This paper is divided into four parts. The first part provides a brief overview of the origins and evolution of civil service in Pakistan. Second, it briefly reviews and evaluates the reports of four commissions set up by the Government of Pakistan between 1972­ and 2009. Two reports were produced under democratic regimes and two under military regimes. Each report and its findings and recommendations must be understood, interpreted and evaluated in the context of three essential factors: the prevailing socio-political environment; regime type (democratic or military); and, the ruler’s imperative. The third section, cognizant of the needs to recognize that the focus of reform efforts have been only on the higher bureaucracy and not the provincial governments, the paper will explore why that is the case. Finally, it will assess how the 18th Amendment is re-shaping the federation – province relations and the role and structure of Civil Services in the country. I argue that both democratic and military rulers’ reform efforts have been driven by considerations of subordinating bureaucracy rather than changing the behaviour, improving service delivery and citizen welfare, enhancing professional skills, managerial capacity, and public accountability. As a result, politicization, institutional decline, pre-occupation with survival, and preserving the status quo have become pervasive in the civil services of Pakistan and deepened the crisis of governance. The 18th Amendment does offer provincial governments an opportunity to revamp the capacity of provincial bureaucracies and improve governance. It invites the federal government to redesign the role and structure of higher civil services of Pakistan.