Pakistan’s political discourse almost always starts with the same question: who should govern and which party should win; which leader should return and which coalition should command a majority, and what role should the institutions of the state play?
These are important questions, but a more significant question is this: when the government changes, does the way the state governs change with it?
Since its inception, Pakistan has seen governments with coalitions, with two-thirds majority, with dictatorships and the hybrid regime; almost every leader has entered office promising transformation. Yet the ordinary citizen’s life confronts the state, often encountering the same offices, the same procedures, the same delays and the same distance between authority and accountability. The faces change, but the state machinery largely remains.
Politics and political authority decide who occupies office through elections, constitutional processes and political transitions, while governance determines and answers the more practical question of how the state works. It is embedded in institutions, procedures, administrative capacity and the relationship between the state and its citizens. Where political change is visible and immediate, the governance architecture is deeper, slower and resistant to the status quo.
Even a new prime minister cannot create a new civil service. Similarly, a new chief minister cannot redesign the revenue system. Likewise, a new parliament cannot, simply by changing its membership, transform the judicial system and courts. No new government can abolish the existing procedures by which citizens obtain licences, register and transfer property, pay taxes, seek justice or receive public services. That’s why Pakistan has experienced political changes repeatedly without experiencing corresponding institutional change.
The problem goes back to our history. Pakistan inherited a colonial administrative mindset shaped more by order, control and revenue collection than by approachable democratic service. But this is not an acceptable excuse; after decades of independence, it is a failure of successive political and institutional leadership to transform that colonial mindset into a modern, citizen-centred state.
In a modern democratic governance system, the citizen is not a subject to be managed but an engaging participant in a constitutional paradigm. In daily life, citizens do not experience the state through constitutional theories, but at the police station, the hospital, the court, the land office, the tax authority, the municipal office and the government school. The legitimacy of the state is ultimately tested when citizens experience property transfers that take months, when a case remains unresolved for years, when a routine permission NOC depends on personal influence, or when a basic problem goes through layers of bureaucracy before anyone accepts responsibility.
Democracy cannot be measured only by general elections, but by what happens between them. Therefore, the real test of a government is what it leaves behind when it leaves. The principle of institutional continuity further reinforces this phenomenon as governments are politically replaceable, but the capacity of the state exists even after every political transition.
Where a new government inherits problems, it also inherits functioning institutions. With a new government, the cabinet changes; so do the policies, but the basic capacity and function of the government – to collect revenue, administer justice, enforce contracts, deliver services, and regulate fairly – must endure. The duty of the new government is to strengthen and further reform them.
Pakistan will only move forward if its parliament legislates intelligently and exercises serious oversight; if its executive implements the law through a professional and accountable administration; and if its judiciary protects and upholds constitutional boundaries and dispenses justice within a reasonable time. The federation will only be strong if its institutions are strong enough to perform their functions and restrained enough to remain within their constitutional parameters.
Institutional continuity becomes even more desirable where there is devolution of powers. The 18th Amendment strengthened provincial autonomy, but the devolution from the federation to the provinces has not been matched by equally meaningful decentralisation from the provinces to local bodies. Our constitution, through Article 140-A, guaranteed the devolution of political, administrative and financial responsibility and authority to elected local governments, but this third tier remains institutionally fragile and financially constrained. The principle is simple: power should be exercised at the lowest level capable of exercising it effectively. The current debate on new provinces and revision of the NFC Award revolves around this principle.
Why should a citizen need to approach a distant provincial capital to resolve a problem that can be addressed competently at the local level? Lahore and Karachi must have their mayors, and they must have both the authority and the resources to keep their cities functioning. This is where governance becomes inextricable from economic growth.
A business should not have to revolve around layers of remote bureaucracy to obtain the permissions, utilities and infrastructure required to create jobs. This is not just administrative convenience but a democratic accountability. In Pakistan, power is concentrated and responsibility is dispersed so that everyone can blame someone else. When responsibility is local, citizens know whom to hold accountable.
Governance is also an economic variable, as foreign direct Investment (FDI) follows certainty: enforceable contracts, predictable regulation, secure property rights, comprehensible taxation, timely approvals and institutions that work without unnecessary friction.
Bad governance and unnecessary compliance raise the cost of investment, discourage innovation and push economic activity towards the grey market. The eventual outcome is slower growth, fewer jobs and diminished opportunity.
Good governance does the opposite as it lowers transaction costs, promotes confidence, encourages FDI and allows entrepreneurs to concentrate on producing rather than negotiating with the state. Governance reform is therefore economic reform, as it is also a matter of social trust.
Citizens in countries with bad governance cannot get justice on time; their public services depend heavily on connections, a different set of rules for the powerful and the powerless, influence becomes stronger than merit etc. In Pakistan, we are going through similar circumstances, and over time, this has changed society’s behaviour.
Comparative analysis tells us that when law is predictable, institutions perform better, services are delivered and citizens are treated with dignity. Accountability and legality begin to take root in these societies beyond government itself. Therefore, Pakistan’s reform agenda must move beyond the recurring debate of who will control the government and the state.
Political legitimacy must come through representative democracy and constitutional authority. State institutions must function within their constitutional domains. But beyond the question of who governs lies the more enduring question of how the state works, and this is what Pakistan has repeatedly postponed to the forefront of reform.
It is clear now, after 79 years of experiments, that Pakistan does not need another political arrangement where one set of occupants interchanges another while the primary machinery remains considerably untouched. We need a democratic system where parliamentary sovereignty and constitutional authority are respected; where our parliament exercises genuine oversight, our executive is professional and answerable, our judiciary is independent and effective, our provinces perform their proper functions, and our local bodies possess meaningful political, administrative and financial authority.
There is neither a need nor a demand for a larger state. We need a better state where reform does not mean replacing every institution or redrawing every boundary. Primarily, we need a meaningful relationship between the institution and the citizen where the state facilitates a shift from command to service, from discretion to rules, from concentration to devolution, from opacity to accountability.
The institutional strength is the ultimate measure of political leadership. A government should be assessed not just by what it achieves during its term, but by whether the state and its institutions are stronger, more capable and more trustworthy when it leaves than when it arrived.
Changing the occupants of power is called politics; changing the machinery of government is called reform; and changing the relationship between the state and the citizen is transformation. Pakistan has spent decades asking who should govern. The question that now matters is whether, whoever governs, the state itself can govern well.
