The Political Economy of Customary Village
Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Jennifer Brick
Department of Political Science
University of Wisconsin – Madison, USA
[email protected]
Afghanistan is at best a fragile state and at worst a failed state. Nevertheless, public goods are provided
routinely and effectively in villages throughout the country. What explains the provision of public goods
in such a context? I argue that customary organizations are the primary source of order in Afghanistan
not only because they can extract and redistribute resources from villagers, but because they are
constrained in their ability to do so. Constraints such as the separation of village powers and local checks
and balances facilitate local predictability despite national-level chaos. By analyzing the productive role
of informal organizations in the provision of public goods, this research brings local politics into the
study of state building in post-conflict or fragile environments. State-building strategies that build on
productive informal organizations may improve their long-run prospects for success. The first step in
the investigation of the potential for a bottom-up state-building strategy is determining what works
locally.
Positive effects of local organizations are obfuscated in public discourse on Afghanistan which
focuses on the weakness of the state (Fukuyama 2006; Ghani and Lockhart 2008; Warnock 2008).
Despite government weakness, citizens have faith in local organizations. According to a recent survey,
seventy-eight percent believe their community leaders are fair and honest. Seventy-six percent of those
1
Prepared for the Annual Meeting of the Central Eurasian Studies Society, Washington, DC, September 2008.
Funding for this project was provided by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the Afghanistan
Research and Evaluation (AREU), the Bradley Foundation, and the University of Wisconsin – Madison. The author
wishes to thank Ghulam Sakhi Frozish, Nasreen Quraishi, Abdul Hadi Sadat, Gulalai Karimi, Fauzia Rahimi, Hussan
Wafaey, and Ibrahim Mahmoodi at AREU for their dedication in collecting data for this project. The author is
particularly grateful and indebted to Deborah Smith at AREU as well as to Paul Lundberg, David Garner, Adam Pain,
and David Stanfield for sharing their wisdom during fieldwork in Afghanistan. Melanie Manion, Edward Friedman,
Ilia Murtazashvili, and Meina Cai provided useful comments and suggestions on many of the ideas presented in
this paper
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
interviewed said that their informal customary local councils (shuras or jirgas) are effective at delivering
justice and representing their interests (Asia Foundation 2007). Detailed qualitative studies of
Afghanistan show that disputes are normally resolved at the local level (Noelle-Karimi 2006; Roy 2003;
Shahrani 1998). Not only are disputes settled locally, water, land resources, and access to credit are
generally maintained through community rules and norms (Emadi 1996, 2005; Favre 2005, 2006; Klijn
and Pain 2007; Wardak 2004; Wily 2003). Public faith in “traditional” organizations stems from their
ability to deliver public goods.
In this paper, I focus on a constellation of three key customary organizations in rural Afghanistan:
shuras (village councils), maliks (village executives), and mullahs (village lawgivers). These organizations
emerged before a central state consolidated, and their existence is thus exogenous to the state. They
existed parallel to existing regimes and endured decades of war and chaos. Explaining the emergence of
these organizations, however, is beyond the scope of this paper. Based on empirical evidence, I find a
potentially productive role such organizations can play in the state-building process.
The results show that customary organizations are alive and well in rural Afghanistan. They indeed
endured decades of fighting and displacement. They not only endured, but they provide a wide range of
public goods in rural areas, including those that affect local safety and security.
The field of post-conflict state building is dominated by two approaches that share a distrust of
subnational political actors. Neither approach analyzes political organizations exogenous to state
breakdown or reconstruction. The most common approach emphasizes the organization of violence and
armed groups or warlords. Their deleterious effects are well documented (Bates 2001; Clapham 2002;
Reno 2002; Zartman 1995). The second approach analyzes development policies and internationallyprovided solutions to development dilemmas in these contexts. Both development economics and
international relations privilege external interventions such as “peace building” or “state building”
policies and their effectiveness (Fukuyama 2004, 2006; Milliken 2003; Barnett, Fang, and Zuercher 2008;
Rotberg 2004). Positive analysis of customary organizations contributes to our knowledge of state
building by describing the informal foundations of order in a failed state.
This approach to customary organizations brings the concept of self-governance into the statebuilding process by recognizing that they are more than mere anthropological curiosities or obstacles to
political development. Empirical studies in self-organization have long recognized the ability of
individuals to overcome collective dilemmas to provide public goods in the absence of external, thirdparty enforcement (Boettke and Coyne 2005; Gibson, McKean, and Ostrom 2000; Olson 1971; Ostrom
1990, 2005; Platteau 1991; Tsai 2006; Varughese and Ostrom 2001; Wade 1988). In the absence of
effective central authority, the self-governance approach expects local actors to provide public goods. In
fact, local self-organization under conditions of central state anarchy may produce more beneficial
development outcomes than formal governance by predatory or corrupt central authorities (Leeson
2007). The self-governance approach stresses decentralized coordination in the absence of well defined
governance structures. I build on the insights of the self-governance approach by analyzing hierarchical
customary organizations in public goods provision.
In the sections that follow, I analyze the political economy of customary organizations and public
goods provision in rural Afghanistan and develop a theory that describes the conditions under which
public goods are provided by local organizations in post-conflict societies. Local organizations will
provide public goods when they are able to raise local sources of revenue. However, revenue collection
on its own does not guarantee that public goods will be provided as local leaders may simply engage in
[2]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
predatory behavior. Local leaders must be able to extract resources, but they must be constrained in
their ability to do so. The theory describes the four conditions that facilitate effective local governance:
independent sources local of revenue, separation of local authority, checks and balances between these
authorities, and the presence of economic veto players. Independent revenue sources generated locally
enable the provision of public goods while constraints on extraction through separation of customary
authority enable local accountability. Economic veto players and checks and balances further provide
incentives for customary organizations to provide public goods by limiting predation. I argue that
customary organizations are the only local organizations that exhibit these characteristics, and are
therefore able to provide public goods.
This leads to two testable hypotheses. First, communities that have customary organizations will
have higher levels of public goods provision than those that do not. Secondly, the presence of other
forms of local organizations, especially donor-supported community development councils, will not
exhibit higher levels of public goods provision than communities that do not have such organizations.
To explore these questions in rural Afghanistan I rely on both quantitative and qualitative evidence.
First, I analyze two nationally-representative surveys, the 2005 National Rural Vulnerability Assessment
(NRVA) (Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development and Central Statistics Office 2007) and the
2007 Asia Foundation Survey of the Afghan People (Asia Foundation 2007), to determine the
relationship between customary organizations, non-customary organizations, and a variety of
theoretically-relevant factors that may explain public goods provision. The statistical analysis explores
the effect of customary and non-customary organizations on three types of public goods: resolution of
land disputes, general dispute resolution, and local safety and security. Second, I present three case
studies illustrating public goods provision based on larger set of original semi-structured interviews and
focus group discussions I collected during fieldwork in 32 villages across six provinces in rural
Afghanistan. These case studies help illuminate processes suggested by the statistical analysis. The
analysis provides evidence that the presence of customary organizations in villages improves the
provision of public goods.
The findings imply that there is the potential for productive cooperation between state-building
programs and customary organizations and demonstrates these organizations perform many functions
that are usually performed the state. In that sense, they effectively complement the nascent state.
Difficulties arise when state-building efforts proceed as if these organizations are inherent enemies of
modernization or do not exist at all.
1.1
Political and Economic Resource Allocation in Rural Afghanistan
Customary organizations are a primary source of order in Afghanistan. They are as diverse in name as
the landscape in which are found. These organizations are pervasive, especially in rural areas where
more than 80 percent of the population resides. However, they are overlooked in attempts to explain
and cure “state failure” in Afghanistan. State builders often treat them as embodiments of a
“conservative political culture” that disenfranchises women or exploits peasants. In most cases, state
builders do not consider them at all or they are just assumed to have been wiped out by decades of war.
Emphasis on their “traditional” features conceals their “modern” capacities to govern. This research
does not make a normative argument about the role such organizations should play in political life.
Instead, it explores the role of these organizations in the provision of public goods. Neglecting the role
of these organizations in the diagnostic phase of state building increases the risk of policy failure.
[3]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
First, I provide some terminology. Organizations are “groups of individuals bound by some common
purpose” (North 1990, 5). The state is a formal or “parchment” organization (Carey 2000). Informal
organizations include any non-governmental collective decision-making procedure (Ostrom 1990). In
every society there are a myriad of informal organizations. They range from social networks, bowling
clubs, or groups of armed guerillas. In the context of Afghanistan, informal organizations include
customary or traditional organizations, informal credit systems, as well as warlords. Informal
organizations can provide public goods (Ellickson 1991).
In the absence of effective states or markets, political and economic resources are often allocated
by a third type of organization: community organizations. Community organizations that have “stable
membership and well-developed mechanisms for transmitting private information and enforcing social
norms among its members [have] the potential to provide sometimes more efficient coordination than
either the state or the market” (Bardhan 2006, 18). Customary village organizations are not “civil
society” organizations for the simple reason that they do more than advocate. They can sanction,
punish, reward, and restrict behavior. Furthermore, membership in these groups is generally fixed.
Customary and non-customary organizations are central in the Afghan political economy. For
example, warlords and their associated political parties were not a central part of the political landscape
in Afghanistan until the state began its downward spiral after the Communist coup in 1978 and the
Soviet invasion which followed the next year. Such groups emerged to control the state apparatus as
well as gain spoils from its decline (Schetter, Glassner, and Karokhail 2007). Most contemporary Afghan
political parties emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s as armed factions. For this reason, the Single NonTransferable Voting system (SNTV) is used to elect members of parliament, as it creates obstacles to the
formation of party (“warlord”) blocs. A dizzying array of scholars have written on warlords and armed
groups in Afghanistan since 1979 (Aras and Toktas 2008; Donini, Niland, and Wermester 2004;
Englebert and Tull 2008; Fukuyama 2006; Giustozzi 2000; Goodson 2001; Jones 2008; Maley 1998, 2002;
Rashid 2002; Rubin 2002; Saikal and Maley 1991; Giustozzi and Ullah 2006; Schetter, Glassner, and
Karokhail 2007). New Community Development Councils (CDCs) that emerged in 2003 as the result of
efforts by the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) are also a type of noncustomary organization that emerged during the state reconstruction process.
1.1.1 Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Customary organizations receive far less attention despite their prowess in maintaining local order.
To remedy this deficit, I describe the three most pervasive customary organizations in rural Afghanistan:
shuras, maliks, and mullahs. A shura is a deliberative body. A malik is an executive authority. A mullah
is a judicial and religious arbiter. Maliks and mullahs are individuals but represent organizations that
have specific functions. The organizations have various names in different parts of the country; I group
them according to the rules that govern their behavior. These organizations are summarized in Table 1.
[4]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Organization
Role
Shura
Village Council (Parliament)
Other Names
Qaumi Shura
Jirga
Shura-ye Rish-i-Safidan
Spinzheri (Spingeri)
Meshrano Jirga
Oq Soqol
Mu-ye Safidan
Majlis/Jalasa
Mullah
Maraka
Religious Leader (Judicial)
Other Names
Imam
Mawlawi
Ulama
Pir
Sayyed/Sadat/Eshan
Qazi
Haji (Bibi Haji)
Karbalayi
Malik
Village Representative (Executive)
Other Names
Arbob
Qaryadar
Khan
Qalantar
Wakil
Nomayenda
Tribal Council
Pashtun name for local council
Elders Council (Dari)
Elders (Pashto)
Council of Elders (Pashto)
Elders (Uzbek)
Elders Council(white hairs, Dari)
Meeting (Dari, used in Hazara
areas)
Meeting
Formally trained religious leader
Religious teacher
Group of religious scholars
Sufi religious leaders
Notable families who are direct
descendents of the Prophet
Muhammad
Islamic Judge (also a government
judge)
Pilgrim (Bibi Haji is a female
equivalent)
Shi’a who made pilgrimage to
Karbala in Iraq.
Executive, can also signify
landowner
Executive
Executive, tribal leader, can also
signify landowner
Leader
Representative
Representative
2
Table 1: Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
These organizations are a relative constant amid political chaos in Afghanistan. They do not have
the uniformity of standards associated with formal bodies (Giustozzi and Ullah 2006; Noelle-Karimi
2006). They evolve over time: “’traditional’ and ‘customary’ [titles] applied to local bodies of decision
making are relative terms … *they+ by no means imply timelessness or immutability” (Noelle-Karimi
2006, 8). However, they have structural features that can be identified across time and place, despite
regional, cultural, and religious diversity. For example, according to focus group discussions conducted
as part of a national livelihood survey, almost all participants said they would first approach a relative if
they had a dispute. However, when asked who they would approach second we begin to see the
primacy of these organizations: 35 percent said they would go to their village shura, 25 percent said
they would go to their village malik, while 22 percent said they would consult their mullah (see Figure 1).
Outside of family, more than 82 percent of focus group participants said they would use one of these
organizations.
2
The names of organizations which I list here are those I encountered during fieldwork in rural Afghanistan. This
list is by no means exhaustive.
[5]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
These organizations are also resilient. In the 1970s, the government of Daud Khan tried to co-opt
many of them into the formal government. In the 1980s, the Communist government tried to eliminate
them as agents of feudalism and backwardness (Hyman 1984). Various warlords, governments, and
political parties in the 1990s understood the importance of these organizations and sought to dominate
them by populating them with their own agents. However, these interventions were usually superficial
and did not have a significant impact on their operations.
Organization Approached to Resolve Dispute
0.4
0.35
0.3
0.25
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
Goto Shura
Go To Malik
Go To Mullah
Figure 1: Source NRVA (2005), Male Focus Group Interview
At first glance these organizations may resemble feudal systems characterized by inequality in
decision making and exploitation of peasants by landlords (Ertman 1997; Moore 1966; Scott 1976;
Skocpol 1979). However, anthropologists, economists, as well as historians have noted that peasant or
rural life in Afghanistan is historically more egalitarian than in other areas of South and Central Asia:
To superficial observers rural society may have appeared feudal, with khans
(lineage leaders) and maliks (village leaders) exercising absolute power, either as
landed aristocrats or creditors, over landless or debt-ridden peasants. The reality
in most areas was far more complex. Authority within micro-societies traditionally
was exercised by a jirga or shura (assembly), with the influence of the khan or
malik within the assembly determined by a complex range of factors, including
the individual’s social position, mediating skills, and institutional resources at his
disposal. In addition, land holdings in Afghanistan were for the most part small,
with some ostensibly large estates being communal lands registered in a single
name; frequently there was little expectation on the part of a debtor that he
would have to repay (Saikal and Maley 1991, 15).
