immediately dissolve within the murky and unidentifiable concoction of informal institutions, which simultaneously limit access to information to those exclusive elite or alternatively dismember and disperse information with such efficiency that processes are obscured.

Educational governance in Pakistan and the decentralisation of governance to the local districts has occurred in the context of weak formal institutions. The result has been the resurgence and bolstering of substitutive informal institutions. Decision-making processes in educational governance therefore have occurred in such an informal institutional context, particularly through the form of hierarchal patron-client relationships. At the district level and within schools, research of decision-making processes and structures strongly suggests that the primary mechanisms for decisions, producing and sharing information, and implementing policy action is through informal procedures and relations (i.e. kinship networks and interpersonal relations).

Whether as barriers to entry for female students, in the form of constraining social norms and taboos, or the disproportionate power of waderas, pirs and other local notables who influence all matters pertaining to governance, localised informal institutions operate unchecked and unbalanced. It is therefore imperative that policy-making for education incorporates the existing, on ground realities of local informal institutions, and how they operate to impede educational development.

This writer researches educational development in Pakistan.

anya.rumi@aku.edu