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This study draws on results of an opinion survey about public views in Afghanistan regarding concepts related to federalism. We argue that concepts such as unitarism, federalism, centralization, and decentralization are highly politicized and often misunderstood when they enter the public discourse. As the survey results indicate, the association of ethnic groups with different systems of governance, although popular in Afghanistan, is misleading. A concurrent majority of ethnic groups takes a more nuanced approach of favoring central authorities on some issues, local authorities on others, and shared or divided authorities on the rest. The findings are helpful in contributing to a better understanding of how Afghans view federalism, and also by providing guidance to constitution-makers in designing institutional arrangements and distributions of power that address society’s needs.

<div><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="left"><tbody><tr><td align="left" valign="top"><p class="AbstractText">Since the Reformation, spatial planning governance has moved away from authoritarianism toward a more democratic style of government. However, the current Job Creation Regulation has heralded the return of the centralistic governance in spatial planning. Surprisingly, Australia is also experiencing this trend. This study will look at how the centralistic phase of spatial planning was implemented in Indonesia and Australia. By using a normative method, the results reveal that the spirit of centralization is obvious in the Job Creation Regulation. The central government has a dominating role in the implementation of spatial planning. It also controls the issuing of detailed plan. Because of the need to produce a digital map, the central government now has a power over the granting of spatial planning permission. In Australia, the local government evaluates and decides on the vast majority of planning applications. A countervailing tendency, nevertheless, has seen state governments take on some of the planning and decision-making duties once exercised by local governments. The state minister and development assessment panels are now responsible for authorization of significant projects. This pattern appears to depoliticize and simplify the application process for development projects, especially when those projects have financial advantages.</p></td></tr></tbody></table></div>

The establishment of the dispute settlement procedure that consists of the Panel Report and the Appellate Body has been the most remarkable characteristic of the World Trade Organization. Beside the most productive international dispute resolution process, it has consistently adopted a rule-oriented procedure in enforcing the commitments made during trade negotiations. Since the last five years, however, the dispute settlement process has confronted an existential crisis. While conflict resolution through consultations and panels continues, the process under the Appellate Body is forced to stop. The United States has impaired the appointment of additional judges to this body, preventing it from obtaining the quorum required to hear appeals. By employing a normative research, this paper aims to identify and analyze the deadlock of the appointment of the Appellate Body judges and its repercussions for international trade governance, including Indonesia. This deadlock could jeopardy the viability of global trading system as there would be no proceeding to hear the dispute at the appellate level. Some cases that involved Indonesia would also be affected, particularly if the parties are willing to continue this process to the Appellate Body.Â

This paper explores why Afghanistan's centralized planning and budgeting policies, despite consistent failure to improve local participation and allocative efficiency, remained stable. Based on policy feedback theory, there are two explanations. First, policy actors, given their interests, often tend to keep the status quo unchanged; and second, policymaking processes play a facilitative role for policy actors. This paper explains how centralized policymaking processes enable policy actors to bypass specific constraints of institutional environment such as agenda setting, principalagent dynamics, information symmetry, and credible commitment to keep certain policies unchanged. With the recent collapse of Afghan state, the Taliban would most likely continue the centralized planning and budgeting policies given their past governance approach and their recent performance.