Afghan communities are not feudal. The pervasiveness and diversity of customary structures
illustrates the degree to which power is distributed across individuals in communities. In addition to the
three main organizations, there are other important village organizations such as mirabs (village water
resource managers) and hawala (money lenders) that play an important role in village governance
(Kakar 2005; Rahmani 2006; Favre 2005). However, the malik, shura, and mullah provide the
foundations of political order and are the informal basis of politics throughout most Afghan villages. In
the following sections, I provide analytical descriptions of shuras, mullahs, and maliks.
[6]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Shura (Village Council)
Informal customary village councils in rural Afghanistan are referred to as shuras or jirgas.3 I define a
shura as the smallest deliberative body in a community.4 Village decision making is characterized by
cooperation and consensus, which is illustrated by the significance of tribal jirgas and local shuras
(Newell 1972, 25). These councils are not formal. Shuras are not fixed-membership organizations and in
most cases they do not meet with predictably, but they do meet often. They gather to discuss particular
issues or resolve disputes that arise within the village or with neighboring areas. In most instances,
members of shuras are elders who have achieved positions of respect in the community:
[Shura membership is a] traditional position that is normally given to old men
who are widely respected and trusted for their honesty and goodwill. Almost
every village has at least a few of these men who are considered to be the
legislative body of the village…Power brokers refer any legislative issue that
concern broader village interests to these elders. It is important to note that they
are not considered to be executive people as they naturally tend to be
kind and forgiving personalities (Rahmani 2006, 14-15).
Shuras deal with a wide range of issues, but they have no fixed agenda. Results from the NRVA male
focus group discussions reveal that individuals rely upon customary organizations for many of their
community issues. For example, when a community has a shura 90 percent claimed to use them to
resolve land-related disputes. Over 60 percent claimed to use their shura to resolve security and water
resource management issues (see Figure 2).
Use of Shuras for Disputes
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Shura for Water DisuteShura for Land Dispute Shura for Aid Issue
Average
Shura for Security
Issue
If Community Has a Shura
Figure 2: Source NRVA (2005), Male Focus Group Interviews
3
The term shura is an Arabic word which literally means “council”. The term shura is used by non-Pashtun villages
to indicate the village council. Jirga is a Pashto term that also means “council”, although it translates literally as
“circle”, which reflects the seating arrangements participants take in the countryside. There are several varieties of
shuras or jirgas at the village level. Because the shura exists to deal with issues as they arise they are flexible in
membership as well as in scope. The shura that is indicated here is at the smallest level.
4
For purposes of simplicity, I will refer to all customary village councils as shuras. The term jirga is common, yet is
a name that applies only to the Pashtun-speaking subpopulations.
[7]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Theoretically, every male can aspire to leadership in the community, as the jirga or shura is based on the
concept of communal authority (Gregorian 1969, 40-41).
Although various ethnic groups may have specific types of shuras, they have many common
characteristics. For example, shuras are usually accessible to all male (and sometimes female) members
of the community.
The structure and authority of the council varies with local traditions and
experience. Its most basic feature is the acceptance of the principle that all family
interests within the group concerned may be represented in deliberations of
justice, war, labor, and land. The spirit and procedure are usually democratic.
Theoretically, a consensus of the whole group in question is necessary, if it is to
act. The jirga [shura] therefore encourages a considerable degree of individual
initiative, although in many instances it may be dominated by powerful chiefs. It
is also a convenient device for accommodation among competing
interests….There is no traditional limit to the size of the group to which the jirga
[shura] principle may be applied…a jirga [shura] might consist of tribal chiefs
(khans) or clan leaders (maliks) representing their communities (Newell 1972, 26).
Figure 3 illustrates that shuras are accessible to individuals across ethnic groups in Afghanistan. The
shura is generally the most important decision-making body in the community because it usually derives
its authority directly from the will of the people. It is the center of village governance.
Accessibility to Shuras by Ethnicity
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Pashtun
Tajik
Strongly Disagree
Uzbek
Disagree
Hazara
Turkmen
Somewhat Agree
Figure 3: Source Asia Foundation (2007)
[8]
Baloch
Strongly Agree
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Mullah (Religious Leader/Lawgiver)
Mullahs are typically self-trained religious leaders. I define a mullah as a community religious leader,
representing the lowest level of religious organization in Afghanistan. Mullahs are part of a broad
network of religious leaders that includes formally trained priests (imams), judges (qazi), scholars
(malwawi), and those who have gone on religious pilgrimages (Haji/Karbalayi). Villages may have
several mullahs, depending on their size and cultural diversity. Shi’a and Sunni populations coexisting in
one community maintain separate mosques and separate religious leaders. Mullahs not only perform
religious rites and services, but they are sought out to help resolve disputes, especially regarding family
or other personal issues. In Afghanistan, an imam is a title given to someone who has had official
training to lead prayers. A mullah is someone who carries out this function “regularly and
professionally,” despite a lack of formal training (Dorronsoro 2005, 48). Due to the decentralized nature
of religious leadership in Islam, mullahs can operate autonomously from religious administration and
hierarchy. Throughout history, Afghan leaders have sought to co-opt religious leaders and bring them
under government control (Olesen 1995) . However, such efforts had limited success due to extremely
weak capacity of the state to actually execute its wishes and the shifts in government policies across
administrations.
The mosque is the center of religious life in rural areas, but it also serves as a deliberative center for
(usually male) villagers. For instance, many interviews and focus groups for this research project were
conducted in mosques as they are open to community members and outsiders. Villagers describe and
demarcate the size of their community by the number of mosques (e.g. “our village is big, we have six
mosques”).
The mullah is the spiritual leader of the village and traditionally plays the role of
the judge, the teacher, and in the absence of a doctor, the role of the village
doctor. The mullah’s power is derived from his religious and judiciary role that
he exercises on a daily basis. It is not easy for anyone, including other powerful
people such as Zamindar [landowners] and Qaryadar [executives], to confront
the Mullah in public (Rahmani 2006, 13).
Religious leaders have a range of responsibilities. They mediate disputes, not only within the
community but between communities as well. Mullahs and other religious leaders raise revenue from
villagers. They are also responsible to collect alms to help the less fortunate and raise funds to maintain
mosques:
Leadership, administration, and financing are locally based…Individual mullahs
subsist upon fees for ceremonial and advisory services on behalf of their clients
and often receive endowments of land or agricultural income from the villages or
tribes who engage them. Many mullahs cultivate or at least oversee their own
land. The support of corporate institutions, such as schools, mosques, and
monasteries has traditionally come from endowments based upon land – the
concept of waqf. Customarily, the mullahs have managed this income on their
own behalf (Newell 1972, 26-27).
While most scholars agree that the shura is the center of political life, some argue that religious leaders
constitute the heart of village governance in Afghanistan because they can access community funds:
[9]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Amongst the power brokers of the village, mullahs and mosques are the
only entities who enjoy support of public funding regularly. All expenses of
mosques and mullahs are paid by village contributions. When villagers were
asked, “What motivates you to give your money to pay for the mosque but not
for the school or road,” they responded, “We can live without education and
without a road, but we cannot live without our mosque (Rahmani 2006, 20).”
During the period of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, authorities sought to demote the role of jirgas and
shuras and place the mullah at the center of community life. Taliban leadership developed their own
network of religious leaders and sought to impose a particular interpretation of Sunni Islam on the
countryside. In principle, the Taliban also tried to eliminate use of the Pashtun customary law,
Pashtunwali, which contradicts some Islamic jurisprudence (Nojumi, Mazurana, and Stites 2004, 45-47).
Malik (Village Executive)
While there is general uniformity in the role of shuras and mullahs in rural Afghanistan, the role of
maliks, village executives, is more complex. I define a malik as the individual who represents community
interests to formal government institutions. He is the village executive.5 In Kabul Province and in many
Pashtun areas, village executives are referred to as maliks, which can also signify a Pashtun clan leader
(but a malik is not necessarily a clan leader). In other parts of the country the individual who fulfills
these functions are called arbob, qaryadar, khan, kalantar, nomayenda or other titles. In Pakistan and
other parts of South Asia, the term malik may connote a large and powerful landowner. The malik in
rural Afghanistan is not always a large landowner. As was the case with mullahs and shuras, previous
governments tried to co-opt the maliks to serve their own purposes. Under King Zahir Shah (1930-1973)
and his cousin Sardar Daud Khan (1973-78), government administrations tried to use the maliks or
appoint their own maliks to extract land tax in rural areas. The Communist People’s Democratic Party of
Afghanistan (PDPA) government tried to appoint its own “parallel” maliks to villages as representatives
of the Party during the 1980s (Giustozzi 2000). These efforts were unsuccessful. Due to past efforts to
formalize the position the title has a different meaning than it does elsewhere in Central and South Asia.
In contemporary Afghanistan, villagers refer to the malik as the “bridge between the people and the
government.” In most instances, the malik is selected by the village shura and then presented to the
district governor (woluswal), who represents the lowest level of government in Afghanistan.6 The malik
is responsible for representing community interests to the government and then communicating
government issues and news back to the community. Woluswals have regular meetings with maliks to
discuss issues of security, development, and governance in their respective districts. In many areas, the
maliks obtain their position through heredity or through position in the clan structure. Because the
malik deals with government documents and other formal issues, it is important to villagers that he is
5
Most are male but during field work I found evidence of female maliks. The head of provincial administration in
Balkh Province in Northern Afghanistan told of at least six female maliks that he was aware of in the province. I
interviewed a female malik in Nahri Shahi District in Balkh Province.
6
The lowest level of Government at the time of research was at the district level (woluswali). The head of the
district government is the woluswal (district administrator or governor). Although the 2003 Constitution stipulates
that the lowest level of government should be village councils, this aspect of the Constitution is not yet
implemented. The Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development advocates the use of its Community
Development Councils for this purpose, while other ministries and presidential offices have strongly disagreed with
this position.
[10]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
literate, so this means maliks come from well-educated families in the community. Maliks are not
directly paid for their work. If they are not independently wealthy, they may depend on community
contributions from villagers in the form of wheat or other crops as compensation for their work.
Members of the village shura elect one person and introduce him to the
district authority. The district head [woluswal] then signs legal documents
appointing the person as malik and sends those documents to the primary district
court. After a series of additional legal processes, the court issues an
entitlement seal that recognizes him as the malik of that particular village
(Nojumi, Mazurana, and Stites 2004, 44).
In many districts, I found that maliks have stamps or seals. In some areas where the woluswal had not
issued them, maliks use a homemade seal consisting of their thumbprint and signature in lieu of a
stamp. While maliks regularly coordinate with and report to government officials, their role is not
mentioned in any official law or in the constitution.
In many cases, where villagers are dissatisfied with their malik, they can choose another malik. In
Herat province, for example, I found evidence that maliks are elected through the use of ballot boxes. In
most areas they are selected using consensus procedures typical in shuras. I illustrate some of the
selection procedures in case studies.
1.1.2 Non-Customary Organizations: Community Development Councils (CDCs)
CDCs are the most significant and pervasive non-customary organizations in Afghanistan. Since 2001,
the Government of Afghanistan embarked on a major national program, the National Solidarity Program
(NSP), which created more than 18,000 CDCs.7 The program is managed by the Ministry of Rural
Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) and is funded entirely by multilateral and bilateral donors, with
core support from the World Bank. They are designed to serve a conduit for external development funds
to create public goods and services. For this reason, they may play a fundamental role in the provision
of public goods in rural Afghanistan. Furthermore, MRRD, several international NGOs, and donors have
suggested that the CDCs replace the customary system.
The NSP is a Community Driven-Development (CDD) project, an approach promoted by NGOs and
international assistance agencies that stresses participatory, decentralized delivery of public goods
(Gupta, Grandvoinnet, and Romani 2004; Mansuri and Rao 2004). The principle objectives of the CDCs
are “to deliver project-based community based development and to improve community governance”
(Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development 2008, 1). The government does not directly
implement this program; instead MRRD contracts more than 24 NGOs (mostly European and American)
and international organizations called “Facilitating Partners” (FPs) who in turn hired “social organizers”
to mobilize communities and create the councils. To achieve these objectives, FPs have the
responsibility to: (1) hold elections in each community to establish the CDC; (2) build capacities of CDCs
to identify subprojects, prepare plans, and implement training that develops skills in participation,
consensus-building, accounting, procurement and contract management, operations and maintenance,
and monitoring; (3) provide funds for the projects; and (4) link the CDCs to government agencies, NGOs,
and donors to improve access to resources.8
7
8
As of July 2008.
MRRD/NSP website: http://nspafghanistan.org/about_nsp.shtm
[11]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
FPs established the first CDCs in 2003, rolling them out initially in 80 districts across most provinces
of Afghanistan. Usually, MRRD contracts with the FPs to cover entire districts. A CDC should comprise of
no fewer than 50 but no more than 300 households. According to regulations, each CDC receives $200
per household in block grant funds that are used to fund projects the community selects (between
$10,000 and $60,000 per community). In theory communities should provide a 10 percent
“contribution” to each project. This can be done through “in-kind” contributions such as labor to build
the project. However, villagers rarely contribute their own funds directly to the project.
The mostly foreign FPs determine the size of CDCs and demarcate borders between communities,
although in some cases this is done with community cooperation and consultation. The number of CDCs
in a community is not based on the actual number of villages but on the size of the population in the
district. Thus, the boundaries of a CDC have a difficulty corresponding with self-identified community
boundaries. For example, in one district the implementing FP received a contract from MRRD to create
40 CDCs in a district, yet according to local government officials there were only 15 villages in the
district.
Each CDC should have elections for members including an executive board consisting of a head,
deputy, secretary, and treasurer. During field research, I found limited evidence that elections occurred
in most villages. A possible explanation is that “development shuras” have been the primary conduit of
humanitarian and development aid to communities since the early 1980s (Carter and Connor 1989), thus
individuals understand that they can create a participatory façade and still receive project funds.
CDCs are also intended to increase female participation at the village level as customary
organizations do not always include women in public deliberations. CDCs should be equally
representative of men and women and they should meet jointly, although this is very rarely the case. If
women do participate, they do so separately from the men in their community, communicating through
male relatives. In some areas, the FPs established separate female CDCs that have their own executive
boards. Female CDCs may exist in name for accounting purposes, they vary rarely thrive in practice.
The rationale for the NSP was to fill a “gap” in governance at the local level. In an MRRD
presentation to donors and stakeholders in September 2007, a Ministry official stated that such a
program is necessary because “village governance structures had not existed in Afghanistan for more
than 200 years.”9 The CDCs fill this perceived void not only from a developmental perspective, but
because they generate “social capital.”10 The Ministry and other NGOs and donors active in funding and
implementing the NSP and creating CDCs argue that they have had a transformative effect on the lives
of villagers. In fact, some of the FPs implementing the NSP claim that the program is vital to Afghans not
because it can provide basic infrastructure, but because it generates “participation” in the countryside.
According to one of the organizations implementing the program, “If the CDCs just provide
infrastructure, then all of our work has been a massive failure.” 11 According to those involved in
designing the NSP:
9
Presentation, MRRD official, Launch of NSP II, World Bank Supervisory Mission, Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation
and Development (MRRD), Kabul, Afghanistan, August 28, 2007.
10
Presentation, MRRD official, National Solidarity Program Official, Ministry Rural Rehabilitation and Development
(MRRD), Workshop on Investigating the Sustainability of Community Development Councils, Kabul Afghanistan.
March 6, 2007.
11
Statement by Manager of an International Organization implementing NSP, January 21, 2008. Workshop: Toward
Sustainable Community Development Councils. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kabul, Afghanistan. Sponsored by the
Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU).
[12]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
The intent of the National Solidarity Program was to address the process of
democratization from the group level up, in parallel to the process of constitution
making and rule writing at the center…Villages that were once the sites of neglect
or predatory behavior by lower-level government functionaries were turned into
the building blocks of a democratic process…Having gathered the necessary
institutional and social capital and demonstrated its usefulness in the creation of
infrastructure and services, the program is now ready to become the platform for
a more ambitious series of undertakings at the village level. It could…become a
mechanism for the registration and formalization of property rights and dispute
resolution at the village level (Ghani and Lockhart 2008, 206-208).
While development interventions are usually designed with good intentions to address
development needs, they are also inherently political (Ferguson 1994). MRRD has insisted that CDCs
replace existing governance structures at the community level and be recognized as the official village
councils called for in the Constitution. In 2007, the Ministry began unilaterally educating villagers on a
new “bylaw”12 that stated the CDCs are the village councils mandated by the Constitution, while other
Ministries or the elected Parliament had yet to agree to such a position.
Due to the broad claims made by those who designed and implement the CDCs, I consider their
potentially important role in providing public goods. However, the task here is not to evaluate the CDCs;
it is to consider their role in the constellation of actors that can provide public goods to communities.
Theoretically and empirically, I consider how well these organizations perform considering the broader
organizational context.
1.2 A Theory of Local Self-Governance
Under what conditions can customary organizations provide public goods? I argue that four
mechanisms—separation of power among community organizations, checks and balances between
organizations, the ability to raise local revenue under a hard budget constraint, and the presence of
economic veto players—facilitate the provision of public goods. These four conditions provide a revenue
basis and accountability mechanisms that prevent predation and promote the delivery of public
services.
Theories of local cooperation and self-governance emphasize the emergence of simple norms that
manage scarce resources (Ostrom 1990). Theories of repeated games predict that cooperative behavior
will emerge when individuals are engaged in face-to-face, repeated interactions. Models of community
enforcement demonstrate that people in small communities can cooperate through small-scale
mechanisms (Ellickson 1991; Kandori 1992). These approaches direct our attention to the role of local
cooperation in the absence of effective state authority. However, by focusing on face-to-face and other
small-scale interaction, they do not capture the structural features of villages that influence public goods
provision. The theory I elaborate here builds on the self-governance approach by acknowledging the
possibility and pervasiveness of self-organized arrangements but adds the possibility of local selfarranged hierarchy.
12
A bylaw is akin to an administrative regulation in the U.S. legal system. The bylaw provides administrative
guidelines to a particular ministry.
[13]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
The first feature of customary organizations contributing to public goods provision is informal
separation of powers. Separation of power implies that organizations of actors within communities
have the right to operate within a particular policy-making domain. Formal constraints on rulers are a
source of beneficial economic outcomes. Theories of government size relate veto players to the size of
government (Persson and Tabellini 2003; Tsebelis 2002). Theories of property rights and public goods
provision recognize that rulers are more likely to protect private property rights and provide other types
of public goods when leaders are constrained (North and Weingast 1989). Theories of formal separation
of powers predict that constraints on rulers reduce the size of government and increase protection of
citizens’ rights (Persson, Roland, and Tabellini 1997). Formal constraints such as constitutions are one
type of constraint on rulers (Weingast 1997).
Informal separation of local authority may also influence outcomes. Communities are polycentric
(Ostrom 2005), and variation in village political institutions may influence the ability to provide public
goods (Agrawal and Gibson 1999). In a village characterized by separation of local political power,
leaders face constraints on their ability to extract resources from citizens. These constraints reduce the
ability of leaders to expropriate citizen wealth.
When village leaders are unconstrained and power is concentrated, rulers have incentives to overextract citizen wealth and few incentives to use resources to provide public goods. Over-extraction of
citizen wealth creates disincentives for citizens to engage in productive activities. In the long run, this
undermines incentives for individuals to engage in productive activities and undermines the revenue
base of the community. Similarly, unconstrained rulers have few incentives to provide public goods with
any revenue they do extract. This leads to the first condition for community-based public good
provision:
Condition 1: Separation of powers is necessary to ensure customary organizations provide public goods
without expropriating citizen wealth.
This condition is satisfied in many Afghan villages. The Afghan system is often characterized by local
separation of powers between maliks (village executives), shuras (village councils), and mullahs
(lawgivers/religious leaders). Decision-making authority over separate spheres of activity which impact
community life is divided by three main bodies, rather than concentrated into the hands of any single
actor. Power is separated because organizations derive their right to govern from separate sources of
authority or legitimacy. Shuras derive their authority from the will of the people in the community.
Mullahs have religious legitimacy. The authority of maliks is derived from tradition and government
recognition. Because each organization derives authority from separate sources, power within the
community is effectively separated across policy areas. The separation of powers in villages constrains
leadership and thereby credibly facilitates the provision of key public goods.
The second condition for public goods provision is checks and balances. While separation of powers
demarcates appropriate use of authority within a sphere of authority, checks and balances implies that
other actors at the village level can intrude on these separate spheres prevent abuse of power. Checks
between customary organizations are not possible unless there is a separation of powers between
them. Checks and balances between organizations prevent competition that undermines the ability of
the government to provide public goods:
Condition 2: Local checks and balances increase incentives of local leaders to provide public goods.
[14]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
There are substantial checks that prevent abuse of authority in the Afghan political economy. While
each organization derives its authority and legitimacy from separate sources, individual customary
organizations can constrain one another. While the analytical description of separated powers may
imply a local presidential system (Shugart and Carey 1992), local politics in Afghanistan centers around
the shura, making it is closer to what Lijphart (1999) describes to as a “consensus model.” Power is
dispersed and separated in a variety of ways.
For instance, the shura can depose a malik who is not responsive or fails to represent the
community interests to the government. Rahmani argues that the shura even has oversight over
religious leaders in the community (2006, 14-15). Religious leaders report to the shura on issues related
to the mosque and other issues. In turn, mullahs can veto programs or policies that violate religious
norms. The fluid and open membership of shuras ensures that power is not concentrated in the hands
of one group in the community. These checks and balances are expected to influence provision of public
goods.
The presence of economic veto players also serves as a structural constraint on the potential abuse
of power within customary organizations. A veto player is an “individual or collective actors whose
agreement is necessary for a change in the status quo” (Tsebelis 2002, 19). In the case of rural
Afghanistan, an economic veto player is usually a landowner. As agriculture is the predominant source
of rural income, I focus on patterns of landholdings in rural area. When landholding is centralized,
villagers have limited economic capacity to constrain customary leaders. When landholdings are more
equally distributed, the number of economic veto players necessarily increases thus constraining abuse
of authority. This leads to the third condition for effective public goods provision:
Condition 3: An egalitarian distribution of landholding increases incentives for local leaders to provide
public goods.
Centralization of local political authority is common in rural areas throughout the developing world.
This is the archetypal view held in the state formation and state-building literature where centralized
authority is linked to patterns of large landholding (Ertman 1997; Moore 1966; Skocpol 1979). As
noted earlier observers of Afghanistan have pointed to the relatively egalitarian distribution of land in
the countryside as a source of consensual decision-making (Tapper 1984). Elphinstone first made this
observation in his documentation of Afghan history and customs in the early 19th century:
The estates of the proprietors are, of course, various in their extent; but on the
whole, the land is more equally divided in Afghanistan than in most other
countries. There are a great number of small proprietors who cultivate their land
themselves as assisted by their families…The reason of the equal division of
property will be easily perceived by adverting the nature of the government of
tribes…Extravagance or misfortune compel many to sell their lands; quarrels, or a
desire for change, induce others to part with them, that they may quit the
neighborhood in which they life, and the division of every man’s estate among all
his sons, which is enjoined by the Mohammedan law, soon renders each lot too
small to maintain its proprietor, who consequently either gives it up to one of his
brothers or sells it. … The number of tenants, in the common acceptation of the
word, is not great in this country (1839, 389-390).
[15]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Severe displacement due to the war has limited the comparative analysis of current patterns of land
ownership. However, as recently as the late 1980s, distribution of land in Afghanistan was far more
egalitarian than it was in neighboring Iran, Pakistan, or India (Rubin 2002, 35-37). A practical
consequence of smaller landholdings is greater local accountability. Village leaders are constrained in
Afghanistan. These constraints, in the form of economic veto players, increase their ability to provide
public goods without extracting excessive amounts of citizen wealth.
Leaders require a reliable revenue stream to provide public services. The informal accountability
mechanism detailed in conditions one through four will not be effective if there is no tax that citizens
are willing to accept and therefore a source of local revenues that provide the basis for public goods
provision. The second condition for customary-based public good provision is that rulers have the ability
to draw on sources of local revenues:
Condition 4: Local organizations must have the ability to raise revenues to provide public goods.
Sources of independent revenue may take several forms, including but not limited to monetary or
cash payments. Local tributes in the form of grain, wheat, or livestock contributions are other forms of
revenue generation. Leaders also extract revenue for resolving disputes and they have the power to
redistribute wealth from one party to another. To settle a grievance, for example, a customary leader
may call upon one individual to transfer wealth to another party as a remedy. Mullahs often expect a
meal when they visit a home to settle a personal dispute. 13 When revenues come from external sources,
as they often do in state-building projects, a local “rentier” economy is established which may not
encourage prolonged provision of public goods.
The tripartite system of government is characterized by three accountability mechanisms and an
independent revenue basis that makes the system self-enforcing. Separation of powers creates
accountability and an independent source of local revenue provides resources to provide public goods.
Both conditions are necessary for the provision of public goods at the community level. It would be
difficult to speak of a separation of “powers” without access to local resources. Conversely, access to
resources without accountability mechanisms is likely to lead to unconstrained authority and
dictatorship. For example:
A khan [malik] is not a feudal lord. Power in villages or tribes does not reside in
any one person or structure but in fluidly structured networks of influence. These
networks are not based on any single principle…some khans redistribute wealth
through patronage and use it to create public goods (irrigation, influence with or
protection from outside powers), this perception is not merely the result of
domination and false consciousness. The pattern of patronage is based on qawm
[tribe](Rubin 2002, 41-43).
Political separation of powers and checks and balances are reinforced by a landholding structure that
divides economic power.
Customary organizations in Afghanistan are not the only local organizations that satisfy some these
conditions. Other organizations—specifically, those endogenous to state failure such as warlords—are
expected to fail to provide public goods because they are unconstrained in their ability to extract local
13
Afghans and others in Central Asia have a wealthy collection of jokes describing this form of revenue generation.
[16]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
resources. Warlords and commanders lack accountability and separation of powers. They may have the
ability to tax, but they have no accountability mechanisms. This is why we expect the effectiveness of
public goods provision to be superior under customary organizations than under warlords. Warlords are
akin to Olsonian “roving bandits,” while those exogenous to the state behave as “stationary bandits”
and thereby serve as the basis for long term, stable governance (Olson 1993). Local non-customary
organizations in Afghanistan, whether political parties, warlords and their command structure,
development councils, lack many of the conditions outlined above, especially separation of powers and
integrated checks and balances that can prevent abuse. For example, CDCs do not derive their
authority from the people, despite the claims democratic elections. They are upwardly accountable not
to the community but to the NGO that provides them access to funds. They submit paperwork detailing
their activities not to community members or to district government officials, but to the local NGO
implementing the project in the area. There are no self-enforcing accountability mechanisms present in
these organizations.
CDCs are also limited in their ability to raise local revenues. CDCs generally do not collect revenues
from individuals. These organizations redistribute resources accumulated through non-productive
sources, specifically from international financial assistance, and are thus “rentier” community
organizations. They are dependent on outside sources of revenue for support. When such support is
absent, as it often is, these organizations will have limited opportunities to provide public goods because
they have no revenue.
In contrast, commanders or warlord networks are not rentier organizations. In most cases they
secure resources in the form of tributes directly from individuals. However, warlords are not constrained
by separated authority. Because they are not subject to any constraints, they can extract excessively.
