Continuity and innovation in the Taliban’s state-building project: insights from four years of ruling Afghanistan

Historians tend to associate Afghan state formation with the reign of Ahmad Shah Durrani (r. 1747–1772)—the presumptive founder of Afghanistan. Yet the emphasis on Ahmad Shah and his establishment of the Durrani dynasty (1747–1973) as the origin point of Afghan state formation obscures the reality that Afghans have been involved in state-building processes across the Persianate lands of the eastern Islamic world for over a millennium. From their putative ancestral homeland (watan) in the mountainous region straddling the modern Afghanistan-Pakistan border, itinerant Afghans formed reputed trading and soldiering communities who regularly interacted with Persianate polities active in the Central Asia-South Asia corridor since the 10th century. Emerging out of the medieval Ghaznavid Empire (977–1186) and Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526, 1540–1555), two Afghan dynasties—the Lodis (1451–1526) and the Surs (1545–1555)—would rise to political prominence and forge states of their own in South Asia. The Lodi and Sur ruling dispensations persisted until the opening decades of the 16th century, when the nascent Mughal Empire of India (1526–1858) halted their state building projects. However, Afghan rule would reemerge with renewed vigor in the early 18th century, coinciding with the waning political authority of the Mughals in India and their Safavid counterparts in Iran (1501–1722). Prominent among the Afghan polities that sprang up across Iran and India in the post-Safavid and late-Mughal milieus was the Durrani state centered in Qandahar (established 1747) and the contemporaneous principalities of the Rohilla and Bangash Afghans based in the Yamuna-Ganga interfluve, or doab, east of Delhi (fl. mid-18th century). Cultural, economic, religious, and political synergies between the Durrani, Rohilla, and Bangash Afghans helped produce a prosperous Indo-Afghan empire that connected the eastern Iranian province of Khurasan, the cis-Oxus Central Asian territory of Turkistan, and the north Indian region of Hindustan. The Indo-Afghan empire thrived until a series of internal economic and political crises occasioned its fragmentation by the end of the 18th century. This crisis of Afghan empire only deepened as a result of external pressures exerted by colonial Britain and also by Russia in the later Durrani context, which profoundly shaped the trajectory of Afghan state formation leading into the 19th century.

ABSTRACTThe failure of the state-building project, the insurgency and, to use the famous phrase, Britain's ‘scuttle’, or ignominious withdrawal, from South Arabia have long been the subject of study, receiving attention from many angles and new perspectives. One aspect which has received less attention is the role of policing in the state-building project of the Federation of South Arabia. This article sets out to explore this lacuna by contextualizing the role of policing in state-building and examining the impact of its absence in the case of South Arabia. It is clear that Britain left it very late to attempt the construction of a Federal State in the face of mounting pressures and challenges, and even later to establish a proper Federal Police Service. The article thus examines the argument that the lack of developed policing structures was the missing link in the state-building process before asking if Britain simply left the construction of effective and unified policing structures too late, or whether this was simply an impossible task.

Positioning minority concerns within a power-sharing mechanism is a key issue that has been influential in Sri Lanka’s modern state-building process experimented from the later part of the colonial period. Throughout the post-independent era, most state-building projects were critically debated with regard to sharing political autonomy between the majority Sinhalese and the minorities. This study attempts to locate the claims and concerns of minorities seeking political autonomy in Sri Lanka’s state-building and power-sharing discourse. The study found that the state-building process in Sri Lanka has always been a struggle between establishing a majoritarian-ethno-nationalist hegemonic state system and preserving the right of minority ethnic groups to political power-sharing. The study further found that (a) insufficient emphasis given towards understanding power-sharing and federalism as a means to accommodate diverse interests and rights, including the political autonomy rights of minorities, (b) the opportunistic politics of opposition parties, and (c) the ethno-nationalist agenda of the majority Sinhalese were the major factors that have induced to undermine the minorities’ claims for political autonomy. The ultimate result of this is the continuous struggles by minorities to situate their political autonomy demands within Sri Lanka’s state-building and power-sharing discourse.

Thailand. Border landscapes: The politics of Akha land use in China and Thailand. By Janet C. Sturgeon. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005; and Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2007. Pp. 255. Maps, Figures, Appendices, Notes, Glossary, Bibliography, Index. - Volume 43 Issue 2

