The Establishment and Termination of Devolution Plan of 2000: The Interplay of Interest, Institutions and Ideas in Public Policy Making
Keywords:
Local Government, Devolution Plan 2000, Triple I, Stakeholders, Military, Higher BureaucracyAbstract
General Musharraf’s military regime announced a comprehensive programme of local government reforms through the Devolution Plan 2000. Despite its emphasis on inclusiveness, equity, and accountability in local governance, the Devolution Plan was abandoned following the fall of its principal architect, General Pervez Musharraf. This paper examines this outcome using the Triple I (3-I) framework, which focuses on the interaction of interests, institutions and ideas. The study identifies and analyses the principal stakeholders involved in the devolution reform project, including the military, the higher bureaucracy, politicians, civil society, and multilateral and bilateral development agencies. The paper is organised into five sections. Section I provides the historical background, emphasising the colonial origins of local government in Pakistan and the nature of the reform challenge. Section II outlines the Devolution Plan 2000 and its major features. Section III presents the analytical framework, explaining the interaction and interdependence of the three major factors—interests, ideas, and institutions. Section IV analyses the stakeholders in terms of their interests, institutional positions, and ideas involved in the devolution reform project, highlighting their interplay during the establishment of the Devolution Plan 2000. Section V examines the interaction of these factors that contributed to the eventual dismantling of the reform initiative. The paper finds that each stakeholder embodied more than one dimension of the Triple I framework and that interests, ideas, and institutions were mutually constitutive, interacting and reinforcing one another in shaping the trajectory of the devolution reform process.
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 By submitting an article to the editor, the author (s) will automatically grant editors the rights to edit and post the content of the articles on the official website of the Sadiq Journal of Pakistan Studies (SJPS) if accepted. Author (s) retain the copyrights and will grant SJPS the non-exclusive rights of first publication of manuscript electronically and in print form and to identify SJPS as the original publisher under creative commons License. It will allow others to share the content with explicit indication of the authorship and its initial publication in SJPS. Under these licensing terms, the author (s) confirm that all the content of the published manuscript will be distributed in the public domain and other researchers may use it exclusively for the non-profit scientific purpose (s) with the obligatory acknowledgement of authorship. Author (s) reserves unconditional rights to copy and reproduce the published work for teaching, use it in other research and redistribute, share or place the copy of the article to any other medium or format, even commercially only if SJPS is explicitly acknowledged as the original publisher. However, author (s) cannot apply any legal or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything that is already permitted under the license terms.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
All the articles editorially accepted for publication by the Sadiq Journal of Pakistan Studies (SJPS) are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Submitting a manuscript to SJPS, the author has to certify that he/ she is authorized by other contributors (s) and co-author (s) to enter the publication process.
He/ She shall assure on behalf of all author (s) that:
- The manuscript is original, it has not been published in any other journal before, is not under consideration for any other journal and does not violate any existing copyrights or any other rights of a third party.
- I/we have full authority to enter into this agreement for granting the rights to SJPS as sole author (s) of the article without breaching any other obligation.
- The manuscript does not contain any unlawful and libelous content or anything that would breach the agreement (s) of confidence, commitment, and secrecy.
- I/we certify that due care has been taken to ensure the reliability of the article. All purported statements and information are facts to the best of my/our knowledge and the currently accepted standards of scientific knowledge. Therefore, any of the proposed methods or instructions will not, if followed accurately, cause any damage or loss to the user (s).
