If Pakistan is finally preparing to create smaller provinces, it should not treat the exercise as merely an administrative rearrangement. It should use this opportunity to rethink the entire structure of governance. If we are going to redraw the map, why not redesign the system?
For decades, one of the strongest arguments for retaining Pakistan’s Westminster-style parliamentary system has been that Punjab is too large and politically dominant. The smaller provinces, it has been argued, need a parliamentary federation to protect their political rights and prevent Punjab from controlling the country. There was some logic to that argument.
But if Punjab itself is divided into smaller provinces, the political equation changes fundamentally. Once the country’s largest province is broken into more balanced administrative units, the old Punjab-versus-the-rest argument loses much of its relevance. That should allow Pakistan to ask a question it has avoided for decades:
Has the Westminster model actually delivered? After years of political instability, weak governance, short-lived governments, institutional confrontation and poor public services, the answer is difficult to defend. But Pakistan’s failure is not only political. It is equally, and perhaps more seriously, bureaucratic.
The bureaucratic system created by the Pakistani state has become one of its biggest obstacles to progress. It has produced too many officials who are complacent, visionless, risk-averse and disconnected from the citizens they are supposed to serve. Incompetence is often protected by seniority, accountability is diluted through layers of procedure and initiative is frequently punished rather than rewarded. And corruption has become deeply embedded in parts of the system.
The tragedy is that Pakistan has an enormous number of intelligent and capable people. Yet the structure through which the state operates often transforms capable individuals into cautious administrators whose primary objective becomes protecting their position rather than solving problems.
Files move from one desk to another. Decisions are delayed. Responsibility is avoided. Rules become more important than outcomes. When something goes wrong, departments blame each other, politicians blame bureaucrats, bureaucrats blame politicians, and everyone blames a lack of resources. Meanwhile, the citizen continues to wait.
The first task of a new system should therefore be to dismantle the system that keeps producing this bureaucracy. Pakistan does not need another cosmetic civil-service reform. It needs a fundamental redesign of the public administration.
Recruitment, promotion and appointments must be based overwhelmingly on competence and performance rather than seniority, connections and bureaucratic patronage. Officials should have clearly defined responsibilities and measurable targets. Persistent failure should have consequences.
The state should reward those who solve problems, not those who merely keep files moving. This is where the creation of smaller provinces becomes particularly important.
The greatest danger is that Pakistan may simply reproduce the existing model on a smaller scale. Instead of four chief ministers, we could eventually have fifteen or twenty. Instead of four provincial assemblies, we could have fifteen or twenty. Each would require ministers, advisers, legislators, secretariats, residences, vehicles, protocol and thousands of officials. That would not reform Pakistan. It would simply multiply the political and bureaucratic elite.
The objective of smaller provinces should not be to create more powerful politicians. It should be to bring government closer to citizens and make it more efficient and accountable. That is why Pakistan should seriously consider a different model.
At the national level, the country should move towards a presidential system, with a directly elected president enjoying a clear mandate and a fixed constitutional tenure. At the regional and municipal level, smaller administrative units should be governed by directly elected mayors supported by lean, professional teams, rather than automatically reproducing the chief minister-and-provincial-assembly structure.
The Turkish model provides an interesting reference point, although Pakistan would obviously need to develop a system suited to its own constitutional, political and social circumstances. The principle is what matters: a strong executive mandate combined with empowered local governments and direct accountability.
A mayor should not merely be a ceremonial figure begging provincial or federal departments for resources. He should have real authority over the functions for which citizens hold him responsible. If roads are broken, the mayor should be answerable. If sanitation fails, the mayor should be answerable. If public spaces deteriorate, water systems collapse or urban planning goes wrong, citizens should know exactly who is responsible. And if the mayor succeeds, citizens should know whom to reward.
This would also provide a natural solution to one of Pakistan’s greatest governance problems: the absence of clearly identifiable responsibility. Today, authority is fragmented among federal ministries, provincial departments, local governments, development authorities and bureaucratic agencies. When something goes wrong, responsibility becomes almost impossible to establish.
A mayoral system would bring accountability much closer to the citizen. Islamabad should be the first city to experience this transformation. The capital was conceived as one of the world’s most beautiful planned cities. Its green belts, open spaces, orderly sectors and relatively low-density character were supposed to make it a model for urban Pakistan.
Instead, Islamabad has been steadily damaged by encroachments, uncontrolled commercialisation, poor urban planning and bureaucratic mismanagement. At the heart of this problem is the institutional structure surrounding the Capital Development Authority.
The CDA has accumulated enormous powers over the decades, yet Islamabad increasingly suffers from precisely the urban problems that such an institution was supposed to prevent. The first major decision of an elected mayor of Islamabad should therefore be to abolish the CDA in its present form and transfer its municipal and development functions to an empowered city government.
There should be one authority responsible for Islamabad’s roads, parks, sanitation, water, public transport, zoning, urban planning and development. One city. One government. One accountable mayor. The same philosophy should govern the new provinces.
The people demanding smaller provinces are not necessarily demanding more politicians, more ministries and more bureaucrats. They are demanding better administration, easier access to government and an end to domination by distant political centres.
If we respond by creating new political empires, we will have achieved very little. But if we use smaller provinces to build leaner governments, professional administrations and directly accountable mayors, the exercise could become one of the most important reforms in Pakistan’s history.
Pakistan has changed prime ministers, governments and political parties repeatedly. Yet the machinery of government has remained largely intact. We keep changing the people who operate the system without asking whether the system itself is producing the results we want. Perhaps that is why the outcomes remain so similar. The creation of smaller provinces offers a rare opportunity to break this cycle.
But it must not become an exercise in multiplying chief ministers, ministers, legislators and bureaucrats. Pakistan does not need more elites. It needs more effective government. If Punjab is divided, the old argument that Westminster is necessary to protect the smaller provinces must be reconsidered. If new provinces are created, they should become laboratories for a new model of governance.
And if the country genuinely wants a new beginning, it should go one step further: abolish the bureaucratic machinery that has failed the citizen and replace it with a professional, performance-driven public service.
The choice before Pakistan is therefore much bigger than the number of provinces. It is a choice between reproducing the old system in new territories—or using this historic moment to build an entirely different state.
Divide Punjab. Dismantle Westminster. Empower mayors. Rebuild the bureaucracy. Redraw the map, yes. But more importantly, redesign the machinery of government.
