Pakistan has spent decades discussing institutional reform. We have debated constitutional amendments, civil service restructuring, police reform, judicial independence, electoral systems and decentralization. Yet one question receives far less attention: what kind of behavior do our institutions actually produce, and what kind of character do they reward?
In his recent article, The Unfinished Independence, Justice (retd) Syed Mansoor Ali Shah makes a compelling argument that Pakistan’s incomplete transition from colonial rule is not simply a problem of laws or institutional design. It is also a problem of mindset and character.
His argument has significance far beyond the judiciary. The same dilemma exists in almost every segment of the state and society.
A constitution can establish an independent judiciary, but it cannot by itself produce courageous judges. A police law can prescribe professional policing, but it cannot automatically produce officers willing to resist unlawful pressure. Civil service rules can require neutrality, but they cannot guarantee that officials will choose principle over personal advancement.
This is the missing dimension in Pakistan’s reform debate.
The System Teaches People How To Behave
It is tempting to blame individuals for corruption, political expediency, institutional weakness or abuse of authority. But individuals respond to incentives.
Consider a young civil servant who refuses an improper instruction and is consequently transferred, while another officer who complies receives a better posting. The system has delivered a powerful lesson. It has not merely punished one honest officer. It has educated an entire institution.
The same principle operates elsewhere. If a police officer who acts professionally is denied support while one who enjoys political connections prospers, institutional culture deteriorates. If a university rewards connections rather than scholarship, merit declines. If a businessperson succeeds through influence rather than productivity, others learn the same lesson. Eventually, behavior that was once considered unacceptable becomes normal.
This produces a vicious cycle:
Bad incentives produce compromised behavior; compromised behavior weakens institutions; weak institutions create public cynicism; and public cynicism further erodes standards.
The answer therefore cannot be another set of rules alone.
What Other Countries Show: Systems Change Through Incentives, Not Sermons
Countries that successfully improved governance did not rely on moral appeals. They redesigned incentives and protected integrity in practice.
Singapore is the clearest example. In the 1960s, corruption was widespread and public service was weak. Instead of relying on rhetoric, the state radically restructured incentives: high salaries for civil servants, strict enforcement against corruption regardless of rank, and a merit-based bureaucracy insulated from political interference. Over time, integrity became rational behavior, not heroic sacrifice.
South Korea followed a similar trajectory during its state-building phase. Bureaucratic promotions were tied to performance in national development goals. Officials who delivered results were rewarded; those who failed were sidelined. The system aligned personal advancement with national outcomes.
Rwanda, after the 1994 genocide, rebuilt its institutions by enforcing strict accountability and performance monitoring across the civil service. While its political context is debated, its administrative transformation shows how quickly institutional behavior can shift when incentives are tightly controlled.
Estonia offers another model. Instead of relying on trust alone, it digitized governance to reduce human discretion. By making services transparent and traceable, it reduced opportunities for corruption and changed everyday administrative behavior.
The lesson across these cases is consistent:
institutional character changes when incentives, monitoring, and protection for integrity are deliberately engineered.
Character Cannot Be Legislated
Pakistan has no shortage of laws. The problem is that the distance between the law and its implementation can sometimes be enormous.
We frequently respond to every institutional failure by creating another regulation, authority, committee or oversight mechanism. These may be necessary, but they cannot substitute for integrity.
A judge must sometimes have the courage to say no. A police officer must sometimes refuse an unlawful order. A civil servant must sometimes resist political pressure.
A journalist must sometimes choose truth over access. A politician must sometimes put national interest above electoral convenience. A citizen must sometimes refuse to obtain an unfair advantage even when doing so is perfectly possible. These are ultimately questions of character.
But character should not be confused with moral preaching. Telling people to be honest while designing institutions that punish honesty is neither realistic nor fair.
The real challenge is to create an environment in which integrity is protected, rewarded and respected.
From Subjects to Citizens
One of the enduring legacies of colonial administration was the relationship between authority and the individual.
The state was an authority to be approached, feared or negotiated with. The citizen was often treated less as the owner of the state and more as its subject.
Independence changed the flag, government and political identity. But aspects of that relationship survived.
A citizen still sometimes believes that obtaining a legitimate service requires a reference. A police complaint may be perceived as requiring influence. An ordinary administrative matter may become easier when someone powerful intervenes.
This is precisely where the idea of an unfinished independence becomes important. Political independence must ultimately produce citizenship. A citizen should not need access to power to receive justice. He should be able to rely on institutions.
The transformation therefore requires moving from: “Who do you know?” to: “What are you entitled to?” That is not merely administrative reform. It is a change in the character of the state.
Reform the Incentives, Not Just The Institutions
A serious reform program should therefore begin by examining what behavior each institution rewards.
Take the civil service. If promotion depends substantially on seniority, relationships and the ability to avoid controversy, officials will naturally become cautious and dependent.
If, instead, promotions are demonstrably linked to professional competence, measurable results, integrity and the ability to make lawful decisions independently, behavior will gradually change.
This is exactly what Singapore’s Administrative Service institutionalized: career progression tied to performance and integrity, not patronage.
The same applies to policing. An officer should not build a career primarily by pleasing political patrons. Career progression should depend on professional performance, crime investigation, public confidence, lawful conduct and leadership.
Georgia’s post-2003 police reform illustrates this shift. By restructuring recruitment, increasing salaries, and removing entrenched patronage networks, it rapidly reduced petty corruption in traffic policing and frontline services.
