DEVOLUTION AND POLITICAL ACCOUNTABILITY SOME INSIGHTS FROM PAKISTAN

Abstract

This paper studies the relationship between devolution and political accountability in District Dera Ismail Khan, Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, Pakistan. It examines the extent of political accountability through the gates of popular participation in elections, level of transparency in decision making process and accessibility of general public to public information at grass roots level. The main findings of this paper are two fold. First, citizen’s participation in election especially in local body’s election 2005 is unequivocally greater after devolution. However the genuine voter choice is restricted by the dominating elite class, especially in rural areas of the country where majority of the people are uneducated and poor. Second, the transparency level of the system is not up to the mark. The present devolution plan provides mechanisms of transparency by declaring citizens’ right to information thereby forcing the district government to display public information, but the present study reveals limited transparency regarding the business of local governments. The public in general and the poor in particular have no access to information, for instance, the researcher himself visited the DO Social Welfare several times to get the list of registered CCBs, but did not succeed. Although it is well documented that a transparent system makes it easier to hold the local government accountable; however, transparency itself depends on the demographic characteristic of the society as verified by this study, which are not very conducive among the population under study.