Twenty Years of the Civil Service of Pakistan: A Reevaluation

Abstract

In the already extensive literature on Pakistan's civil bureaucracy, over the last twenty years the Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP) has received more attention than all the other parts of the bureaucracy together. Even though CSP personnel constitute only 0.07% of the country's total bureaucratic population, it is not at all surprising that they have been the subject of academic attention over such a long period. There are three main reasons for this. First, the CSP is one of the heirs of the famous Indian Civil Service (ICS) created by the British and considered to be the steel frame of Britain's administration in India.' Second, of the two successor services, the Indian Administrative Service and Civil Service of Pakistan, only the latter has continued to work as a real elite group; the former has surrendered a substantial part of the power it inherited to its new political bosses. Long after independence, the members of the CSP continue to hold key positions in all tiers of government, exercising an influence far disproportionate to their numbers.2 Third, in a rapidly changing environ