They become “roving bandits.”
The local government is also an important actor at the local level. While the local government does
have the ability to raise revenue, it is also subject to fewer constraints on its authority. While
Afghanistan has a democratically elected Executive, Parliament, and Provincial Councils, district level
government officials are not elected locally. They are appointed by the government through opaque
procedures. As is common throughout much of the world, these appointees usually do not come from
the district where they are tapped to serve. Formal local government officials are not constrained by any
other governmental bodies. However, they are often constrained by individuals in the communities they
serve. The presence of institutional conditions that facilitate public goods provision in a variety of
customary and non-customary organizations are summarized below in Table 2.
[17]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Institutional Conditions
Organization
Customary
Organizations
Warlord Groups
Community
Development
Councils
Formal Local
Government
Separated
Power
Checks and
Balances
Economic
Veto
Players
x
Source Local
of Revenue
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
Table 2: Conditions for Public Good Provision and Local Governance
The theory has several implications:
Implication 1: Public goods will be provided when customary organizations are characterized by
accountability through informal separation of powers, increased distribution of economic power, and
sources of revenue.
Implication 2: Individuals who are members or leaders of customary organizations will not have better
access to public goods than non-members.
Implication 3: The presence of non-accountable organizations (such as warlords or CDCs) will fail to
improve access to public goods and services.
Implication 4: Individuals who are members of non-customary social organizations will have greater
access to public goods than other members of the community because these organizations are less
accountable.
These implications can be tested by evaluating the relationship between local organizations and
public goods provision. In a given village, I can measure if there is a shura, a CDC, both, or none of these
organizations. A limitation with current data sets is that they do not provide information on customary
actors aside from shuras in a community. However, the shura variable is a measure of accountable
customary organizations: where a shura is present it is almost always accompanied by a mullah and a
malik. Not all villages are governed by a shura. Based on the theory of customary organizations, I
hypothesize that the presence of a shura in a village will lead to greater public good provision relative to
villages that do not have a shura. Conversely, the presence of a CDC in a village will have limited or no
effect on public goods provision, because they are not accountable to the citizens they are supposed to
serve.
[18]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
1.3 Measures, Hypotheses, and Models
In order to statistically analyze the provision of public goods in rural Afghanistan, I utilize two nationallyrepresentative surveys. The first is an extensive household survey, the 2005 National Rural Vulnerability
Assessment (NRVA) that was administered and designed by the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and
Development with support from the World Bank (Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development and
Central Statistics Office 2007). The purpose of the NRVA assessment, conducted across all 34 provinces
in the country, was to provide vital information about rural livelihoods in the absence of a national
census. The sample size of this survey consists of more than 30,000 households in more than 2,500
communities. The second source of survey data is a public opinion survey designed by the Asia
Foundation with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and
administered by the Afghan Center for Socio-economic and Opinion Research (ASCOR) based in Kabul.
This survey was also conducted across every province in Afghanistan in 2007 (Asia Foundation 2007).
The survey interviewed more than 6,200 people in more than 570 communities from all provinces. The
purpose of the public opinion survey was to gauge individual attitudes on a range of governance issues. I
limit my analysis of both surveys to the rural subpopulations. 14
1.3.1 Land Disputes
The first set of public goods analyzed relate to local land disputes. Using the NRVA 2005 household
livelihoods survey, I analyze three measures related to land disputes and their resolution: whether a
household reported having a dispute, whether the dispute was resolved and whether the dispute or its
resolution had been officially recorded.15 All three variables are measures of community-based public
goods. These models allow us to measure the relative impact of customary and non-customary
organizations on the provision of public goods related to local land disputes.
The dependent variable in a first set of models (Models 1 and 2) is whether a household has been
party to a land dispute. Preventing such disputes is a public good: a traditional function of a local
governing organization is to prevent disputes over land. If customary organizations are able to provide
public goods, then households in communities with such organizations should have fewer disputes. 16
14
The NRVA survey included three population strata: urban, rural, and the nomadic Kuchi population. The Asia
Foundation survey did not stratify for the migratory Kuchi population and included them under the larger Pashtun
subpopulation (as Kuchis are Pashtun). I do not include urban or Kuchi populations in the analysis.
15
Whether a dispute or its resolution has been recorded measures not only whether the dispute has been resolved
but whether record of the dispute was recorded with local officials. Thus, a dispute does not have to be resolved in
order to be recorded.
16
According to the NRVA survey, 54 percent of the rural population own agricultural land, while 5 percent manage
land for others, and 42 percent own no garden or agricultural land. Out of those that own land, only 3 percent
reported having a dispute over their land. This number is surprisingly small given other qualitative reports on the
escalation of land disputes in Afghanistan. One explanation for this could be that disputes do occur, but they occur
between family members who may rarely seek recourse outside the family to resolve it. Another explanation is
that individuals may in fact be involved in a dispute but do not report it because they are aware they do not have
legal or any formal recourse as they are not entitled to use of the land in the first place. For example, most
rangeland in Afghanistan is owned by the government, not by private individuals. In any event, we want to
describe what determines the probability of disputes. However, I compared responses between male and females
in communities where both populations are enumerated and found no significant discrepancies.
[19]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
A second set of models (Models 3 and 4) relates social organizations to resolution of a dispute. The
dependent variable in these models is whether a land dispute is resolved, given that a dispute occurred.
In these models, resolution of land disputes is the measure of the public good. If customary
organizations are effective in providing the public good of dispute resolution, then households in
communities with customary organizations should be more likely to resolve their disputes.
A third set of models (Models 5 and 6) analyze the probability that a land dispute, if resolved, was
recorded in a court or in local official records. The ability to record land disputes is a measure of the
effectiveness of local formal government to provide public goods. Recording the results of disputes also
measures the ability of customary organizations to facilitate communication with the local
government—a task the malik is supposed to play. Therefore, examining whether results of disputes are
officially recorded provides insights into several features of the local political economy.
The theory implies that the presence of a customary organization, measured here by the presence
of a shura in a community, is associated with increased provision of public goods to households with
access to them: there should be fewer disputes and more disputes should be resolved for households in
communities with a shura. The theory has no implication for whether or not a land dispute will be
resolved in the community. Most of the business of the shura is unrecorded (Stanfield et al. 2008).
However, a shura should increase the ability of households to interact with a government, relative to
households that lack access to these organizations.
Conversely, the theory implies CDCs will have limited or no impact on public goods provision. CDCs
lack accountability and independent authority to generate revenue. Lack of constraints undermines the
ability of these organizations to provide public goods. This leads to the prediction that the CDC will not
pacify conflicts over land, increase resolution of disputes, or create incentives for people to record their
disputes. However, proponents of CDCs as instruments of state building would suggest that CDCs have a
positive impact on the registration of land disputes. These independent variables and the control
variables are defined below.
Social Organizations
To measure the presence of customary organizations, I constructed a variable that indicates
whether a customary shura is present in a community. This variable is a composite of responses by male
focus group as to whether a community had at least one of the following customary organizations: jirga,
elder shura, mixed gender shura, tribal shura, female shura, and male shura.17 Similarly, I coded whether
a household had a CDC if the male focus group reported the presence of a male CDC, female CDC, or a
mixed gender CDC in their community.18 Communities could have more than one kind of CDC or
customary social organization.19
17
The NRVA dataset includes both household survey responses as well as one focus group in each community
(population sampling unit). The focus group survey includes village-level questions such as the type of variety of
village governance structures in the community and general community characteristics such as population.
18
The presence of CDCs and shuras are not correlated in pairwise tests.
19
I rely on results from the male rather than the female focus groups interviews as female responses were not
enumerated in all districts. In many southern regions of the country involved in ongoing conflict, NRVA did not
interview female household members or conduct focus group discussions with women. To capture a more
comprehensive sample, I used responses from the male focus group discussions.
[20]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Figure 6 shows that 75 percent of the rural population claimed to have one type of customary social
organization active in the community. This is surprising, as we would expect such social organizations to
be ubiquitous in rural Afghanistan. Upon further exploration, it appears that the number of social
organizations is lower in areas around Kabul, the capital. As Kabul has experienced large migrations of
population in recent years, we would expect fewer social organizations to be present in these areas.
Another area that show a significantly fewer social organizations than other parts of the country is the
set of provinces that constitute the “Hazarajat”. The Hazarajat named after the Shi’ite Hazara minority
that inhabits the rugged mountainous territory of central Afghanistan. Due to difficult terrain and
decreased availability of arable land, such communities will have fewer customary organizations. Also, a
significant portion of the population in the region was resettled to this area from southern parts of the
country nearly a century before by King Amanullah Khan who sought to redistribute their land to other
groups, causing further disruption to community governance organizations. The Central Hazarajat region
includes most of the mountainous terrain in the center of the country as visible in Figure 5.
[Figure 5: Physical Map of Afghanistan]
The presence of a CDC was also coded from the male focus group questionnaire conducted in each
community. A problem with this variable is that it does not indicate the duration of CDC activity in the
community, as CDCs were rolled out over a period of several years, beginning in 2003. This is a
limitation of the dataset that can be overcome by examining multiple sources of data.
We can also test the effectiveness of constraints in customary organizations by analyzing whether
households with a member in a shura or a CDC have increased access to public goods. The theory
predicts that shura members will not have higher levels of access to public goods. However, due to the
lack of binding constraints preventing expropriation, CDC members should have higher levels of access
to public goods. Predicted directions of variables related to land disputes and social organizations are
summarized below in Table 3.
Public Good
Prevention of Land Disputes
Resolution of Land Disputes
Official Recording of Land Dispute
Shura/Customary Organization
+
No effect
CDC
No effect
No effect
+
Table 3: Hypothesized effect of local organizations on issues related to Land Disputes
Control Variables
In order to capture the impact of social organizations, I control for a series of geographical variables,
including six regional dummy variables (Central/Kabul, Eastern, South Central, South Western, Northern,
and Central/Hazarajat).20 In addition to the regional variables, I also control for the altitude (in meters)
of each community. Studies of civil war suggest that mountainous terrain is correlated with conflict, as
mountainous regions are more difficult for a central government to control and areas provide effective
hideouts for insurgent groups (Fearon and Laitin 2003; Skaperdas 2008). In terms of social organizations,
higher altitudes may decrease the presence or necessity for social organizations to form as they are the
byproduct of a need to manage scarce resources. The higher the altitude, the lower the likelihood of
finding social organizations, both customary and non-customary. Higher altitudes are not only difficult
for states to access, but they present challenges to aid organizations and others wishing to create new
20
For identification purposes the Western variable is omitted in estimation.
[21]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
institutions, such as CDCs. The models also control for demographic variables, such as whether the head
of household is literate and number of household members.
Measuring wealth in Afghanistan presents a challenge because personal assets are not always
measured in cash or currency. Therefore, I include three separate measures of household wealth:
annual income, whether the house owns or manages agricultural land, and whether the household owns
livestock.21 I also include a variable measuring the number of people in the community. As size of the
community increases, local cooperation to provide public goods may be more difficult to achieve.
There are also three theoretically relevant variables that should be included in models of land
dispute: possession of a land title (deed), whether the land was inherited, and number of years a family
has lived in a community. Households that have deeds and that inherited land should be less likely to
have disputes. Length of time in the community should also decrease likelihood of a land dispute.
Finally, to estimate whether a household records the results of a land dispute in local courts or
official records, I include a measure of distance to a local market, which in most cases is the district
center (woluswali). This variable measures the distance to the nearest market by foot during the
summertime. I expect that the likelihood of recording a dispute decreases the further a community is
from the nearest market.
1.3.2 Dispute Resolution
The second set of public goods I analyze are related to dispute resolution involving all types of local
claims, not just land disputes. To analyze the role of local organizations in dispute resolution, I analyze
data from the Asia Foundation public opinion survey. Unlike the previous model, the unit of analysis in
this survey is the individual, not the household.
A first model of dispute resolution (Model 7) asks individuals whether their community has had a
problem in the past five years such that outside help or cooperation was required to resolve it. A second
model (Model 8) asks if the community dispute was resolved. The next two dependent variables return
to the individual level of analysis exploring whether the individual has had a dispute or formal case that
required formal adjudication by a state court or village/neighborhood shura/jirga (Models 9 and 10) and
whether respondents were satisfied with the outcome of those proceedings (Models 11 and 12).
The theory suggests that individuals who have access to a shura will be less likely to have a dispute
or formal case that requires outside adjudication. The CDC should have no effect on the likelihood that
an individual requires assistance to resolve disputes as the CDCs do not have the same preventive
benefits that the shura provides.
A shura is also expected to increase satisfaction with outcomes with dispute resolution. Individuals
who take their formal dispute to a shura should be satisfied with the outcome due to the constraints on
these local organizations. Because local government organizations do not have self-enforcing constraints
on their activities, we can anticipate that individuals who take their cases to government courts will be
less satisfied with the outcome. Appointments to courts and local government positions are not yet
conducted through a democratic or transparent process. I summarize the predicted direction of
variables related to general disputes and social organizations below in Table 4.
21
Pairwise tests show that the variables are not correlated.
[22]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Public Good
Prevention of Community
Disputes
Resolution of Community
Disputes
Prevention of Individual Formal
Disputes
Satisfaction with Resolution of
Individual Formal Disputes
Shura/Customary
Organization
-
CDC
Government
No effect
n/a
+
No effect
-
-
No effect
n/a
+
n/a
-
Table 4: Hypothesized effect of local organizations on issues related to General Disputes
Social Organizations
Measures of social organizations in the public opinion survey differ from those in the household survey.
To measure the presence of a customary organization, I rely on individual agreement or disagreement to
a statement that a shura or jirga is accessible.22 The shura/jirga variable is not dichotomous, but ordinal.
The measure of CDC presence in a community is based on responses to a question about whether
individuals are aware of such a council working in their village, a dichotomous variable. Thirty-seven
percent of those interviewed were aware of a CDC in their village. Fourteen percent said that shuras
were not accessible.23 This number is lower than the 25 percent of communities in the NRVA
communities reporting there was no shura in their community.24
The survey asked an open-ended question about who they approached to resolve a dispute, which
allows us to test the ability of various organizations to resolve disputes. The theory predicts that
individuals who approach shuras or maliks (customary organizations) are more likely to have their
disputes resolved than those approaching other, non-customary organizations. I also include subjective
measures of individual attitudes towards social organizations, such as satisfaction with the CDC and
beliefs about whether their shura and local courts represent local norms.
Where possible, I use the same control variables for the public opinion data that I use in the
household models. Controls included here include the number of people in the household, income, level
of education, and age.25 I also include a measure for whether the household listens to the radio. Radio
22
This measure is imperfect, as access to a community organization is not equivalent to measuring its presence.
However, the survey asks a battery of subjective questions about the performance of customary organizations (e.g.
are they fair, do they represent local norms and values, etc.). I measured the presence of customary organizations
using this variable as it is the least subjective of all the questions on the topic.
23
When asked whether a shura or jirga was accessible to them, 4.3 percent strongly disagreed, 9.7 percent
disagreed, 45.9 percent somewhat agreed, and 40.12 strong agreed.
24
One explanation is that the NRVA questionnaire listed specific sub-classifications of shuras such as a qaumi shura
(tribal shura), shura-ye mardomi (male shura), jirga, shura-ye rish-i-safidan (elder shura) and even whether there
are mixed gender shuras. In some parts of the country, a community may not have a specific sub-classification for
their shura and perhaps this is why the presence of such councils may be underreported. The question may have
unnecessarily over-specified responses. The Asia Foundation survey did not make such distinctions and merely asks
about generic shuras or jirgas.
25
Variables for age, education, and income are measured on a scale of 1 to 5. While in many countries education
and income are highly correlated, this is not true of Afghanistan: pairwise tests show no significant correlation
between these variables.
[23]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
waves in Afghanistan are flooded with public service announcements by the government, NGOs, and
foreign and domestic military sources; therefore those who listen to radio should be more informed of
reforms and more likely to engage others to resolve a dispute. They should also be more likely to
participate in CDC and other aid-related activities. Another key control variable is trust in others, which
should have a preventative impact on the emergence of a dispute. A trusting individual involved in a
dispute would be more likely to reach out to others for assistance. Finally, this survey included both
men and women in the sample, allowing analysis of the effect of gender.
1.3.3 Local Safety and Security
The last set of public goods I investigate concern local safety and security. The ability to resolve disputes
undoubtedly impacts perceptions of local security. By asking individuals directly about the local security
situation in the community, we can test the degree to which informal organizations provide this public
good. The presence of regional variables takes on even greater significance in these models, as the level
of attacks from an insurgent Taliban, which opposes the central government and foreign forces, is higher
in those regions neighboring Pakistan (Eastern, South Central, South Western). While security is related
to insurgent activity, the questions here are specific to community-level issues, such as burglary,
murder, and other crimes. To examine these questions, I rely on the Asia Foundation public opinion
survey.
Models 13 and 14 test the factors that explain whether an individual fears for his or her personal
safety or the security of the family. Thirty percent of the rural population stated that they never fear for
their safety, 22 percent said they rarely experience such fear, 38 percent sometimes feel fear, while 11
percent of the population fears often for their safety.
What is the relationship between organizations and security fears, if any? The theory predicts that
because of local accountability mechanisms, individuals having access to customary organizations should
feel more secure relative to those who do not. I hypothesize that access to customary organizations
should decrease individual fears regarding personal safety and security. I also hypothesize that
presence of non-customary councils, in this case CDCs, should have no effect on such fears.
In Model 14 I include a set of dummy variables that measures confidence in various security
organizations such as the army, police, as well as local militias. If people have confidence in the ability of
such organizations, then they should be less fearful for their security.
The final set of outcomes explores whether a person has been a victim of violent crime, such as a
physical attack or beating, racketeering or extortion, burglary, or pick-pocketing in the past year. These
are outcomes that involve local security, which local governing organizations should be able to monitor
and control. Seventeen percent of the rural population indicated that someone in their family had been
the victim of violence in the past year. Model 15 analyzes the relationship between violent crime and
the presence of shuras and CDCs in communities. The presence of a shura should decrease the
likelihood that an individual was a victim of a violent crime, while the presence of a CDC should have no
impact on this outcome.
Does the presence of a local governing organization affect whether an individual reports the crime
to an authority? The theory of local governance outlined above does not speak to the relationship
between customary or non-customary organizations and the government. However, proponents of CDCs
as instruments of state-building would predict that the CDC increases links between individuals and the
[24]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
government (Model 16). Whether or not an individual chooses to report a crime to the government is a
measure of such links.
The final model (Model 17) investigates the relationship between reporting crimes and trust in
shuras, CDCs, militias, and government departments such as local justice officials, public administration
in general, political parties, municipalities, and democratically elected provincial councils. Individuals
who have more trust in government agencies and officials will be more willing to report their crimes to
the government. The same theoretical caveats from previous models regarding the relationship
between informal organizations and local government also apply here.
Public Good
Individual Fears for Personal
Safety
Victim of Violent Crime
Report Crime to Authorities
Shura/Customary Organization
-
CDC
No effect
n/a
No effect
+
Table 5: Hypothesized effect of local organizations on issues related to local safety and security
1.4 Estimation and Results
Because all relevant dependent variables are ordinal or dichotomous, I use logit and ordered logit
estimators to analyze the role of customary social organizations in the provision of public goods.
Estimation of models using both datasets account for the unique design of each survey by including
household weights, provincial stratification, and identifies each population sampling unit (PSU) to
correct for unobserved differences between members of different units that may affect standard error
estimates (Deaton 1997). Summar statistics for the relevant variables from the NRVA and Asia
Foundation surveys are listed in Table 6 and Table 7.
[Table 6: NRVA (2005) Summary Statistics]
[Table 7: Asia Foundation (2005) Summary Statistics]
The results support the hypotheses that customary organizations play an important role in many
aspects of local public goods provision. Customary organizations are not only effective in providing
public goods; individuals who use them when seeking remedies are more often satisfied with the
outcome. Consistent with the theoretical framework, CDCs did not have a beneficial effect on public
goods provision. In many instances, the CDC actually had a negative impact on public goods provision.
It is possible that public good provision and the presence of CDCs are endogenous. CDCs may locate
in a village based on the degree of public good provision. This implies that public good provision is
causing CDCs. However, there is limited evidence that CDCs locate in regions based on public good
provision. During the time of the survey, the CDCs were widespread. However, if there is any possible
bias it would be that CDCs are located in areas with higher public good provision as CDCs may have been
first established in more easily accessible areas, which implies they are more likely to have a positive
effect on public good provision. The potential for locating in better regions would bias the results in
favor of CDCs. However, there is limited evidence CDCs have a positive effect, considering the possibility
[25]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
of this bias. Because the CDCs are designed to infuse communities with resources to provide public
goods, it is important to include them in any model estimating public goods provision.
1.4.1 Empirical Findings: Land Disputes
Customary organizations had the expected influence on both the emergence of disputes and on
whether such disputes are resolved. The estimation shows that the presence of a shura in a community
has a more precisely estimated impact on the prevention of land disputes (Model 2): households in
communities with shuras are less likely to be involved in a conflict than those that do not. Interestingly,
households with at least one member in a shura are more likely to be party to a land dispute. This
demonstrates that shura members are not “above the law” and are subject to constraints; otherwise it
would be unlikely that they would be challenged to a dispute (Model 4). As the theory predicted, the
presence of a CDC has no preventative impact. The results also show that CDC members are no more or
less likely to be parties to land dispute than other members of the community. The findings suggest
that presence of customary organizations have more influence to deter conflict than do state-sponsored
property rights.
[Table 8: Estimation Results, Land Disputes, NRVA Data (2005)]
The presence of both shuras and CDCs in a community increases the likelihood that a land dispute is
resolved, although we do not have information about whether individuals were satisfied with the results
of the resolution. However, shuras have a more precisely estimated, larger in magnitude impact on the
ability to provide the public good of dispute resolution than do CDCs.
CDC presence does not influence the recording of land disputes (Model 6). However, proponents
believe that the CDC should increase links to the government: as this is one of the stated program goals.
Those who own livestock and who manage or own agricultural land are also less likely to record their
disputes formally; however, those who have higher income are more likely formally to record results of
their disputes.
Wealth has expected effects in some of the models. The inclusion of the three wealth indicators
demonstrates that the type of household wealth may affect outcomes, as those who have higher cash
incomes are more likely to have their disputes resolved than those owning agricultural land or livestock.
The wealth measures do not seem to have a significant impact on whether a household is party to a
dispute or whether disputes are resolved. The fact that wealth does not have a significant impact on
whether a household is involved in a dispute or whether disputes are resolved indicates that wealth
does not influence access to some public goods. This provides further insight into the egalitarian nature
of local decision making. In this case, wealthier households do not appear to be above the law.
1.4.2 Empirical Findings: Disputes
Results from the public opinion survey are consistent with those from the household vulnerability
assessment. The consistency reinforces the validity of the conclusions about the relationship between
varieties of local organizations and public goods provision. The empirical results regarding general types
of dispute resolution suggest that CDCs may actually destabilize community cooperation.
[Table 9: Estimation Results, General Disputes, Asia Foundation Survey of the Afghan People (2007)]
[26]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
First, the presence of a shura or jirga does not have a significant effect on whether a community has
a dispute for which outside assistance is required (Model 7). This finding contradicts the theoretical
prediction as the theory predicted that customary organizations would have a deterrent effect.
Surprisingly, CDCs actually increase the likelihood of community-level disputes that require outside
assistance to resolve. The lack of self-enforcing accountability mechanisms within a CDC and the large
infusions of cash the program injects into a community may be sources of contention that generate,
rather than prevent, conflict.
The results indicate that when community members use shura mechanisms to resolve disputes, the
likelihood of resolution increases (Model 8). Approaching the police also has a positive and significant
impact on community-level dispute resolution. However, when the community approaches a malik or a
CDC, it is no more likely to have the dispute resolved. The shura appears to be the more effective
organization in providing this public good. Approaching the shura also has a more positive effect than
approaching the police.
Similar patterns emerge in individual disputes. The presence of a shura has no significant deterrent
effect on whether someone is party to a formal dispute; however, the presence of a CDC in the
community again increases the likelihood that an individual has a formal dispute that requires outside
adjudication (Model 9). However, if an individual is satisfied with CDC performance and she believes that
shuras follows local norms; she is less likely to be party to formal disputes. This reveals that the quality
of local governance matters (Model 10).
Finally, individuals who used shuras to resolve their dispute are far more satisfied with the outcome
than those who used state courts (Model 11). A possible explanation for this is that due to the lack of
binding constraints on local government officials, individuals may experience corruption or other
distortion when they use government offices to resolve disputes. Because there are no informal or
formal constraints on their activity, they may be more corrupt than the constrained customary
organizations.
The results from these estimates on dispute resolution indicate that for general types of disputes
shuras may have less of a deterrent effect than for land disputes, although they cause no harm.
However, when both communities and individuals use shuras to resolve issues, shuras are not only
better able to resolve disputes, but individuals who use them are more satisfied with the result than
those who use state courts.
1.4.3 Empirical Findings: Local Safety and Security
The final set of results also provides support to the theoretical argument that customary village
organizations are effective in providing public goods at the community level. Consistent with the theory,
the CDCs do not enhance security through preventative measures.
[Table 10: Estimation Results, Local Safety and Security Issues, Asia Foundation Survey of the Afghan
People (2007)]
When a shura or jirga is accessible, individuals are less likely to fear for their safety and security.
While the summary statistics indicate surprisingly high levels of support and trust in both the Afghan
National Army and the police, such confidence may be somewhat superficial as confidence in the army
or police does not significantly reduce individual personal security fears.
[27]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Accessibility to customary organizations decreases the probability that an individual is subject to
violent crime. However, presence of a CDC in a community actually increases the probability that a
person is the victim of violence. There is no empirical reason to expect that CDCs are placed in areas that
have greater levels of violence. So this finding is surprising. It reinforces earlier findings that CDCs may
actually disrupt rather than assist local dispute resolution and security mechanisms.
One of the stated goals of the CDCs is to build effective links between citizens and the government.
However, there is no evidence that the presence of these bodies at the community level increases the
probability that an individual will report a crime to authorities. Similarly, access to local courts does not
impact whether individuals will report crimes to authorities. However, access to a shura does increase
the likelihood that an individual who is victim of a crime will report it. Access to customary
organizations in this case increases citizen access to formal government. However, we must be careful
when interpreting this result as such a result could be endogenous to the quality of local formal
government.
When people have confidence in local, non-governmental militias, they are significantly less likely to
report crimes to authorities. Yet, confidence in shuras has a beneficial effect on reporting crimes. This
finding provides evidence supporting the differentiation between informal organizations endogenous
and exogenous to the breakdown of the state. Militias, by discouraging citizens from reporting crimes
authorities, appear to replace the state or compete with it. On the other hand shuras seem to
complement, rather than replace, the formal local government. Customary organizations are therefore
not inherently opposed to the formal government.
1.5 Qualitative Case Studies
The quantitative evidence demonstrates the ability of customary organizations to provide diverse public
goods despite central government weakness. Yet the empirical analysis raised several more questions. In
this final empirical section, I draw on case study evidence that supports the theoretical arguments and
untangles some of the surprising statistical results. Qualitative analysis also allows us to understand the
context in which public goods are provided. Below, I present three brief case studies from data
collected in 2007 on the nature of public goods provision and informal organizations in rural
Afghanistan. The case studies here are part of a larger set of 300 interviews conducted in 32 villages
across 16 districts in six provinces in rural Afghanistan.26 The case studies were constructed from 8-12
interviews or focus group discussions, equally divided among men and women, as well as observations
from each village.27
The case studies help us understand how customary organizations have adapted to adverse
circumstances and how they interact with a variety of actors and organizations at the local level.
