A Struggle for Hearts and Minds: Statebuilding and Origins of Political Legitimacy in Post-2001 Afghanistan

This thesis tackles a central puzzle of externally-assisted statebuilding: why international efforts to rebuild states with more capacity do not necessarily result in more internal legitimacy. It examines the dynamics of state legitimacy in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban by tracing dominant understandings of political legitimacy that came to characterize the international statebuilding project; (de)legitimizing practices of the Afghan state and external actors; and in turn, citizen evaluations of state institutions. Unlike scholars who interpret legitimacy as automatically following from particular kinds of institutions (namely those associated with liberal democracy), this thesis suggests that legitimacy is best understood as resulting from complex interactions between state, society and – in the context of externally-assisted statebuilding – international actors. The study finds that despite initial optimism and the existence of a state that provides more to its citizens than has historically been the norm, many Afghans have grown critical of state institutions. This shift in perceptions owes in large part to the conflicted approach to governance taken by the international statebuilding project. I argue that international actors first positioned good governance as a core criterion against which to judge the legitimacy of the Afghan state, which represented a departure from traditional understandings of political legitimacy in the country. Despite this emphasis, external actors then contributed to a dysfunctional governance environment characterized by a polarization of power, an uneven distribution of resources, and high levels of external intrusiveness in local politics, especially in Afghanistan’s insecure southern provinces. Aligning with these arguments, this dissertation finds that local attitudes towards international actors are instrumental in determining Afghans’ perceptions of state legitimacy, especially in the South where external actors were more invasive in shaping the statebuilding project. Secondly, it finds that key governance indicators – namely the state’s perceived inclusiveness, responsiveness and fairness – are critical drivers of legitimacy, particularly in the South where the gap was especially great between the rhetoric of good governance and governance failings on the ground. These findings help to position political legitimacy at the center of conversations about statebuilding efforts, and contribute to a richer understanding of state legitimation during international intervention.Ph.D