Case
CITIZEN AGENT OR STATE AGENT: A POLICY IMPLEMENTATION DILEMMA OF A FRONTLINE BUREAUCRAT
INDUSTRY :-
AREA :BUSINESS GOVT/INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY
ORGANIZATION :-
LENGTH :11
LUMS No :16-178-2022-1
PUBLICATION YEAR : 2022
ABSTRACT:
This case analyses the implementation challenges faced by a frontline bureaucrat working in the local government of District Abbottabad in Pakistan. The case illustrates the particular dilemma of separating politics from the administration. This challenge came to fore when Anwar, an assistant city manager, was tasked to implement the official policy of controlling prices of essential commodities. In order to do so, he had to visit different shops and dealers, check that they were selling commonly used food items and essential commodities at the approved prices and fine or jail them if they were found to be non-compliant. Anwar being a relatively junior officer who has very conscientious and idealistic took the normative approach towards policy implementation: that is, he tried to implement the policy as it was written. However, he gradually became aware of multiple limitations in the design and implementation of the price control policy: He realized that because policy design had no provision to determine fair prices, prices had become tethered to the historical rates. Politicians as well as city managers were also reluctant to increase the prices of essential commodities because of political reasons and media scrutiny. These artificially low rates were harming the store owners and traders. Importantly, this impact was disproportionately felt by small shop owners and traders, who had small profit margins and could not pay the fines. Consequently, there was a growing resentment among traders. This resentment had translated into several incidences of police violence and brutality. Anwar also realized that his managers were more interested in the amount of fine collected, which became a proxy for good performance. This was counter-productive because by monitoring fines (and asking frontline workers to increase them), managers were actually monitoring infarctions, not compliance. Now he faced a dilemma: whether to continue acting as a state agent: implement policies as created and written, or act as citizen agent, take a more pragmatic approach and amend the intent of the policy to suit the needs of the citizens. LUMS Number assigned 7-July-22.