A case study for the project ‘Capacity, Change and Performance’
D. Watson and A.Q. Khan, ECDPM Discussion Paper 57G, 2005. The Pakistan case is one of two that examine capacity issues in relation to decentralised education service delivery. The study explores the institutional environment and broader governance context within which institutional reform and capacity development has taken place. The study identifies factors that have either facilitated or constrained capacity development across the sector from the classroom level to the policy making level within central government. The case suggests that ‘supply-side’ constraints are proving difficult to overcome, noting that the bureaucracy is largely self-interested; representative democracy is dysfunctional in part because of collusion with the bureaucracy, and that these pose formidable obstacles to performance improvement. The case argues that a successful future strategy for capacity building must build on appropriate motivators to encourage the changes and performance improvements which devolution was intended to bring about. Factors which impeded the major earlier attempts to introduce change and improve performance through capacity building appear to be as real and as relevant as ever.