Furthermore, they add to the evidence supporting the theoretical assertions regarding the separation of
local authority, checks and balances between organizations, economic veto players created through
egalitarian land distribution, and the ability to generate revenue. The organization of the analysis
mirrors the issues addressed in the statistical analysis in the previous section. The first case from Eastern
26
Provinces include Balkh, Bamiyan, Herat, Kabul, Kunduz, and Nangarhar. Security concerns limited site selection.
Most of the interviews were conducted by a team of Afghan researchers from the Afghan Research and Evaluation
Unit, an independent Afghan research organization based in Kabul for whom this research was commissioned.
However, I designed the interview guides and accompanied the researchers to field sites.
27
All village and informant names in this section are fictitious. I do not provide these details to protect the
confidentiality of informants.
[28]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Afghanistan deals with land disputes. The second case from Central Afghanistan explores issues of
general dispute resolution. The final case from Northern Afghanistan highlights issues of local security as
well as insight into how the introduction of new organizations can destabilize patterns of local
cooperation.
Yakakhak Village, Behsod District, Nangarhar Province (Eastern Afghanistan)
The first case, from eastern Nangarhar Province on the border with Pakistan, illustrates dynamics of land
conflict and the role customary leaders play in resolving issues. In this case, the malik was able to
resolve a large land dispute and manage the transfer of wealth from one party to another. The case also
highlights how communities deal with corruption in customary organizations through local checks and
balances. While customary leaders may have opportunities to expropriate wealth, they may be limited
in their ability to do so for very long. Finally, it demonstrates the previous finding that wealthy
individuals are not above the law when it comes to land disputes.
Yakakhak is a village of about 1,400 people in Behsod District in Nangarhar Province on
Afghanistan’s eastern border with Pakistan. The village is located about 10 kilometers from Jalalabad
City, one of the largest cities in Afghanistan. The population of the community is a mix of settled
Pashtun Kuchi nomads and Khogiani Pashtun tribes who in recent decades emigrated from neighboring
Kunar Province.28 There is also a small Shi’a Hazara group in the community. According to villagers,
there are 22 farms in the village, which allows for small landholdings. Unlike many other areas of the
country, villagers feel there is adequate land in the community, but said they never had enough inputs
such as seeds to produce abundant and profitable harvests.29
The village has an active shura as well as a several mullahs and a malik. However, the community
recently replaced its malik. Villagers complained that the previous malik was corrupt, detailing how he
expropriated external assistance for himself including food aid and cows provided through NGO animal
husbandry projects. Even worse, he was allowing his greed to influence shura decision making: “The
malik was not a good man. He would sit in the marakas and jirgas and made decisions on behalf of
those who could give him the biggest bribe.”30 Out of frustration, the villagers appealed to a young man
whose father was a malik before the war to serve in place of the corrupt malik. The villagers appealed
to him several times, but he was not interested in serving because he had other interests and work,
after some cajoling, he took the position. The newly selected malik was only 30 years old and was from
a Kuchi family. Villagers did not have a formal election for this position; they selected him during a
meeting of the shura. He was chosen not only because of his personal attributes, but also because of his
family’s honest reputation in village decision making.
As is the case throughout Afghanistan, the cessation of large scale violent conflict resulted in the
return of millions of refugees to the country. The return prompted conflict over land as returning
families claimed ownership of the same parcel of land. Successive governments handed out their own
titles, making definitive land ownership uncertain. Some families remained during the war and others
28
The two main Pashtun tribes are Ghilzai and Durrani. Khogiani are a subtribe of the Durrani while most Kuchis
are Ghilzai. Most Afghan Kings and leaders, including Hamid Karzai, have been from the Durrani tribe while most of
the most of the leadership of the Afghan Taliban movement have been Ghilzai. The Khogiani here often referred to
themselves as Khogiani or Kunari. They maintain links with relatives in Kunar through marriage. During periods of
fighting this group migrated to Kunar.
29
Interview, Mother of Malik, Yakakhak Village, Behsod District, Nangarhar Province, September 2007.
30
Interview, Young Woman, Yakakhak Village, Behsod District, Nangarhar Province, October 2007.
[29]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
fled. The shura in Yakakhak handled most of the land disputes. However, a powerful commander had
recently returned to the village after nearly 30 years. Upon his return he claimed a large parcel of land
that others had lived on and cultivated in his absence:31
Some Hazara people from our village had land and one commander came and
took his land. The Hazara man tried to take his land back from the commander
but he could not. The commander said that the land was his, but he hadn’t lived
in our village for 28 years! The shura divided the land. They gave one-half for the
Hazara and one-half to the commander. In the end, the Hazara agreed to the
settlement that the shura negotiated. Instead of taking the land, the commander
gave him 2 million Afghani ($40,000) for the land. 32
Despite the wealth of the commander, in this community he was not above the law. He had to use the
shura process to resolve his dispute with the much less wealthy Hazara farmer. The shura required that
the commander pay the poorer Hazara for the land, regardless of his possession of a land title. The
community used the shura to resolve this dispute. However, the community has several types of shuras.
There is a community shura and a larger inter-communal shura. Also each ethnic and religious group has
its own group of elders that forms the basis of a smaller, sub-shura. According to the malik:
“We have a shura with 13 people and they usually resolve conflicts. This shura is
composed of elders who find who is guilty and not guilty in our village. We have
another larger shura called a meshrano jirga that has about 21 members that
includes our settlement as well as neighboring villages. …There are several ethnic
groups here so they are all represented there.” 33
The malik indicated that responsibility for resolving conflicts lies with the shura, not the malik. An
elderly man described the process of dispute resolution, as it applied to recent land conflicts:
Afghan people are very traditional and they live by different customs. People
usually resolve their problems by discussion in the village, and rish-i-safidan
(elders) resolve most village disputes. The people usually refer their conflicts to
elders, and they try to resolve all the problems. Elders talk with both sides and
then they talk with each other; finally, if both parties give wak (authority)34 to the
elders then they will make a decision and both sides have to accept it. The elders
make their decision according Shari’a and customs of Afghanistan. Another
important thing you should know is that elders must take shast (fingerprints)35 of
the people before a decision is made and then they cannot disobey the decision.36
He said that the role of the malik in the village is to communicate individual needs to the government
and then help the government implement policies in the village. For example, “the woluswal [district
31
Interview, Farmer, Yakakhak Village, Behsod District, Nangarhar Province, October 2007.
Interview, Farmer, Yakakhak Village, Behsod District, Nangarhar Province, October 2007.
33
Interview, Malik, Yakakhak Village, Behsod District, Nangarhar Province, September 2007.
34
Wak is an a priori commitment given by both parties whereby they swear to abide by the decision of the elders,
regardless of the outcome.
35
Due to high illiteracy rates in Afghanistan, fingerprints are used in place of signatures on many official
documents as many Afghans are unable to sign their names.
36
Interview, Farmer, Yakakhak Village, Behsod District, Nangarhar Province, September 2007.
32
[30]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
governor] wants us to stop growing poppies and he wants to use the elders of the community to
communicate this to the villagers. He says that if we plant any poppies we will not receive any assistance
from the government.”37
There is tension in the community between settled Pashtun Kuchi nomads who were given deeds by
the Communist Government during the 1980s and the Khogiani tribal population. However, the mullah
of the community is aware of these tensions and although he himself is a Khogiani, he has tried to
integrate the Kuchi population into the community. According to the malik’s mother, “the mullah in the
village teaches Islamic books to the children. Some Kuchis are coming into our mosque because our
mullah is kind to them [despite tensions in the community].”38
Villagers were not aware of a CDC in the area. The new malik said that there was a CDC in one part
of the community, but the FP put it with a CDC in another neighboring village. The community had no
role in determining the boundaries of the CDC. Villagers were keen to have a CDC because they had
heard advertisements for the program on the radio and had heard of project funds and infrastructure
that neighboring villages received.
The case illustrates that customary leaders can also be corrupt, yet their corruption is tempered by
the presence of other bodies in the community which act to constrain them or remove them from
power after a series of abuses. While authority is separated, the checks and balances that exist between
customary organizations can work to prevent long-term expropriation of citizen wealth. The case also
highlights the increasing pressure put on customary organizations to resolve land disputes due to the
large number of returnees to communities since 2001.
Rashidan Village, Saighan District, Bamiyan Province (Central Hazarajat Afghanistan)
This case from Bamiyan Province in the Central Hazarajat highlands, illustrates the role customary
organizations play in the resolution of general disputes. It lends insight into the dynamic and adaptive
nature of customary organizations but also highlights the important role they play in maintaining local
security and preventing violence. Customary organizations have not only changed their names, but the
landowners who once dominated the organizations have been driven out of the community. The case
study also illustrates that CDC funds can provide badly needed infrastructure to communities, but
underscores the difficulties encountered by NGO staff, if they are not from the community or even the
province, to implement the program: they are not accountable to villagers. According to members of the
village, there are approximately 270 households in Rashidan (about 1,500 people).39 The community is
about two kilometers from the district center, giving it access to government offices. The entire district
of Saighan is quite small, with a population of only 17,000. Prior to the Taliban, Saighan was a subdistrict
of neighboring Kahmard District. 40 According to the district governor, two-thirds of the population are
Farsi speakers (loosely referred to as Tajiks) while the remaining one-third are Hazara.
37
Interview, Malik, Yakakhak Village, Behsod District, Nangarhar Province, September 2007.
Interview, Mother of malik, Yakakhak Village, Behsod District, Nangarhar Province, September 2007.
39
The village is not listed in official population numbers issued by the Central Statistics Office. All population data
in this paper is from official government statistics provided by this Office. Data is available for download at
http://www.cso.gov.af.
40
In Dari a subdistrict is aloqadari. The Taliban eliminated the subdistrict system. The aloqadari system is no longer
used. There are no subdistricts remaining in Afghanistan; all aloqadari have become full districts [woluswali].
38
[31]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
In Bamiyan province, villagers had particularly bad memories of highly extractive landlords, arbabs,
who taxed them excessively at the behest of the government more than thirty years ago. According to
interviews, the landholdings of the arbabs had been divided byte the people and commanders and the
arbabs themselves were driven away in the 1970s and the 1980s. Yet the arbab played an important
governing role as a broker between the community and the government. According to the villagers, the
Communist Khalq Party41 was responsible for this dissolving the arbab system. In its place, villagers
created a nomayenda (“representative”) system that had many of the same responsibilities.42 It is
unclear whether the Khalqis established this system or whether it emerged out of community needs.
The title nomayenda is used exclusively in Bamiyan Province to indicate a village executive.
Nomayendas and villagers with whom I spoke in the district asserted that the nomayenda represented
the will of the people to the government.
External conflict dynamics had an adverse effect on local cooperation. According to the nomayenda
of the village (who is also a mullah), most homes in the district were destroyed during the war by the
Soviets, “During the war with the Russians, people would go to Pakistan and they would bring guns back
to fight the Russians. People were united then, but when the Russians left, civil war began.”43 During the
Civil War between mujahedeen groups in the 1990s, there was heavy fighting between Northern
Alliance and Hazara militias in the district. Many Tajiks emigrated out of the district as a result, but most
have since returned. According to villagers, there are now good relations between the groups. The
mostly-Pashtun Taliban brutalized Shi’a Hazara communities in Afghanistan because they were not
Sunni. The malik said that the cruelty of the Taliban brought both communities closer together:
I was the nomayenda for two or three years during the regime of the Taliban.
During that period some Hazara people came to me and asked that I represent
them because they needed someone to help them and they were afraid of the
Taliban at that time. I accepted their nomayendagi. I accepted their suggestion
that I be their representative. When they had some business in the district, first
they would come to me. I would try to resolve their problems alone. During that
time I was very busy. Every day, every moment, the Taliban police were coming to
me and they were asking me to do things for them in the community. They would
always take me to different villages to help them resolve issues.44
The jihadi commanders active in the area were killed during the war, so the area has returned to relative
peace.45 The area is also fairly remote and does not have substantial land or other resource
endowments.
Religious leaders regularly interacted with members of the shura. While the malik is also a mullah,
the community has an ulama shura or a council of religious scholars. Despite the fact that the malik is a
religious leader, he has disputes interpreting Islamic law with the ulama. The malik told of an NGO that
came to the village to teach children how to play musical instruments. He said the ulama complained
about them, believing that music would bring social problems to the community. The organization then
left the area because it did not want to be a source of conflict in the community. The malik said, “I told
41
The Khalq (People’s Party), was one of the two main Communist parties in Afghanistan.
While the Khalq Party sought to disrupt large landholders and traditional power brokers, it is unclear why the
title nomayendas surfaces only in Bamiyan province and not in other areas.
43
Interview, mullah/malik, Rashidan Village, Saighan District, Bamiyan Province July 2007.
44
Police Commander is a district police chief; an official government position.
45
Interview, Male Villager, Age 25, Rashidan Village, Saighan District, Bamiyan Province, July 2007.
42
[32]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
the ulama shura they should have stayed out of this…They should have left this organization alone, but
they did not accept my wish.”46
Villagers had a great amount of reverence for the woluswal [district governor] in this area. Unlike
woluswals in most other districts, this woluswal himself was from the district and he had served in the
position since the fall of the Taliban nearly six years before. Several villagers repeated the story of how
the woluswal’s father was shot on his son’s wedding day by a Northern Alliance group fighting Soviets
who thought his father was a Khalqi (Communist) more than twenty years ago.
