Public Policy Process in Pakistan: Key causes of Public Policies Failures

Abstract

The public policy help to address public issues to the government. Since the establishment of Pakistan, the reigning governments has failed to adopt a viable mechanism for formulation and implementation of public policies.  According to the constitution, the executive branch of the government is responsible for developing the public policy altogether with federal, provincial and local governments. Currently, after the 18^th Amendment, this responsibility has been transferred to the provincial government and it further can delegate authority, powers and resource to the local governments. Every elected government has a manifesto that public the public relies on for voting. The elected governments are responsible for developing viable policies to address the public issues. But is case of Pakistan, politically elected government had always served their own interests rather than public issues. The 65 years history of Pakistan has presented very dismal situation in respect of formulation and implementation of policies. The research paper has investigated vast literature on successive government policies, and it has identified the major causes of policy failures i.e, massive corruption, insufficient financial allocations, untrained human resource, lack of vision, poor monitoring system, poor policy evaluations and centralized approach in policy implementation. The paper has identified reasons coupled with weak institutional structures and frequent political interventions due to which current policies failed to provide productive results as was desired in the policy goals.

Keywords. Public policy, Government Structure, Democracy, Political Leadership.

JEL. D73, H10, H75.