III.8 Policy Making and Implementation in Pakistan

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Key points — 30-second recap

• Who makes policy: Federal Cabinet and Parliament; provincial cabinets and assemblies (post-18th Amendment most social sectors are provincial); CCI, NEC and NFC for shared matters; ministries draft through summaries under the Rules of Business 1973.
• Formal route: problem → ministry drafts → inter-ministerial consultation → summary to Cabinet → approval / bill to legislature → rules and SOPs → budget (PSDP / ADP) → field implementation → review.
• Real influences: military establishment, IMF and donors, courts (suo motu), business and landed elites, media.
• Implementation gap causes: weak capacity, politicisation, poor coordination, lack of funds, corruption, frequent policy reversals, weak M&E.
• Hook: Good policies, poor delivery.

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Syllabus item III.8: "Policy making and implementation in Pakistan". Read the policy-cycle foundation and model comparisons in III.3, then use this page for Pakistan's institutions and implementation. Implementation theory is on III.4.

Policy-cycle foundation: definitions, all six stages, agenda levels and formulation are integrated into III.3 Policy Analysis. Apply that framework to the Pakistan institutions and processes below.

1. Institutional Framework for Policy Making

• Federal level
  • Parliament — laws, budget approval, committees.
  • Prime Minister and Federal Cabinet — approve policies through summaries (Rules of Business 1973).
  • Ministries / Divisions — draft policies; consult other divisions (Finance, Law, Planning).
  • Planning Commission — development policy, PSDP, plans.
  • ECC (Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet) — economic decisions.
• Shared / intergovernmental
  • CCI (Art. 153–154) — Federal Legislative List Part II matters.
  • NEC (Art. 156) — national development plans.
  • NFC (Art. 160) — resource distribution.
• Provincial level
  • Provincial assemblies and cabinets; Planning and Development Boards / Departments; line departments.
  • After the 18th Amendment (2010), education, health, agriculture, social welfare and labour policy are mainly provincial.
• Local level — elected local governments under Art. 140-A (powers vary by province).

2. The Policy-Making Process in Pakistan

• 1. Problem identification and agenda setting
  • establish the issue's nature, history, affected groups, root causes and gaps in existing policy; use data and public consultation.
  • A manifesto, crisis, court decision, donor condition or media pressure may then bring it onto the government's agenda.
  • Political visibility alone does not establish policy need.
• 2. Formulation — ministry prepares a draft; task forces and commissions; consultation with stakeholders (often limited).
• 3. Inter-ministerial consultation — Finance, Law and Planning views attached to the summary.
• 4. Adoption — Cabinet approval; bill passed by Parliament / Assembly; ordinance in urgent cases.
• 5. Resource allocation — budget, PSDP / ADP, PC-I approval (DDWP → CDWP → ECNEC).
• 6. Implementation — attached departments, provincial departments, district administration, autonomous bodies.
• 7. Monitoring and evaluation — Planning Commission's Projects Wing (monitoring), provincial M&E directorates, Auditor-General, PAC.

3. Informal Actors and Influences

• Military establishment — security, foreign and increasingly economic policy (e.g., SIFC, 2023).
• IMF, World Bank, ADB — conditions on taxes, energy prices, subsidies (see III.7).
• Judiciary — suo motu actions and PILs shaping policy (water, prices, local elections).
• Business, landed and religious lobbies — tax exemptions, sugar and wheat policy, education curricula.
• Media and civil society — agenda setting; pressure for reversal.
• Bureaucracy — drafts, advises and implements; strong influence through files and data.
• Policy actors versus resources
  • executive, legislature, judiciary, bureaucracies and regulators have distinct legal powers; business associations, NGOs, researchers, professional bodies, unions and citizens influence agendas through expertise, mobilisation, lobbying and consultation.
  • Financial, informational and organisational resources help explain whose proposals receive attention.
  • The influence of any actor varies with the policy issue and constitutional authority.

4. Features of Policy Making in Pakistan

• Highly centralised and elite-driven.
• Reactive and crisis-driven rather than planned.
• Weak use of evidence and data.
• Limited public consultation.
• Frequent reversals with changes of government.
• Donor-influenced economic policy.
• Poor federal–provincial coordination after devolution.

5. Why Implementation Fails (2018 Q5)

• Policy design faults
  • incorrect diagnosis, vague goals, unrealistic targets and no costing.
  • Treating a symptom as the cause can produce an efficiently delivered programme that still misses the problem; implementation reform alone cannot fix faulty design.
• Political factors — lack of continuity; patronage; interference in postings.
• Administrative capacity — weak skills, frequent transfers, poor coordination.
• Financial factors — late or insufficient releases; plans larger than budgets.
• Corruption and rent-seeking.
• Resistance — from vested interests and from staff.
• Evaluation and feedback gap — missing baselines, activity counts mistaken for outcomes, weak assessment of unintended effects, and findings that do not influence subsequent funding or redesign.
• Low public participation and trust.
• Theory link: Pressman and Wildavsky (1973) — the more clearances a policy needs, the lower the chance of success.

6. Examples (use with care)

• Successes or partial successes
  • BISP (2008) — targeted cash transfers using NADRA data;
  • NADRA's identity system;
  • polio programme's structure through EOCs (with gaps);
  • Punjab land-record computerisation.
• Persistent gaps
  • education (Article 25-A goals vs out-of-school children);
  • tax policy (narrow base, exemptions);
  • energy sector (circular debt);
  • local government (delayed elections).
• Verify current figures before quoting.