When asked about how they resolve conflicts, all those interviewed described the same procedure:
they first try to solve the dispute between internally, between parties; if the dispute cannot be solved
internally, they then go to the shura for counsel; if the shura has difficulty send the dispute to the
woluswal;47 because the woluswal “respects” the authority of the elders, he sends the dispute back to
the village for adjudication:
A few days ago, there was one problem between two people. One side had a
donkey. Their donkey was running around in the neighbor’s field and eating their
wheat. The person went to the district security commander (police chief) and
then to the woluswal. The woluswal sent the dispute back to me. And I sat
between them. I told them that this is not such a big problem. If the donkey eats
a lot of wheat, then your neighbor will simply pay you some money. I told them
that I didn’t want to hear anymore about this donkey.”48
The villagers appointed the mullah to be the head of the CDC. There were no complaints of corruption
in the village. However, villagers did not view the CDC as anything more than an organization set up by
an NGO for the purposes of implementing a reconstruction project. Women did not participate in its
activities. There were some complaints about corruption in the FP working in the area. A retaining wall
built with CDC funds had collapsed since its construction one year ago. Villagers said that engineers
working for the FP in the district were corrupt and skimped on construction materials. Women
complained about the conduct of elections for female CDC members:
On election day, each candidate had their picture on the ballot box so people
distributed the pictures so women would know who to vote form. The men who
distributed the pictures promised that if they voted for their relative, they would
be given some money. But after the elections, the candidates did not give money
as the promised.49
The malik system in Saighan district is unique because the previous landlords who held leadership
position were driven out. In this case, the malik system regenerated itself during times of fighting and
was able expand its scope to protect outside groups. Demand for the functions of the organizations
continued to arise. As a result, villagers created a village governance structure that functioned along the
same lines as the previous system under a different name. The case also highlights the difficulties of
creating new organizations in communities that are not subject to mechanisms of local accountability.
46
Interview, Mullah/Malik, Rashidan Village, Saighan District, Bamiyan Province July 2007.
Villagers have this option because the woluswali offices are very close to the village.
48
Interview, Malik/Mullah, Rashidan Village, Saighan District, Bamiyan Province, July 2007.
49
Focus group discussion, women, Rashidan Village, Saighan District, Bamiyan Province, July 2007.
47
[33]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
This case also illustrates how religious leaders and other leaders can operate in unique policy domains
under a separated system, but have the right to check one another.
Manzil Bagh Village, Hazrati Imam Sahib District, Kunduz Province (Northern Afghanistan)
The final case study illustrates how the influx of funds gained from non-productive sources of income,
such as aid, can potentially disrupt patterns of customary decision-making and destabilize local
cooperation. The statistical models provided surprising evidence that CDCs may actually increase conflict
in a community. The story of this desert village, in northern Kunduz Province, help explain this finding.
External assistance encouraged the return of “roving bandits,” such as commanders, to the community.
The lack of self-enforcing accountability mechanisms within the CDC and other aid-related shuras
accompanied by large infusions of cash can cause community contention.
Manzil Bagh, population 2,000, is a village in Hazrati Imam Sahib District in Kunduz Province
(northern Afghanistan). The population of the village is mostly Uzbek, although there are a few Turkmen
and Pashtun families in the area. The village is located about 15 kilometers from the district center.
Most villagers migrated to Pakistan, Iran, Kunduz City (the provincial capital), as well as Kabul during the
war. Homes in the village were destroyed during two rounds of fighting: in the 1980s, when villagers
fought the Russians, and during the late 1990s when Northern Alliance forces fought the Taliban. There
are significant amounts of landless families in the community and water is scarce. Men in the village are
employed harvesting wheat and corn while women weave carpets. Some men work as daily laborers
(mardikar).
Villagers described their respect for the malik. He came from a pious family.50 The village has a tribal
shura (qaumi shura) where elders make decisions and resolve disputes. Both men and women said that
if they had a dispute in the village, they would normally take their problem to the elders and the malik,
although recent events caused disruption to these patterns of governance. If they could not resolve the
dispute they would then go to the district government (woluswali).51 Customary leaders were active
resolving domestic disputes.52 For example:
There was a wedding party between two villages [and a large bride price was
paid] to the family of the bride. After the wedding the bride was not happy with
the groom and wanted to separate from her husband. The elders and the
religious leaders sat together and resolved the issue so that the couple could
peacefully separate.53
The elders were able to redistribute wealth from one family to another to ensure the resolution of the
dispute.
However, villagers complained about corruption in the CDC. When the project first started in the
village, the people selected their malik to be the head of the organization (through consensus voting,
not through a ballot box). Villagers made no contributions to the CDC activities, but instead were
promised salaries for work building projects. This is a common practice among CDCs. However, one
50
In this province, maliks are referred to by the title arbob.
Interview, Young Woman, Manzil Magh Village, Hazrati Imam Sahib district, Kunduz province, June 2007.
52
Interview, Middle-aged Woman, Manzil Bagh Village, Hazrati Imam Sahib District, Kunduz Province, June 2007.
53
Interview, Dehqan Yasin, Manzil Bagh Village, Hazrati Imam Sahib District, Kunduz Province.
51
[34]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
metal worker said he installed many of the hand pumps built by NGOs in the village, but he has never
been paid for his labor or materials as he was promised.54
The CDC was one of several NGO projects in the community. As the amount of money flowing into
the village increased, villagers complained that local commanders took greater interest in village
activities. In the years since the war ended, commanders had receded, yet the money provided by
external assistance encouraged them to reappear. The people feared the commander, as he was part of
General Abdul Rashid Dostum’s Milli-ye Junbish political party. When the commander took charge of
village activities, he encouraged the malik to resign his position and dismantled the beginnings of female
participation. When asked, the commander said that he had done such a good job managing a German
NGO project (another “development shura”) that the villagers voluntarily decided to have reelections
and that the incumbent malik “decided not to run against me.”55 People in the village, including the
deputy director (moween)56 did not seem to have information about CDC meetings or any other
activities since the commander wrestled control of the organization from the community.
While people feared the commander and discussed his corruption, they also spoke highly of how he
handled security issues. He had access to a larger network of commanders that customary leaders were
usually unable to access. The commander bragged openly about how he brought order to the village
with his iron fist. Several villagers told of how he captured three young men who were sexually abusing
boys in the village. “Actually, I’m not really interested in being the arbab [malik] in this village and
solving all these disputes. I have wanted to resign many times but my people say, ‘what will we do if you
resign?’”57
According to other villagers, the new head of the CDC (the commander) bought two cars for himself
since the CDC started its work. They also speculated that the CDC cashier, a close ally of the commander,
bought two cows with CDC money.58 Despite these complaints, the villagers did see results from several
donor projects such as water wells, culverts, as well as a newly graveled road. Although, they
speculated that more could have been done with the vast amount of funds the commander had
received. Since the commander reemerged in the village. Local decision making through the customary
organization had continued informally but not publically, as the malik became increasingly afraid of the
power of the commander.
Women were not participating in village activities. The women said that the FP came to the village
and themselves selected the female participants to the CDC. None of the villagers, aside from the
commander, were aware that the CDC was a government project. They believed it was just an NGO
project, like so many that had come before it.
This case illustrates that local separation of powers and local checks and balances that encourage
more legitimate use of village resources can be destabilized by outside groups. Most importantly, this
case highlights the important distinction between informal organizations endogenous and exogenous to
the breakdown and reconstruction of the state.
54
Interview, Dehqan Yasin, Manzil Bagh Village, Hazrati Imam Sahib District, Kunduz Province.
Interview, Commander, Manzil Bagh Village, Hazrati Imam Sahib District, Kunduz Province, June 2007.
56
Interview, Deputy Director of CDC, Manzil Bagh Village, Hazrati imam Sahib District, Kunduz Province, June 2007.
57
Interview, Commander, Manzil Bagh Village Imam Sahib District, June 2007.
58
Interview, Mechanic, Manzil Bagh Village, Hazrati Imam Sahib District, Kunduz Province, June 2007.
55
[35]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
1.6 Conclusion
Can public goods be provided in a failed state? If so, what mechanisms govern their provision? I
distinguished between customary and non-customary organizations and developed a theory predicting
the conditions under which local governance organizations can be effective in providing public goods. In
the context of rural Afghanistan, customary organizations meet the conditions that encourage selfenforcing local governance and public goods provision. The evidence supported the implications of the
theory. By focusing on the productive role of customary organizations in the provision of public goods
and differentiating between customary and non-customary organizations, I have shed light on the
micro-foundations of state building in a post-conflict society.
Community-scale public goods such as dispute resolution and safety and security are provided by
customary organizations. However, such goods are neither provided by government authorities nor
newly-created development councils. Customary organizations are far from perfect. They can also be
sources of predation and corruption, and the conditions that encourage local accountability do not exist
in every community.
Constraints within village organizations provide an explanation of why these organizations are
generally effective. Shuras (village councils), maliks (executives), and mullahs (religious leaders) are not
only accountable to one another in a separated system; they are also directly accountable to citizens in
the community. Customary leaders are able to resolve disputes and provide other goods to citizens
because they extract a fee for their services but also because they are accountable for what they
extract.
The case studies elaborate results from the statistical analysis and illustrate why the presence of
non-customary organizations, such as CDCs or warlords, may destabilize local cooperation or in the
worst case, cause conflict or tension in communities.
The representatives to CDCs should be elected by villagers, yet these elections, if they do occur, are
not sufficient to create conditions for accountability. In practice, CDCs are neither accountable to
citizens nor to the local government. They are accountable only to the (usually) international NGO to
which they report their activities. Furthermore, the creation of a CDC creates only one body. Power
within these organizations is not distributed; it is concentrated. While the CDC is supposed to derive its
legitimacy from the community, the large influx of resources that the CDCs provide, if not accompanied
by effective monitoring, can destabilize local cooperation. The presence of such councils creates a
rentier effect at the community level where resources, gained through non-productive processes,
provides temporary access to public goods and services, but does not encourage the development of
local accountability measures.
Several findings are worrisome about the impact of CDCs on broader outcomes in the community.
For example, the presence of a CDC seems to increase the probability that a community is involved in a
dispute that it cannot resolve itself. Also, presence of a CDC increases the odds that an individual will be
involved in a dispute as well as be the victim of a violent crime. Presence of a CDC has no significant
impact on “state building” or building links between individuals and local government.
However, these findings yield more puzzles: if customary organizations are effective at providing
public goods and services, why does Afghanistan remain so poor? Why are human development
indicators so horrifically low? Such observations suggest that there are limits to customary social
[36]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
organizations. While they can provide certain kinds of public goods and act as a deterrent to disputes
and other conflicts, they are not a panacea. The next problem is explaining the limits of community
organizations.
[37]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Estimate
Std. Err.
[95% Conf.
Interval]
1435.262
10.69384
0.344972
0.076882
0.063887
0.097589
0.477316
3.779417
0.107476
7.385536
0.713064
0.731609
0.8261
0.027449
0.322814
0.485994
67.21815
0.286476
0.294632
0.748541
0.165213
0.187588
0.122292
25.13153
30822
2597
22.56536
0.014812
0.010986
0.003847
0.005362
0.007132
0.010157
0.052083
0.006858
0.040494
0.009433
0.006279
0.005418
0.001693
0.027475
0.033214
0.06156
0.010238
0.008009
0.010056
0.00589
0.009775
0.008459
0.368338
1391.014
10.6648
0.32343
0.069339
0.053373
0.083605
0.4574
3.677277
0.094028
7.306132
0.694567
0.719298
0.815476
0.024129
0.268809
0.420611
67.09744
0.266399
0.278928
0.728822
0.153663
0.168421
0.105706
24.40923
1479.51
10.72289
0.366513
0.084425
0.0744
0.111573
0.497232
3.881558
0.120924
7.46494
0.73156
0.74392
0.836724
0.030768
0.376819
0.551377
67.33887
0.306552
0.310337
0.768261
0.176763
0.206755
0.138879
25.85382
Mean
Altitude (meters)
Annual Income (ln)
CDC in Community
CDC Member
Central/Kabul
Central/Hazarajat
Deed to Land
Distance to Market in Summer by Foot
Eastern
HH Member Count
HH own agricultural Land
HH own Livestock
Inherited Dwelling
Land Dispute
Land Dispute Recorded
Land Dispute Resolved
Longitude
Northern
Read Letter
Shura in Community
Shura Member
South Central
South Western
Years in Community
N
PSUs
Table 6: NRVA (2005) Summary Statistics
[38]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
100%
Village Organizations by Region
90%
80%
70%
Percentage
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Jirga
Female
Shura
Mixed
Gender
Shura
Male CDC
Female
CDC
Mixed
Gender
CDC
Total
Shura
Total CDC
45.9%
11.8%
2.9%
0.0%
51.1%
14.1%
14.0%
56.9%
62.9%
36.3%
41.1%
18.2%
2.1%
0.4%
34.0%
9.1%
0.4%
93.0%
34.4%
25.1%
1.8%
66.6%
3.6%
0.9%
0.0%
21.5%
2.7%
2.4%
82.7%
23.9%
South Western
21.3%
24.2%
54.2%
7.2%
0.5%
0.5%
21.0%
1.1%
1.0%
86.3%
22.0%
Western
16.1%
30.2%
21.6%
0.7%
5.2%
1.7%
31.5%
12.2%
11.1%
63.7%
41.2%
Central/Hazarajat
12.5%
5.7%
34.9%
0.6%
1.6%
2.3%
17.4%
6.0%
15.2%
53.1%
30.6%
Northern
26.1%
8.9%
53.7%
6.3%
5.3%
4.0%
23.0%
10.6%
23.5%
73.4%
41.5%
Average
20.7%
15.0%
47.5%
6.4%
3.2%
1.8%
26.5%
8.2%
11.7%
74.2%
36.2%
Elder
Shura
Male
Shura
Tribal
Shura
Central/Kabul
14.7%
4.4%
Eastern
15.6%
South Central
Percentages based on responses to community-level focus group, not individual level responses.
Figure 4: Source Male Focus Group Interviews, NRVA (2005)
[39]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Figure 5: Physical Map of Afghanistan
[40]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Mean
Estimate
Std. Err.
[95% Conf.
