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The independence of Pakistan and the Iranian revolution generated major recompositions in the two states: Pakistan was founded on the institutional legacy of the state inherited from British era, whereas in post-revolutionary Iran, new rulers sought to reorganize both the structure and the composition of the state and its upper bureaucracies. The article examines the differentiation of administrative elites’ modes of legitimation and ways of narrating their professional practices in the two states, showing that the differentiation in one’s approach to depicting his life story in his memoirs reflects the changing symbiotic articulation between political, administrative, and societal realms. To do so, it investigates the autobiographical memoirs of four Iranian and Pakistani prefects (provincial governors). As they antagonize political and administrative fields, Iranian and Pakistani prefects claim the monopoly over the function of representation of the population. Yet, they show opposed relations to the idea of the state. In Pakistan, where the bureaucracy experienced a gradual politicisation, state officials’ “exemplarity” derives from their role of state servants and results from educational skills and moral values – similarly to prevailing norms in the colonial state. Conversely, Iranian revolutionary prefects build their uniqueness on their individuality as “self-made men”, by claiming their autonomy from both the state itself, and traditional institutions of socialisation (the family, the school).