Judicial independence requires more than constitutional language. Judges must have institutional protection from improper pressure, while mechanisms of accountability must ensure that independence does not become immunity.
Universities need similar reform. Academic freedom and merit must matter more than patronage.
Protect the Person Who Says “No”
Perhaps the most important test of an institution is what happens to the person who says “No”.
- No to an illegal instruction.
- No to corruption.
- No to political interference.
- No to nepotism.
- No to manipulating a process.
- No to bending the rules for a powerful individual.
If that person is immediately isolated, transferred, denied promotion or socially ostracised, the institution is teaching everyone else to remain silent.
Countries that improved governance understood this early. In Nordic systems, whistleblower protections and strong administrative courts ensure that officials can resist unlawful pressure without destroying their careers.
Therefore, Pakistan needs stronger institutional protection for lawful dissent.
A public servant who records a lawful objection should not automatically become a problem to be managed. A police officer who refuses an illegal instruction should not fear professional retaliation. A junior official who exposes wrongdoing should have access to credible protection.
This does not mean encouraging indiscipline. There is a fundamental difference between disobedience and principled dissent.
Education Is the Starting Point
This is where Justice Mansoor Ali Shah’s emphasis on history, philosophy and literature becomes particularly relevant.
Our education system tends to reward memorization. We teach students what happened, but not sufficiently why it happened.
We teach constitutional provisions, but not sufficiently why constitutionalism matters. We teach rights, but not sufficiently the responsibilities that accompany them.
A student should learn to ask difficult questions. What happens when the majority is wrong? Should an unlawful order be obeyed? Does loyalty to an institution require concealing its wrongdoing? Is something right because everyone does it? What should a person do when honesty carries a personal cost?
These questions develop judgment.
History teaches us the consequences of institutional failure. Philosophy teaches us to distinguish principle from expediency. Literature develops empathy by allowing us to see the world through another person’s eyes.
Technical education creates professionals. Humanities can help create citizens. Pakistan needs both.
Reforming the Culture Of Success
There is another reform that cannot be legislated: what society chooses to admire. We often measure success through wealth, office, influence, protocol and access. The person who can make a telephone call to get something done may be regarded as more powerful than the person who insists that the proper process be followed. This is a dangerous social message.
Countries that improved governance also reshaped social norms. In Singapore and Estonia, public service integrity became socially prestigious, not merely administratively required.
We need to restore respect for a different kind of success: competence without arrogance, wealth without corruption, authority without abuse, and public service without personal enrichment.
Imagine if children grew up hearing family stories not only about the relative who became powerful or wealthy, but about the person who refused an improper favor protected a weaker colleague or sacrificed personal advantage to uphold principle. That is how culture changes.
We Cannot Wait For Perfect People
There is, however, an important practical caution.
We should not build a reform strategy on the assumption that every public servant, politician or citizen will become exceptionally virtuous. Institutions must be designed for ordinary human beings.
Successful countries did not wait for perfect citizens; they built systems where bad behavior was difficult and good behavior was rewarded.
Good systems reduce the opportunities for wrongdoing. They make decisions traceable. They reduce arbitrary discretion. They separate powers. They create independent complaint mechanisms. They publish information. They use technology to create audit trails. They make appointments and promotions more transparent.
In other words:
- We should build institutions that do not require heroes to function properly.
- Integrity should be an advantage, not a handicap.
- The Ombudsman model offers one example
- The idea of an independent ombudsman illustrates this principle.
- An ordinary citizen may have neither money, influence nor access to senior officials. Yet he can still seek redress against maladministration.
- The importance of such institutions therefore goes beyond disposal of complaints. They can help change the citizen’s relationship with the state.
- Instead of asking a powerful person to intervene, the citizen learns that an institution exists to protect his legitimate rights.
- That is how the state gradually moves from patronage to entitlement, from discretion to rule-based administration, and from subjects to citizens.
- The same philosophy should inform the reform of every public institution.
A National Character Program
- Pakistan does not need another slogan-driven campaign about morality.
- It needs a practical national program built around four objectives:
- Educate for character.
- Introduce constitutional citizenship, ethics, history, philosophy, debate and civic responsibility into education.
- Reward integrity.
- Make merit, professional competence and ethical conduct meaningful factors in recruitment, promotion and recognition.
- Protect principled dissent.
- Give institutional protection to those who lawfully resist corruption, unlawful orders and improper influence.
- Design institutions for accountability.
- Reduce arbitrary discretion, strengthen transparency, create audit trails and ensure that no individual or institution becomes effectively unaccountable.
These reforms would take years. There would be resistance. Those who benefit from the existing system would naturally resist changes that reduce their influence.
But reform is not supposed to be comfortable.
Completing Independence
Pakistan’s founders did not struggle merely to replace one group of rulers with another. Independence was intended to create a state in which citizens could live with dignity, justice and security.
The unfinished task is therefore deeper than institutional restructuring.
It is to transform the relationship between power and principle.
The ultimate test of a state is not how elegantly its laws are written. It is what happens when a powerful person wants something that the law does not permit.
Does the institution bend? Or does it say no? That moment reveals the real character of the state.
Pakistan has repeatedly attempted to reform institutions from the outside: new laws, new structures, new authorities and new procedures. Perhaps the next stage of reform must go deeper.
We need to reform the incentives, education and culture that shape the people who operate those institutions.
Because institutions ultimately behave according to the character of the people inside them.
And if independence means that citizens, rather than rulers, are sovereign, then completing independence requires more than changing institutions. It requires changing the character of the state itself.
(The author is former IGP of AJK and Karachi Police Chief)
