DefinePK

Abstract

This paper aims at investigating the impact of decentralization on social services delivery in Pakistan. In 2001 a large-scale Devolution Reforms policy was launched aiming to devolve substantial fiscal and administrative powers to local governments from the provincial governments after restructuring and revamping the administrative, political and fiscal landscape of the local government system. The paper uses a panel data set from 1975 to 2008 from four provinces of Pakistan in order to detect the efficacy of local governments in providing the essential social and economic services to common people particularly to the poor. The empirical results suggest that after the decentralization, expenditures on social and economic services have increased manifold. Therefore, it indicates that the decentralization in the shape of widespread devolution reform despite its loopholes was an essential structural reform with positive impact on sectors and subsectors that believed to be pro-poor.