Coping with political interference and resource scarcity: Governance in the former tribal regions of Pakistan

Abstract

Design and delivery of public services in the global south remain woefully understudied. This is especially the case with newly institutionalized regions enmeshed in economic, social, and security challenges. Public administration literature recommends that regions facing wicked problems must rely on effective governance but offer little insight into the specificities of the problems faced by implementers and the prevailing means to tackle them. In this exploratory qualitative study, we focus our attention on studying governance in the understudied context of the tribal areas in the mountainous northwestern regions of Pakistan. We apply Lipsky’s street-level bureaucracy framework to learn how frontline public employees working in these regions cope with the identified challenges of political interference and resource scarcity. Our findings demonstrate that public employees in the former tribal regions of Pakistan bend and break rules, engage in corruption, and shirk responsibilities to cope with challenges and meet performance expectations. The findings underscore the need for more contextualized institution-building such that frontline public workers are more answerable to citizens than to those who undermine the democratic imperative of these critical public infrastructure projects.