Long hidden in the technical jargon of aid delivery, the ‘politics’ of development have steadily gained prominence in debate and practice over the past few years. This shift has been particularly pronounced in relation to the highly fragmented and politicized conflict-affected environments in which development was long approached on the basis of the politically neutral and technically focused paradigms of the Paris Declaration (2005) and Accra Agenda for Action. The realization is now fairly widespread that the political aspects of development processes are not limited to electoral competition, political parties and affairs of state, but include the entire range of policies and resources across which power is exercised. This makes the extent to which external actors understand the domestic politics of the conflict-affected environments where they operate of paramount importance for the appropriateness and effectiveness of both their diplomatic and their development initiatives.
This report contributes a case study of Afghanistan to the debate. From the perspective outlined above, it analyses how donors seek to understand Afghan domestic politics, how donors feed such understanding into their development activities and what recommendations can be distilled from the present state of affairs that have relevance for new, more ‘politics-oriented’ strands in the development discourse, such as ‘thinking and working politically’ or ‘doing development differently’. The report focuses specifically on how donors seek to understand and improve the legitimacy and inclusivity of Afghan domestic politics as part of their corresponding commitment under the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States.
Its main conclusion is that donors generally have a modest and one-sided understanding of the nature and dynamics of Afghan domestic politics as expressed through the key premises of its political settlement, a narrow outlook on what type of activities constitute support for the promotion of more legitimate and inclusive politics, and a limited suite of instruments for doing this. Table 1 below visualizes the main factors that bring this situation about. Each factor is examined in the main body of the report.
One important aspect of the present state of affairs is that donors display a nearly uniform and strong focus on the central Afghan state and its government, despite a long history of decentralized governance and a fusion of informal and formal power at all levels of rule. Another aspect is that donors focus their efforts to improve political legitimacy and inclusivity on technical and capacity-building initiatives that seek to improve the procedural aspects of electoral democracy, largely ignoring the historic evidence that ‘input-legitimacy’ is not what counts most in Afghanistan.
It is noteworthy that a significant number of donors are keenly aware of their narrow understanding of Afghan domestic politics, are frank about their internal limitations that play an appreciable role in bringing about this narrowness, and seek to do as good a job as possible under the circumstances. It is nevertheless problematic that the general awarenesss of this situation has not translated into a sense of urgency that the risk of unintended consequences arising out of well-intended diplomatic and development initiatives (including the fight against terrorism) is significant and needs to be addressed. Or, to put it negatively, the danger of doing harm is clear and present. Worse, the evidence suggests that international engagement has already significantly damaged the quality of governance in Afghanistan – an assertion further substantiated in the report.
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Factor 1: The fragmented and hybrid nature of Afghanistan’s governance, and its legacy of violence, make it difficult to grasp the country’s political complexity |
A fading certainty about who has the right and ability to rule Violence as an acceptable method to acquire or resist power Foreign influence as a permanent feature of power and governance A consultative and reciprocal relationship between centre and regions A steady undercurrent of religious influence on the affairs of state |
Result A limited understanding of Afghan politics and only a modest ability to promote greater political inclusivity and legitimacy |
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Factor 2: Each tool that donors use to develop insight into Afghan domestic politics has serious limitations |
Anecdotic bilateral diplomatic conversations Occasional country-wide conflict or political-economy analysis One-off project-specific conflict or political-economy analysis Employment of local staff with their own backgrounds and loyalties Intelligence that often has military sources |
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Factor 3: Strategic and operational internal constraints limit how well donors are able to understand Afghan domestic politics |
Attitude of interference Security focus Parliamentary micro-management Focus on central government High staff turnover Limited language abilities An overemphasis on risk to staff Narrow interpretation of political inclusivity and legitimacy Spending pressure Planning limited to the short-term |
Consequences No effective challenge to a central-state-centric, executive-focused governance paradigm Signficant resource allocation based on limited political understanding of potential effects Technical institution-building with a procedural understanding of introduced legitimacy |
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Factor 4: The transmission of political knowledge into development programmes is ad hoc and personalized instead of organized and institutional |
A lack of structural connectors between political analysis and development programming Incompatability of level and ‘fit’ of information Short-term programme cycles unable to absorb analysis Outsourcing of programming to multilaterals |
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Although these findings are not necessarily new, they have not yet been corroborated through more systematic examination of how the inner workings of donor operations influence the level of political understanding that donors can hope to achieve in fragile societies. As this is an important dimension that should be taken into account in future improvement efforts, the report intends to make a contribution to stimulating more thoughtful political analysis and engagement in conflict-affected countries.
However, as many of the elements listed in Figure 1 have been around for years, they give rise to the suspicion that the ability of donors to do a better job in understanding and supporting domestic politics in fragile societies is not very susceptible to such efforts at change. Accepting this premise for the purpose of the present report suggests two sets of recommendations: one pertaining to the enablers needed for developing a deeper understanding of Afghan domestic politics; the other pertaining to the instruments necessary for establishing a broader concept of legitimacy and inclusivity.
Enablers that can bring a better understanding of Afghan domestic politics about:
Instruments that can broaden the suite of options to stimulate inclusive and legitimate politics: