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THE notion that state institutions have a part to play in economic and social development is beyond any debate. One can take the minimalist position, where states simply create rules for a private market to function, or a more maximalist one, where the state actively produces goods and delivers services. In either case, certain functions need to be to carried out effectively by the state.
Over the duration of the 20th and now in the 21st century, the importance of the state in delivering human capability expansion stands well-established. Writing in 2015, development theorists Patrick Heller and Peter Evans argued that the mandate of the state is no longer confined to the delivery of higher economic growth via greater productivity and industrialisation.
Delivering basic social services such as health and education are now central to any vision of development, since they help expand human capabilities, feed into economic growth, and allow citizens to access more opportunities.
Facilitating accumulation of wealth in mostly private hands and facilitating the delivery of healthcare and learning to the public at large are two key tasks.
As Evans and Heller argued, the former requires government functionaries to forge close ties with a small section of business owners, provide selective incentives and punishments, and ensure that key inputs to the production process are readily available through an effective bureaucracy.
Similarly, delivering quality healthcare and education to millions requires technical capacity to know what type of interventions are needed. It requires establishing relations with large swathes of the citizenry, and in particular, with civil society to understand what type of improvements are needed and how they can be delivered. It also requires the state to discipline and override the interests of those groups who are against such interventions.
The Pakistani state is proving itself to be incapable of delivering order or development in any meaningful way.
The case of Pakistan is troubling on all accounts. In the recently concluded Pathways for Development conference, which gathered over 70 academics and policy practitioners working on the country’s various developmental issues at Lums, panellists identified numerous constraints related to state capacity.
Economic dynamism and delivery of basic social services have both faltered in the past few decades, in light of state institutions that are simply unable to coordinate or deliver effectively. As one senior researcher described, Pakistan’s current human capital conditions look similar to Afghanistan, a country with 40 years of near-constant warfare, than other countries in the region.
Therein lies the central problem. The state is a central answer to questions of order and development.
The Pakistani state is proving itself to be incapable of delivering order or development in any meaningful way. Do we then chart out an entirely different answer, one that bypasses the state altogether?
That is a favoured answer among some. For instance, a case has recently been made for the privatisation of school education through outsourcing to private school entities and establishing a voucher system.
This is a relatively straightforward suggestion given the decrepit condition of public schooling. But it has its own set of issues. Outsourcing and voucher systems don’t perform as well on equity considerations (leaking kids from the poorest households).
They require extensive regulatory monitoring from state institutions, given risks of collusion between education businesses and state officials. And they’re only a solution in areas where private-sector capacity actually exists.
But more than that, they communicate a dangerous resignation: if we cannot fix the state to deliver education and health effectively even in well-resourced, well-funded, densely populated conditions like Lahore, Karachi, Sialkot and Faisalabad, what chance do we have of fixing it in the geographic and economic peripheries where it is definitely the only option?
What chance do we have of ensuring effective public sector ability to coordinate and regulate all the other domains outside of health and education?
Whatever way you cut it, there is no bypassing the state and no choice but to think of a way of improving its capacity. The latter has been deliberated upon endlessly by scholars of development. Some prefer technological fixes, such as streamlining and automating processes that remove human discretion, and human resource fixes, such as recruiting more skilled public officials and offering better incentives.
Overall though, the consensus is that accountability and effective oversight by the people keeps public officials — politicians and bureaucrats alike — on their toes and improves capacity.
Some states, such as China and increasingly Vietnam, operate a high-capacity system that features accountability and oversight outside of electoral democracy. But the origins of their system lie in revolutionary upheaval led by a well-organised, mass-membership party.
Pakistan does not have those base ingredients, nor, I suspect, the stomach for such a recipe. Our best bet is to improve accountability and oversight within the system that we have.
The simplest path involves changing administrative arrangements to offer more scope for the average citizen to participate and obtain a voice in decision-making, and the surest option we have is effective devolution. If the central problem is of limited state capacity, and that, in turn, is an outcome of limited accountability and oversight, then devolution offers an institutional solution to this mess.
It does not take much to conclude that a bureaucrat and politician accountable to 500 households actually reliant on public education and public healthcare versus one lording over a city of 11 million will face different types of pressures, and thus different incentives to actually do their job.
There are encouraging noises within civil society gathering volume in support of devolution. There are politicians in every party that understand what is at stake and what needs to be done.
There is a judiciary that has previously backed a constitutional mandate for local governments. This pressure needs to be maintained and the agenda of effective devolution made a central plank for the next general election.
The writer teaches politics and sociology at Lums.
Twitter: @umairjav
Published in Dawn, December 26th, 2022
