Tariq Mahmood Awan
Pakistan’s governance crisis is rooted in a deep structural contradiction: a unitary federal bureaucracy operating inside a constitutionally federal state. The Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS), erstwhile, the District Management Group (DMG) were designed as centralised cadres, aligned closely with the federal executive and Parliament. This alignment works smoothly when these officers serve inside federal ministries. At that point, their institutional loyalty, reporting chain, and statutory mandate synchronise naturally with the federal government.
However, the contradiction becomes visible the moment these federal bureaucrats enter the Council of Common Interests. Constitutionally, the CCI is meant to be the federal platform where provinces exercise co-equal authority. Yet PAS/DMG officers do not arrive as neutral bureaucrats; they represent federal ministries. As a result, provinces lose the administrative strength necessary for genuine power-sharing. The spirit of cooperative federalism collapses because provincial voices are filtered through federal officers who were never created to represent provincial autonomy. It is a place where All Pakistan services , common between the federation and provinces, should work for common or joint subjects enumerated in the federal legislative list part II.
The governance distortion becomes even more alarming when the same bureaucracy operates at the provincial level. Constitutionally, provinces possess their own executive authority, led by the Chief Minister, cabinet, provincial assembly, and provincial legislation. Yet PAS/DMG officers working in provinces are not legally subordinate to the Chief Minister, not answerable to the cabinet, not bound by the assembly’s oversight, and not obligated to provincial laws in the same manner as provincial officers. This creates a dysfunctional hierarchy where the provincial executive is theoretically powerful but administratively powerless. Reservation of provincial posts by the federal bureaucracy compromises not only the federal governance scheme but also one fourth of the constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
This imbalance hollowes out the entire provincial governance structure. Provincial cabinets make decisions, but PAS/DMG officers, reporting upward to the Establishment Division, Islam Abad, retain the power to delay, reinterpret, resist, or neutralise those decisions. As a result, provincial autonomy remains cosmetic. The elected provincial executive becomes dependent on a federal cadre that does not structurally belong to the province, does not arise from its legislature, and does not share its political mandate. This is not a matter of individual incompetence; it is the inevitable outcome of an incoherent institutional design.
The distortion deepens at the local government level. When federal officers descend into districts, they function outside any framework of local oversight. Local governments cannot hold them to account; district assemblies cannot question them; municipal representatives cannot supervise them. The result is a complete disconnection between administrative authority and democratic legitimacy. PAS/DMG officers administer districts as extensions of the centre rather than as servants of local citizens. This breaks the very foundation of decentralised governance, where power must flow downward to the level closest to the people.
Thus, a single unitary bureaucracy exercises authority across four distinct constitutional tiers, federal, CCI, provincial, and local, while being accountable only to one tier: the federal government. This imbalance skews Pakistan’s federal architecture. It strengthens the centre at the expense of provinces, substitutes elected authority with administrative dominance, and suffocates local democracy. The system becomes structurally unstable because the same cadre is expected to represent multiple and often competing constitutional interests. No modern federation allows such a centralized service to dominate all tiers of the state.
For Pakistan to function as a genuine federation, each tier of government must possess its own civil services. The federal government must have a federal service aligned with federal legislation, federal executive authority, and federal parliamentary oversight. Provinces must have their own provincial services, recruited and developed through provincial legislatures, trained for provincial priorities, and held accountable through provincial institutions. Similarly, local governments must possess independent local cadres rooted in municipal governance, fiscal management, community development, and district-level accountability. In the same way, the CCI should have common or All Pakistan services, as mandated in the article 240 A of the Constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan, read with the explaination in the article.
Such structural separation is not only administrative but constitutional. Political executives at each tier must be aligned with bureaucratic executives who share the same system of accountability in the same legislature. A federal minister and a federal secretary must share the same institutional origin. A provincial minister and a provincial secretary must arise from the same legislature. A district mayor and a district chief officer must belong to the same local governance framework. Only then will Pakistan achieve coherent governance where authority and accountability operate in harmony.
To move toward a stable federal system, Pakistan must adopt five core reforms:
- Create separate federal, provincial, and local civil services with clear constitutional boundaries, eliminating cross-tier reservations and deputations.
- Separate the Federal and provincial public service commissions to ensure merit-based recruitment aligned with federal needs.
- Establish a dedicated Local Government Service recruited locally and answerable exclusively to elected municipal institutions.
- Reform the Council of Common Interests by ensuring that federation and the provinces are represented by common civil services, not federal officers only. All Pakistan Service must be created to function here.
- Make all administrative authorities answerable to the political executives of their tier, not to an external chain of command.
If Pakistan wants to remain a federation, functioning, democratic, and decentralised, it must end the era of a unitary civil service governing multiple constitutional spheres. Administrative power must align with legislative authority. Only then will Pakistan’s governance system achieve balance, stability, and legitimacy. The unitary bureaucracy can only function, if provinces are abolished and the State of Pakistan, is transfomred into a unitary state. Except it, there can be no way, that federal bureaucracy work in the provinces on provincial posts.
This is the reform Pakistan must pursuede, cisively, structurally, and without delay.
