Sustainable Development Policy Institute

• Introduction
• Initiatives

Introduction

The program on governance is designed to fill the gap in research on governance by providing independent scholarly advice to decision makers on how to address the current crisis in governance and contributing to intellectual debate on the topic.

There appears to be a general agreement that Pakistan faces a multi-faceted crisis of governance. The weakening of the managerial capacity of the state has resulted in environmental degradation, law and order problems, human rights violations, poor and inadequate delivery of social and economic services, and a lower than potential rate of economic growth. The problem is much more general and not unique to Pakistan. In Europe, the attempt has been made to resolve the problem by structuring the state on the principle of subsidiarity, where local government constitutes the basic unit of government, and functions which overlap local boundaries are transferred to the next higher level of government. The positive vote for devolution in Scotland and Wales in the Britain is the latest case of this trend. The adoption of this principle involves decentralization of the state and devolution of power to the local level.

The National Conservation Strategy aptly describes the crisis of governance in terms of the institutional capacity of the state to meet the needs of the people. It states: "State institutions are sectorally organized, in line with general arrangements for administration and development. The ministries and attached line departments are not oriented towards joint facilitation of local development and have limited capacities for dealing with environmental impacts, most of which are cross-sectoral." The description fits all aspects of public life, from law and order to delivery of social and economic services.

Initiatives

Given below are a few of the projects completed under this program: 

• Project on Local Government
• Landed Power and Local Government Elections
• Using Theatre as a Research tool: Troubleshooting the Devolution Plan
• Analyzing the Effectiveness of the Devolution Plan
• An Analysis of Access of the Marginalised to the Judiciary

Please see SDPI's List of Publications to find out more about SDPI's research findings on governance or contact Ambrin Hayat (ambrin@sdpi.org), Research Coordinator for more details on SDPI's research program.