Building Integrity in the Global South: Lessons from Pakistan’s Struggle Against Public Sector Corruption

Why do formally mandated anti-corruption institutions fail in contexts of entrenched political patronage? This study addresses that question through an embedded case study of the Anti-Corruption Establishment of Sindh, Pakistan, combining the document analysis, case-file examination, enforcement statistics from 2015 to 2023, and interviews with twelve retired officials. Three contributions emerge: process-level evidence of how subnational institutions are operationally hollowed out rather than merely underperforming on aggregate indices; demonstration of how political interference, capacity deficits, legal loopholes, and neglect of preventive functions interact as a compounding failure ecosystem; and extension of institutional theory to subnational governance in federal developing states, offering transferable lessons where elite capture constraints accountability reform. The findings confirm that patronage networks convert formally mandated anti-corruption institutions into ritualistic procedure rather than substantive restraint, with accountability outcomes systematically conditioned by political affiliation rather than evidentiary merit.