This book is an important contribution to studies of the cultural and intellectual revival, the nahḍa (Renaissance or, more accurately, Risorgimento), which the Arab world witnessed in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. It takes issue with two well-established narratives of this movement, one seeing it as a founding moment of Arab modernity, and the other as the period where indigenous Arab and Islamic traditions yielded to the Western project of colonization. It also rejects the teleological approach which considers the period it examines, 1830–70, simply as a prelude to the more substantial events starting in the mid-1870s; instead, it studies this period in its own right. And it places the contemporary projects of class- and state-building in a global perspective. The opening chapter sets the scene. It first presents the intensification and expansion of capitalism in the early nineteenth century as a complex phenomenon in which global and local economic realities interacted and sub-systems emerged round capitalist nodes. One of these nodes was Beirut with its new bourgeoisie, many of whom were bureaucrats, professionals and intellectuals. Some of them gave the impulse for the formation of cultural and scientific associations, the best known of which was the Syrian Scientific Society, inspired in its organization by American Protestant models. Hill outlines its membership and debates. In Egypt, by contrast, the main centre of nahḍa activity was the Languages School, set up by Muḥammad ʿAlī as part of his state-building project and headed by Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ al-Ṭahṭāwī. The functioning of the School, the translators who worked in it and the circulation of the books printed are sketched. Another centre of the early nahḍa, less well-known than Beirut and Cairo, was Aleppo. There informal circles of discussion round the Greek Catholic Dallāl and Marrāsh notable families continued a tradition of Christian cultural activity which had started some two centuries earlier and which had ties to Muslim cultured circles. The chapter concludes by suggesting that a still wider perspective of the nahḍa might be envisaged, geographically, socially and linguistically.

Introduction

O F ALL POSSIBLE POLITICAL ACTIONS the voting decision has received the most attention from behavioral political scientists. Probably we have compiled and analyzed more data on candidate choice and turnout than on any other form of political behavior. Of course, this heavy emphasis comes as no surprise. The voting act is the fundamental political act in a democracy. It is the most widespread political act. Furthermore, on the surface, at least, the voting act would appear to be one of the simplest (and therefore, most understandable) political acts. A heavy scholarly focus on the voting act follows naturally from these considerations. While our data base expands, however, our theoretical superstructure remains far from finished. It is fair to say that political science has relied chiefly on models rooted in the sociological, and later the social-psychological tradition.' These models hold that

The article aims to address the historical knowledge gap concerning Russia’s ideological shifts in economic management. Previous research has often focused on isolated periods, overlooking the continuous transformation driven by internal crises and international pressures. Our study adopts a comprehensive perspective to trace these ideological transitions and their long-term impacts. Each phase reveals how the USSR/Russia adapted policies to mitigate economic stagnation and address shifting geopolitical realities. The qualitative historical and phenomenological analysis has been applied to generate arguments based on primary and secondary sources. The findings suggest that ideological rigidity – manifesting in both Marxist and neoliberal forms – contributed to economic stagnation, while episodes of pragmatic flexibility facilitated stability and recovery. This historical trajectory underscores the necessity of adaptability in economic governance. Russia’s experience reveals that blending state control with market mechanisms can serve as a strategy for managing complex economic and political environments, offering lessons in balancing ideology with pragmatic policy-making.

Political instability has arguably been the most important factor that defined the African political landscape for the past five post-independence decades. Few countries in the region were immune from the costly conflicts that afflicted the region. It is perhaps no surprise then that a growing volume of literature on African political economy chose to explain the lacklustre economic performance of the countries in terms of absence of political stability. However, studies generally tend to downplay the diversities in the political economy trajectories of the different countries in the region. By highlighting one such cross-country variation, this study analyses the determinants of regime survival in Africa. More specifically, we apply survival analysis techniques to identify the institutional features behind observed differences in regime survival. We find that colonial legacy as well as level of income is important determinants of the hazard rates for regime survival in Africa. Key words: Africa, regime survival, democracy, colonial legacy.

An ideology of “revolutionary democracy” has driven the project of state building in Ethiopia over the last 20 years. This paper explores the relationships that the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government have sought to forge with the Ethiopian state and its people, by means of the various political organizations (parties, fronts, mass associations) that organize, represent or control them. It examines continuities and shifts across a series of iterations since the late 1970s: the Front's politico-administrative organization in 1980s Tigray; the party-led construction of the federation, civil service reform and political “gimgema” in the 1990s; the politicization of capacity building as the focus shifted to the developmental state following party splits and “renewal” from 2001; and the reconstruction of party structures distinct from those of the state in the wake of a strong electoral challenge in 2005, culminating in sweeping electoral wins in 2010. Despite its imprecision, the notion of revolutionary democracy has anchored shifting constellations of party–state relations, and changing strategies of political mobilization and organization, in the all-encompassing and fundamentally non-liberal political aspiration characterized by the Prime Minister as forging a direct “coalition with the people”. Whilst the ruling party has been widely criticized for failing to compromise or collaborate with alternative sources of authority, the paper suggests that this reflects a set of deliberate political choices that are both ideologically and sociologically reinforced. Processes of state building are at root about power, and as such their assessment calls for a nuanced understanding of context. The paper traces the role of ideological, historical, institutional and cultural influences and continuities in the Ethiopian case.