7. Way Forward

• Evidence-based policy units in ministries.
• Regulatory impact assessment and public consultation before major policies.
• Cross-party consensus on core long-term policies (charter of economy).
• Link plans to the medium-term budget.
• Stable tenure for implementers.
• Strong independent M&E with published results.
• Empowered local governments for last-mile delivery.
• Digital tracking of delivery (dashboards, citizen feedback), combined with independent assessment of outcomes; expenditure and output counts alone do not prove success.

Connect each weakness to a remedy

Illustrative application — girls' schooling: identify whether transport, household costs or teacher absence constrain attendance; choose instruments against those causes; fund and assign delivery; then assess attendance, learning, exclusion and cost per additional participant. Label this as an illustration, not an evaluated result from a named programme.

8. Critical Evaluation

• Delivery weaknesses matter, but not every failed policy was well designed. Distinguish faulty diagnosis and instrument choice from implementation failures and external shocks.
• Exam verdict: Better policy performance requires evidence-based diagnosis, legitimate and feasible choices, funded implementation, and evaluation that changes subsequent decisions.

9. 📌 Past Paper Questions — CSS 2015–2026

Subjective questions

• 2018 · Q5 · 20 marks — Why public policy implementation fails in Pakistan. → 2018 · Q5 · Why public policy implementation fails in Pakistan (20 marks)
  • Use: sections 5 and 7.
• 2025 · Q4 · 20 marks — Policy analysis, evaluation and areas to improve implementation in Pakistan. → 2025 · Q4 · Policy analysis, evaluation and implementation reform (20 marks)
  • Use: section 7 for the Pakistan part; III.3 and III.5 for theory.

MCQ practice

• Development projects above the CDWP limit are approved by: (A) DDWP (B) ECNEC (C) NFC (D) None of these → ✅ B.
• Federal policy summaries go to the Cabinet under the: (A) Rules of Business 1973 (B) Estacode (C) PPRA Rules (D) None of these → ✅ A.
• "Implementation" (1973) highlighting multiple clearance points was written by: (A) Pressman and Wildavsky (B) Lipsky (C) Dye (D) None of these → ✅ A.

10. 🎯 CSS Exam Perspective

10.1 How often it comes

• Two full questions (2018, 2025) — the Pakistan implementation gap is a favourite.

10.2 Likely 2027 angles

• Policy-making process in Pakistan and its actors.
• Role of the IMF / establishment in economic policy.
• Why good policies fail — with examples.

10.3 Outline for a 20-mark question

• Q: Critically analyse the policy-making and implementation process in Pakistan.
  • I. Introduction — good policies, poor delivery
  • II. Institutional framework — federal, intergovernmental, provincial, local
  • III. Process — seven steps
  • IV. Informal actors
  • V. Features / weaknesses of policy making
  • VI. Causes of implementation failure
  • VII. Examples
  • VIII. Way forward
  • IX. Conclusion

10.4 How to score

• Draw the process chain with Pakistani bodies at each step.
• Name Pressman and Wildavsky and Lipsky in the implementation part.
• Give one success and one failure example.

10.5 Common mistakes

• Only listing problems without explaining the process.
• Ignoring the 18th Amendment's shift of policy to provinces.

10.6 Active recall

• Seven steps of policy making in Pakistan.
• Six causes of implementation failure.

🇵🇰 Pakistan examples — understand, apply and cite

How to use: choose the case that proves your point. “Exam sentence” is original model wording, not a quotation from an official. Facts are tied to the linked source and reporting period; practical applications are analytical explanations.

1. 2022 floods → assessment → recovery framework — policy-cycle application

• Documented fact: The PDNA diagnosed recovery needs; the 4RF organised the subsequent recovery approach. Source.
• Plain meaning / application: Map the case analytically: disaster reveals a problem → public attention → assessment and options → recovery framework → projects → evaluation. This is a teaching map, not a claim that policymaking followed a perfectly linear sequence.
• Exam sentence: Pakistan's post-flood response illustrates how a crisis can move an issue onto the policy agenda and generate a programme of action.
• Qualification: Keep plans, financing commitments, releases and completed works separate.

2. Punjab land records — a qualified implementation success

• Documented fact: The 2017 World Bank account reports a shift from paper-based rural records to digital service delivery. Source.
• Plain meaning / application: Use this alongside a difficult delivery case to avoid saying that every Pakistani policy fails.
• Exam sentence: Punjab's land-record modernisation shows that administrative reform can improve service delivery when records and procedures are redesigned together.
• Qualification: State the province and reporting period; avoid claims that all land problems were solved.

3. Polio — explain a delivery gap rather than merely blaming corruption

• Documented fact: The June 2025 programme review identified access, missed children and hesitancy among key barriers. Source.
• Plain meaning / application: Match remedies to causes: local engagement for distrust, safe access for hard-to-reach areas, and better tracking for missed children. These are analytical implications.
• Exam sentence: Pakistan's polio programme illustrates that implementation gaps can arise from social and operational barriers as well as administrative weaknesses.
• Qualification: Do not turn the example into an unsupported claim of programme-wide failure.

4. KP Revenue Mobilization and Resource Management, 2019 — provincial capacity

• Documented fact: The June 2019 agreement supported KP's own-source revenue and public-resource management. Source.
• Plain meaning / application: Provincial service responsibilities need fiscal and administrative capability. This is a useful provincial example alongside federal programmes.
• Exam sentence: KP's revenue and resource-management programme illustrates the link between provincial revenue capacity and public-service delivery.
• Qualification: The programme's stated purpose is not proof that fiscal targets were achieved.