Historically Turkey and Afghanistan have had strong centralist administrative systems that demonstrate relative institutional flaws at the local level. Afghanistan as a country that is emerging from decades of instabilities has adopted a new legal framework for its local administration under the 2004 Constitution. Likewise, Turkey's local administrative system has applied various reforms under the 1982 Constitution. Although both countries' constitutions delegate a certain amount of authorities and responsibilities to the sub-national level, local administrations are subjected to strong administrative and financial tutelage of central states in both countries. In Turkey, local elections matter relatively on the functionality of public institutions and local democracy, whereas in Afghanistan, major local authorities still representing the central state, and people at the local level have no role in making public decisions according to their constitutional rights. Since Turkey's experience on modern state-building has had a significant influence on shaping the first constitution of Afghanistan, recent reformations, successful or failed, can be lessons for Afghanistan as a country that is in the process of state-building to empower its public institutions, and foster participatory governance. This paper aims to compare the evolution, structure, and function of the local administration system in Turkey and Afghanistan to clarify the question of authority and autonomy level for local governance in both countries. The author in this research examines constitutional provisions, legislation, and policies regarding the interrelationship of the central states and local components to highlight the mechanism of people's engagement with states and offers specific recommendations at the end of this paper.