Daily Times

Pakistanis love to discuss politics but dislike politicians, viewing them as corrupt, opportunistic and bereft of ethical principles. Sins of politicians are manifold: defaulting on bank loans, embezzling development funds for their personal use, and offering sanctuary to dacoits and contesting elections on fake degrees.

The anti-politician bias has permeated deep into the psyche of our nation, so, it did not shock many when the returning officers began weeding out politicians, under articles 62 and 63 of the constitution, on allegations of corruption and embezzlement of funds. Initially, the nomination bid of Raja Pervez Ashraf was rejected by the election commission staff and the election tribunal for the misappropriation of public funds. Some of the politicians had to undergo gruelling questioning on the ideology of Pakistan and injunctions of Islam. It leads to a question: can returning officers and election tribunals decide the fate of candidates bidding for elections?

To find answer to this question, the examination of the democratic models of the western countries such as the United Kingdom, United States of America and Germany reveals that the right to choose representatives is vested with people. But many observers might argue that such a system of democracy is ideal for a society, where politicians generally do not indulge in the kind of sleaze and corruption that we witness in Pakistan.

To begin with, it is a simplistic notion as none of these countries had ever been free of tainted politicians; self-indulgence is part of human nature. All of these countries, at a certain point in their democratic history, faced a crucial dilemma: how to deal with corrupt politicians within the democratic framework? That said, instead of engaging in witch-hunting and containing avaricious behaviour of politicians through arbitrary control mechanisms, the western democracies began treating politicians as a special class, as much motivated by self-interest as any other elite group, and started to study behaviour of politicians and their civilian counterparts (bureaucrats) academically. In the past four decades, several theoretical frameworks, borrowing insights from psychology, economics, law, political science, political sociology and public administration have evolved that empirically examine behaviour of the political class.

In this article, my argument is that politicians should not be screened on the basis of abstract and normative constructs such as sagaciousness, non-profligacy and piety. Instead, we need to modify their behaviour through positivist theoretical insights, by institutionalising them into political set ups and policy frameworks. I’ll begin with a brief discussion of the conceptual frameworks of the public choice theorists, who in the past three decades have influenced the field of public management in the western countries and will show with examples their applicability to Pakistan’s political context.

Gordon Tullock, an American academic, developed a theory on the rent-seeking behaviour of the politicians, offering an insight, later became known as Tullock paradox that the rent seekers lobbying for political favours manage to grease the palm of the politicians at a cost much lower than the value of the favour. This paradox explains why politicians are intensely lobbied by the special interest groups to create a favourable legislation: the cost of graft paid outweighs the value of profits. However, this lobbying can lead to moral hazard, resulting in risky and less efficient policy decisions.

William Niskanen, a member of Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors, proposed his groundbreaking study on the behaviour of politicians and government officials, known as the budget maximisation model: the government agents attempt to enlarge their authority domain and perks and privileges at the expense of public good.

In Pakistan, politicians and other government officials indulge in rent seeking behaviour by becoming hostage to the interests of influential lobbies such as pharmaceutical industry, farmer lobbies and steel industry, causing massive distortions in the efficient functioning of market to the detriment of public good. Last year, an interferon injection scandal came to light, when on the intense lobbying of pharmaceutical groups, the ongoing research on the production of the interferon injection, used for curing hepatitis C that could have considerably reduced the price of injection in the local market was stopped; and, an inquiry was initiated against Dr Riazuddin, the head of the research team, and his name was put on the Exit Control List. Reportedly, multinational companies, importing expensive interferon from abroad, and making billions of rupees as profits had bribed the health ministry officials and some politicians to forestall the local production of the injection.

Similarly, our politicians fail to make distinction between state and personal resources and expand their perks and privileges exponentially. For instance, a day before the dissolution of assemblies, Raja Pervez Ashraf issued an order for costly security protocol for himself and the former prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani. Likewise, in the second week of March, Sindh Assembly passed two private bills to grant lifetime monetary and other benefits to the outgoing chief minister, the speaker and the deputy speaker.

To put in a nutshell, the sleazy behaviour of politicians cannot be reformed through abstract notions that cannot prove or disprove their conduct empirically but only managed through meaningful accountability mechanisms, incorporating tested behavioral insights, which treat politicians as rational actors, with specialised functions to perform such as the management of the business of the state. However, it means that we re-formulate our evaluation criteria about the conduct of politicians from normative to the positivist and also let people judge their representatives.

The writer is a public policy practitioner and holds an MSc degree in Public Policy & Management from King’s College, London