Corruption and the Bureaucratic Elite in Pakistan: The 1960s and 1970s Revisited

Abstract

AbstractThe present paper examines the growth of corruption in Pakistan in the 1960s and 1970s with particular emphasis on the factors that influenced changes in the behavioural norms of the officer cadres or higher bureaucracy of Pakistan. The main argument is that during the 1960s increases in development spending and the manipulation of local governments by civil servants to help the Ayub Khan military regime secure legitimacy led to a substantial increase in the level of corruption. However, while the increase was alarming, the higher bureaucracy was still fairly clean and, given leadership, training and resources, in a position to contain the spread of corruption. In the 1970s the first Pakistan People's Party government enacted a number of reforms aimed at asserting political control over the civilian bureaucracy while pursuing a socialistic development model that justified nationalisation of industrial and commercial assets. These substantially undermined the ability of the higher bureaucracy to fight back against corruption while dramatically increasing state penetration of society and the economy, thus making opportunities for corruption more abundant. After General Zia-ul Haq's military coup in July 1977, the new regime, though it received plenty of good advice, was not interested in enhancing the autonomy and prestige of the services as that would diminish Zia's personal power over the state apparatus.