THE Federal Investigation Agency recently busted what it describes as an alleged network involved in fake apostille stickers and official stamps, booking 22 suspects, including six officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The investigation will establish what happened and who was responsible. But there is a larger question that should concern all of us: why does obtaining a perfectly legitimate government service become so difficult that an ecosystem of agents and middlemen can flourish around it?

Anatol Lieven offered an uncomfortable explanation more than a decade ago in Pakistan: A Hard Country. Writing about Pakistan’s bureaucracy, he observed that “The bureaucracy acts as an agency of distributing patronage rather than good government”. He was making a broader point than simply accusing officials of corruption: formal institutions themselves can be shaped by patronage, personal relationships and competing interests.

The result is a paradox. The machinery of the state can be weak and dysfunctional, yet the networks around it can make the system remarkably resilient. Those same networks, however, can make the state harder for ordinary citizens to navigate. Lieven’s observation remains relevant because the problem citizens encounter today is not simply corruption. It is the growing difficulty of dealing with the state itself.

Getting a document attested from the foreign affairs ministry can mean hours in queues, repeated visits, uncertainty about requirements and the possibility of........

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