CAN INTERVENTION WORK? Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus Cambridge: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. 236 pp., $15.95 (PaPer) ISBN 978-0393081206Since the end of the Cold War, international intervention has gained a prominent role in national and international academic debates: since the early 1990s, many interventions have been undertaken in a wide variety of countries, while the morality of these interventions and their implications for state sovereignty have been disputed. In Can Intervention Work? Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus focus on the feasibility of international intervention, particularly on its practical implications. In other words, Stewart and Knaus examine the effectiveness of intervening actors in pursuing their stated goals. While brief mention is occasionally made of moral and theoretical aspects, the book is concerned with determining whether international intervention can achieve success or is inherently doomed to fail (xiii).The structure of this book is noteworthy. Both Stewart and Knaus are able to draw on many years of fieldwork, as well as extensive work in government and various independent think-tanks and humanitarian groups, to address the fundamental practical issues concerning international intervention. The volume is divided into two independent essays. The first, written by Stewart, focuses on the international intervention in Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001. The second essay, written by Knaus, concentrates on the intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. Stewart asserts that the mission in Afghanistan has been a failure, while Knaus holds that intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo was successful: but both effectively highlight different issues surrounding the practical, rather than theoretical or moral, issues of international intervention.Stewart's assessment of the international intervention in Afghanistan is highly critical, and justifiably so. Using a combination of personal and historical narratives, he pays particular attention to the general lack of continuity and consistency displayed by the interveners, as well as the blatant disconnect between the realities of Afghan life and the stated methods and objectives of the interveners. The constantly changing focus of the international force in Afghanistan, from governance to state-building to the rule of law, combined with the force's extensive reliance on shortterm postings and consultants, has inevitably led to a vague and distracted approach to the mission (21 and 23). Stewart's depiction of the current preference in the international community for broad, theoretical knowledge, rather than specialized expertise grounded in specific locales, compellingly reinforces his argument that the international approach to intervention is out of touch with local realities. Stewart effectively summarizes the position of the interveners in Afghanistan: We, by contrast, were so isolated from the reality of Afghan life, through tour length, security restrictions, linguistic and cultural barriers, and barriers of ideology, that we were hardly even conscious of the depth of our isolation (25).The analysis by Knaus of the international intervention in the Balkans presents a far different understanding of the issue. Though Knaus effectively incorporates a historical narrative to explain the context, his analysis is predominantly focused on the subsequent discourse regarding the success of the mission. Knaus highlights four particular schools of thought: the planning school, the liberal imperialist school, the futility school, and the principled incrementalism school. …

This article analyses state formation in Botswana and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe in the light of general theories of state formation. It seeks to explain why Botswana became a strong state, while state power in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe has eroded. Three main arguments are made. First, Zimbabwe’s experience shows that security threats and compulsion to collect revenue are not sufficient conditions for establishing a strong state. Second, the Botswana case indicates that the formation of a strong state may be possible even in the absence of such compulsions. Third, both cases reveal that patterns of state formation ultimately depend on the interests of ruling regimes, and on their ability to promote those interests. The creation of a strong state requires that regimes must have an interest in a strong state as well as the power to carry out a project of state building. This depends on the relationship between regimes and their constituencies. The article concludes by pointing out the need for expanding the framework described by security-based and fiscal theories, to include considerations about how state formation is related to the underlying social forces on which state power is based.

This article analyses the effect of the Congo war on state power in Rwanda and Uganda. Drawing on theories of European state formation, it asks whether the Congo war has led to a strengthening of the state in the two countries. It is argued that this has not been the case. Neither the Rwandan nor the Ugandan state has been strengthened as a result of the war. While the war has weakened the state in Uganda, the remarkable strength of the Rwandan state just a few years after the 1994 genocide must be understood as a result of the security threat faced by the regime from Hutu militias, and not as a result of the Congo war. This means that security threats against the regime can, in certain circumstances, have the same effect on state formation as war had in early modern Europe. I also argue that changes in the state system have altered the links between war and state formation. The ‘war makes states’ connection presupposes a positive relationship between war, regime survival and state formation. In contemporary Africa there is no such link. On the one hand, state survival is guaranteed anyway, no matter how weak the state is. On the other hand, regime survival does not depend on mobilisation of resources through taxation, since resources are available from elsewhere.

The emergence of local factions in County X and their relationship to the formal institutions of Party and government and the resilience of local state factionalism and its implications for central government control and one-Party rule are examined. It is argued that local politics is driven largely by a competition over spoils and that competition over spoils is organized around a relatively stable system of factionalism.

Consulates, both in the 19th century and today, exist in a sort of hybrid space: Established by one sovereign entity in the territory of another, on the basis of exterritorial concessions, they depend on not one but two sets of legislation without being wholly defined by either one. This paper takes a local approach to a global phenomenon by considering the French consulate in Salonica (Thessaloniki) from the late 18th to the early 20th century from the perspective of a ›history of administrative reality‹. It shows how this consulate was located at the intersection of two state-building projects: those of France and the Ottoman Empire, both vying for control of the local space in which the consulate was active. While the French state strove to integrate its consulates into the internal logic of its expanding bureaucracy, and thus to extend its legal space beyond the borders of its own territory, the modernizing efforts of the Empire tended to reduce the immunities of exterritorial institutions with a view toward homogenizing and effectively controlling imperial space. The gaps and conflicts between the rival state-building agendas, as well as local factors beyond the control of either, created a local reality in which the consular personnel had the challenge and the opportunity to shape their own space of action. In this way, the consular district appears as a spatial entity somewhat resembling a state in miniature.