State Building in a Rentier State: How Development Policies Fail to Promote Democracy in Afghanistan

Abstract

State building is considered to be the solution to Afghanistan's ills. State‐building efforts largely aim to mirror Afghanistan to a market democracy. However, a market democracy is the outcome of specific historical and geo‐graphical circumstances, and cannot be replicated easily. This article explores four models of state formation: the Western, developmental, rentier and predatory state. Afghanistan can be characterized as a weak rentier state, subsisting on aid. Generally, the structural consequences of such aid rentierism are underestimated. ‘State building’ in this context cannot be successful. More aid ‘ownership’ and a strengthening of the Afghan bureaucracy will simply consolidate aid rentierism rather than reverse‐engineer a market democracy. A greater focus on economic policy is required to direct Afghanistan's rulers towards a more viable path of state formation. In this regard, the ‘developmental state’ offers some insights.

Order, stability, and change in Afghanistan: from top-down to bottom-up state-making

“…At the same time, and from the perspective of social order and local governance, political and especially social change at the community level is under-studied. The pooling of empirical material from two distinct research projects confirms the views of researchers who have underlined persistence and continuity in political patterns (Centlivres-Demont and Centlivres 2013;Geller 2009) and patron-client relations (Centlivres-Demont and Centlivres 2013; Sharan 2011), but also identify rentier logics (Verkoren and Kamphuis 2013) and the limited prospects for the current intervention's achieving its goal to 'develop' Afghanistan in the broadest sense (Suhrke 2012).…”

Rentier Statebuilding in a Post‐Conflict Economy: The Case of Kosovo

“…Furthermore, in the context of economies characterized by an abundance of natural resource rents, the combination of Dutch disease and a rentier economy contributes to what has been dubbed the ‘resource curse’: economic stagnation and political discontent in the midst of plentiful resource rents which are subjected to elite capture. A predatory state goes one step further (Verkoren and Kamphuis, : 509–11): here, the elite's interest in rent extraction renders them comparable to the roving bandits described by Olson (). A roving bandit merely exacts tribute, without nurturing the tax base from which the rent is exacted, effectively destroying the economy.…”

“…See Verkoren and Kamphuis () for an elaboration on these concepts, with an application to the case of Afghanistan.…”

The Taliban Regime in Afghanistan: En Route to International Recognition?

“…The taxation by the Taliban was maintained in a semiofficial way in its regions even after the fall of the regime. 36 Night brings the rule of the Taliban, especially in the Pashtun regions of the east and south, while daylight is under the control of U.S. forces and the central government. Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, the leader of the Taliban elected in 2016, just after the killing of Mullah Mansour in a U.S. drone attack, stipulated the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan as a condition for reaching peace with the Kabul regime.…”