POLICY ADVISORY CAPABILITY IN DEVELOPING BUREAUCRACIES: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE CAPACITY FRAMEWORK IN PAKISTAN'S FEDERAL SECRETARIAT

Abstract

Policy advisory capability has been identified as one of the most essential predictors of the effectiveness of governments in all parts of the globe, but has been under-researched as to particular determinants in the developing countries bureaucracies in comparative public administration literature. The paper examines the determinants of policy advisory capacity at the Federal Secretariat in Pakistan and puts the policy capacity framework to the test by operating in a difficult administrative environment, that is, colonial legacies, political instability, and bureaucratic dispersion. Data was gathered through a purposive sample of 426 federal officials (Grades 17-22) using multi-modal strategies of recruitment to overcome tremendous access restrictions to elite bureaucrats, which is a frequent problem in studying developing state apparatuses. According to the analysis that uses hierarchical multiple regression, the Policy Quality Systems (=.621, p =.001), Engagement/Customer-Centric approaches (=.348, p =.001), and People Capability (=.214, p =.05) impact on the perceived policy advisory quality significantly. An interesting contradiction is found in the study, since although Stewardship demonstrates positive bivariate correlation with advisory quality, in the full model, its impact is negative (= -.281, p < .001), which indicates suppression effects in highly political settings. Methodologically, we show how serious research of hard-to-reach bureaucratic elites can be done, without obscuring the sampling limitations and prevalent method bias. In principle, our results would add to the comparative literature on policy capacity, by demonstrating the interaction between universal drivers of capability and local institutional malfunctions in post-colonial countries. In practice, the research determines Policy Quality Systems as the strongest leverage point of instant reform providing evidence-based ways of future improvement of capabilities in such a bureaucratic setting that faces modern governance issues.