Interval]
Age
Approach CDC
Approach Foreign Forces
Approach Govt. Agent
Approach Malik
Approach MoP
Approach Police
Approach Shura
Approach Woluswali
33.84515
0.009779
0.001481
0.007427
0.02401
0.012632
0.034311
0.061083
0.04642
0.216036
0.001944
0.000534
0.001672
0.003172
0.002942
0.003619
0.005313
0.004042
33.42083
0.00596
0.000432
0.004143
0.017781
0.006853
0.027202
0.050647
0.038481
34.26947
0.013597
0.002529
0.010711
0.03024
0.018411
0.04142
0.071519
0.05436
CDC in Community
CDC Satisfaction (1-5 scale]
Central/Hazarajat
Central/Kabul
Confidence in Army
Confidence in Municipality
Confidence in Pol. Parties
Confidence in Police
Confident in CDCs
Confident in Govt. Justice
Confident in Militias
Confident in Municipality
Confident in Provincial Council
Confident in Public Admin
Confident in Shura/Jirga
Court Accessible
Court Reflect Local Norms
Did Report Crime
Dispute Solved
Eastern
Education
Fear Safety
Female
Had Formal Dispute
Income [1 to 5 scale]
Listen to Radio
No People in HH
Northern
Outside Help Needed
Satisfied with Resolution
Shura/Jirga Accessible [1 to 5 scale]
Shuras are Fair [1 to 5 scale]
Shuras/Jirgas Reflect Local Norms [1 to 5 scale]
South Central
South Western
Take Dispute to Court
Take Dispute to Shura
Trust People
Victim of Violence
0.367749
3.154236
0.090989
0.089947
0.878158
0.349682
0.379951
0.822414
0.685142
0.481619
0.349682
0.485153
0.725426
0.615769
0.741943
2.971833
2.628532
0.64174
0.502762
0.107809
2.388417
2.301527
0.500068
0.154945
2.960826
0.714411
9.380056
0.326131
0.174532
0.719647
3.217758
3.103977
3.096065
0.175911
0.092143
0.488444
0.511556
0.41343
0.171243
0.015009
0.032884
0.012629
0.012366
0.009274
0.014451
0.013561
0.010461
0.012604
0.013735
0.014451
0.014543
0.011983
0.013318
0.011762
0.024416
0.026071
0.021597
0.025958
0.013512
0.050332
0.030251
0.021916
0.008413
0.046163
0.011224
0.104102
0.020322
0.009428
0.020483
0.024349
0.022596
0.022472
0.016802
0.01257
0.024814
0.024814
0.012126
0.007817
0.338268
3.089595
0.066184
0.065659
0.859943
0.321297
0.353316
0.801866
0.660386
0.454642
0.321297
0.456589
0.70189
0.589611
0.71884
2.923876
2.577325
0.59927
0.451694
0.08127
2.289559
2.24211
0.457021
0.138421
2.870156
0.692365
9.175585
0.286217
0.156015
0.67933
3.169933
3.059595
3.051927
0.142911
0.067454
0.43961
0.462723
0.389612
0.15589
0.397229
3.218877
0.115793
0.114235
0.896373
0.378066
0.406586
0.842962
0.709899
0.508597
0.378066
0.513717
0.748962
0.641928
0.765045
3.019789
2.679738
0.68421
0.553831
0.134349
2.487275
2.360944
0.543114
0.171469
3.051496
0.736457
9.584528
0.366045
0.193049
0.759964
3.265583
3.14836
3.140202
0.208912
0.116833
0.537277
0.56039
0.437248
0.186597
N
PSUs
5209
572
Table 7: Asia Foundation (2005) Summary Statistics
[41]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Land Disputes
land dispute all s
Model 1
Shura in Village
Shura Member
CDC in Village
CDC Member
Altitude (in meters)
No People in Village
Annual Income (ln)
Read Letter
# People in HH
Deed
HH owns agricultural land
HH owns livestock
Inherited Land
Years in Village
Central/Kabul
Eastern
South Central
South Western
Northern
Central/Hazarajat
-0.000**
[0.000]
0.000*
[0.000]
-0.041
[0.121]
-0.191
[0.138]
0.009
[0.021]
-0.244
[0.159]
-0.138
[0.088]
0.171
[0.165]
-0.324
[0.218]
-0.007+
[0.004]
1.227**
[0.465]
0.971*
[0.451]
2.141**
[0.388]
2.534**
[0.453]
2.212**
[0.347]
1.927**
[0.414]
Land Dispute Resolved
Land Dispute Officially Recorded
Model 2
-0.497*
[0.203]
0.384*
[0.172]
0.036
[0.183]
0.052
[0.230]
Model 3
Model 4
0.853*
[0.394]
0.24
[0.417]
0.767*
[0.371]
-0.488
[0.585]
Model 4
Model6
-0.297
[0.367]
0.345
[0.393]
-0.205
[0.397]
1.153*
[0.468]
-0.000**
[0.000]
0.000+
[0.000]
-0.067
[0.117]
-0.218
[0.137]
0.008
[0.021]
-0.213
[0.158]
-0.146+
[0.087]
0.167
[0.164]
-0.312
[0.214]
-0.007+
[0.004]
1.232**
[0.471]
1.132*
[0.470]
2.301**
[0.415]
2.698**
[0.470]
2.288**
[0.360]
1.941**
[0.417]
0
[0.000]
0
[0.000]
0.036
[0.149]
-0.357
[0.370]
-0.012
[0.049]
1.018**
[0.327]
-0.378
[0.263]
0.037
[0.364]
0
[0.000]
0
[0.000]
-0.006
[0.134]
-0.406
[0.397]
-0.019
[0.049]
0.990**
[0.322]
-0.453
[0.297]
0.063
[0.390]
0
[0.000]
0
[0.000]
0.403*
[0.162]
0.017
[0.331]
0.052
[0.043]
1.387**
[0.356]
-0.304+
[0.168]
-0.944**
[0.351]
0
[0.000]
0
[0.000]
0.394*
[0.172]
0.005
[0.340]
0.062
[0.042]
1.487**
[0.360]
-0.286+
[0.170]
-0.949**
[0.361]
-1.704
[1.181]
-1.685+
[0.860]
-1.259+
[0.707]
-1.358+
[0.728]
-1.720**
[0.581]
-0.504
[0.829]
-1.412
[1.230]
-1.919*
[0.896]
-1.089
[0.685]
-1.328+
[0.715]
-1.792**
[0.579]
-0.156
[0.872]
0.029
[0.074]
0.114
[0.096]
-8.094
[5.050]
359
0.001
269
Longitude
Constant
-3.952**
[1.279]
-3.485**
[1.243]
0.253
[1.802]
0.008
[1.633]
0.039
[0.072]
0.1
[0.096]
-8.602+
[4.909]
Observations
prob >F
PSUs
10332
0
1944
10332
0
1944
235
0.079
191
235
0.027
191
359
0.001
269
Distance of market by foot in Summer
Heteroskedasticty robust standard errors that correct for correlation of error terms across within communities in brackets
+ significant at 10%; * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%
Logit Estimates, Estimation accounts for survey design including household weights and population sampling units
Table 8: Estimation Results, Land Disputes, NRVA Data (2005)
[42]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Shuras/Jirga Accessible
CDC in Community
Community Dispute
Community Dispute
Resolved
Individual had Formal Dispute
Satisfaction with Resolution of Formal
Dispute
Model 7
0.03
[0.077]
0.817**
[0.116]
Model 8
Model 9
0.043
[0.077]
0.525**
[0.118]
Model 11
Approach Shura Elder
Model 10
0.617**
[0.194]
-0.047
[0.258]
0.155
[0.203]
0.207
[0.417]
-1.150*
[0.460]
-0.433
[0.504]
-0.277
[0.840]
0.459+
[0.236]
Approach Malik/Khan
Approach Woluswali
Approach CDC
Approach Member of Parliament
Approach Government Agent
Approach Foreign Forces
Approach Police
Courts Accessible
-0.066
[0.079]
Took Case to Court
-0.799**
[0.221]
Took Case to Shura
0.799**
[0.221]
CDC Satisfaction
Courts Follow Local Norms
Shuras/Jirgas Follow Local Norms
# People in HH
Income
Education
Female
Age
Central/Kabul
Eastern
South Central
South Western
Northern
Central/Hazarajat
Trust People
Listen to Radio
Constant
Obervations
prob >F
PSUs
Model 12
0.016
[0.011]
-0.031
[0.045]
0.066**
[0.025]
-0.157
[0.139]
0.001
[0.003]
-0.38
[0.258]
0.058
[0.255]
0.278
[0.243]
-0.144
[0.313]
-0.644**
[0.212]
-1.684**
[0.342]
-0.237*
[0.103]
-0.011
[0.123]
-1.771**
[0.400]
4446
0
561
-0.01
[0.025]
0.144*
[0.067]
0.083*
[0.042]
-0.228
[0.217]
0.001
[0.006]
0.867*
[0.408]
1.955**
[0.424]
1.374**
[0.344]
1.331**
[0.403]
0.978**
[0.320]
2.012**
[0.628]
0.439**
[0.168]
-0.243
[0.201]
-1.847**
[0.509]
822
0
315
0.019
[0.012]
-0.025
[0.042]
0.032
[0.026]
-0.658**
[0.138]
0.004
[0.003]
-0.425
[0.269]
0.675*
[0.275]
0.409+
[0.239]
-0.312
[0.322]
-0.182
[0.213]
-0.750+
[0.399]
-0.01
[0.109]
-0.200+
[0.121]
-1.705**
[0.482]
4478
0
563
-0.190+
[0.097]
0.093
[0.087]
-0.244*
[0.095]
0.043+
[0.024]
-0.072
[0.061]
0.069*
[0.035]
-0.574**
[0.186]
0.001
[0.005]
-0.105
[0.343]
0.861*
[0.367]
0.289
[0.299]
0.148
[0.456]
-0.059
[0.264]
-0.309
[0.499]
0.189
[0.146]
0.05
[0.185]
-0.64
[0.602]
1573
0
404
0.003
[0.035]
0.082
[0.097]
-0.036
[0.057]
0.093
[0.238]
0.008
[0.008]
0.472
[0.530]
0.511
[0.419]
-0.419
[0.406]
-0.362
[0.536]
0.017
[0.415]
-0.437
[0.642]
0.003
[0.035]
0.082
[0.097]
-0.036
[0.057]
0.093
[0.238]
0.008
[0.008]
0.472
[0.530]
0.511
[0.419]
-0.419
[0.406]
-0.362
[0.536]
0.017
[0.415]
-0.437
[0.642]
0.236
[0.610]
563
0.033
261
1.035+
[0.602]
563
0.033
261
Heteroskedasticty robust standard errors that correct for correlation of error terms across within communities in brackets
+ significant at 10%; * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%
Logit Estimation, Estimation accounts for survey design and includes provincial weights and population sampling units (PSUs)
Table 9: Estimation Results, General Disputes, Asia Foundation Survey of the Afghan People (2007)
[43]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Shuras/Jirgas Fair/Trusted
CDC Satisfaction
Fear for Personal Safety or Security
Victim of Violent Crime in
the Past Year
Was Violent Crime Reported to Local
Authorities
Model 13
-0.207*
[0.101]
-0.004
[0.090]
Model 15
Model 16
-0.116+
[0.063]
0.583**
[0.099]
0.210*
[0.104]
0.149
[0.175]
0.136
[0.106]
Model 14
-0.240*
[0.100]
-0.001
[0.087]
Shuras/Jirgas Accessible
CDCs Accessible
Courts Accessible
Confidence in Army
-0.029
[0.225]
-0.209
[0.148]
0.209
[0.162]
Confidence in Police
Confidence in Local Militias
-0.005
[0.011]
0.063+
[0.035]
0.070**
[0.023]
-0.075
[0.111]
0.008*
[0.003]
-0.732**
[0.237]
0.421*
[0.204]
0.390*
[0.193]
0.24
[0.257]
-0.09
[0.173]
-1.380*
[0.556]
-0.210*
[0.104]
0.02
[0.028]
-0.221**
[0.063]
0.081+
[0.042]
-0.349+
[0.204]
-0.003
[0.007]
-0.41
[0.457]
-0.594
[0.373]
-0.382
[0.359]
-0.211
[0.499]
-0.744*
[0.323]
-2.447*
[0.957]
0.068
[0.184]
0.256
[0.315]
0.353
[0.252]
-0.376+
[0.215]
0.225
[0.209]
0.495*
[0.206]
0.195
[0.211]
-0.448*
[0.222]
-0.132
[0.219]
0.375
[0.249]
0.259
[0.231]
0.022
[0.030]
-0.249**
[0.069]
0.079+
[0.047]
-0.432*
[0.219]
-0.002
[0.008]
-0.07
[0.504]
-0.447
[0.382]
-0.001
[0.392]
-0.104
[0.496]
-0.773*
[0.371]
-1.921*
[0.928]
0.012
[0.188]
-1.839**
[0.319]
0.483
[0.637]
0.693
[0.656]
789
0
346
738
0
335
Confidence in Political Parties
Confidence in Gov. Justice
Confidence in Public Admin.
Confidence in Municipality
Confidence in CDC
Confidence in Provincial Coun.
Confidence in Shura/Jirga
# People in HH
Income
Education
Female
Age
Central/Kabul
Eastern
South Central
South Western
Northern
Central/Hazarajat
Listen to Radio
Victim of Violence
Trust People
0.009
[0.018]
-0.098+
[0.053]
0.01
[0.025]
0.162
[0.166]
-0.009*
[0.004]
-1.630**
[0.335]
-0.465
[0.285]
-0.01
[0.301]
1.373**
[0.398]
-1.341**
[0.199]
-1.989**
[0.429]
-0.532**
[0.137]
0.537**
[0.131]
-0.292*
[0.120]
0.005
[0.019]
-0.071
[0.054]
0.008
[0.026]
0.171
[0.169]
-0.007*
[0.004]
-1.755**
[0.344]
-0.492+
[0.292]
-0.046
[0.307]
1.170**
[0.397]
-1.399**
[0.196]
-1.784**
[0.416]
-0.486**
[0.137]
0.561**
[0.134]
-0.272*
[0.120]
Constant
Model 17
Cut 1
-3.135**
-3.284**
[0.494]
[0.521]
Cut 2
-2.271**
-2.418**
[0.499]
[0.528]
Cut 3
0.017
-0.117
[0.484]
[0.516]
Observations
1609
1558
4625
prob >F
0
0
0
PSUs
402
399
566
Ordered Logit Estimates
Logit Estimates
Heteroskedasticty robust standard errors that correct for correlation of error terms across within communities in brackets
+ significant at 10%; * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%
Estimates Account for provincial sampling weights as well as population sampling units
Table 10: Estimation Results, Local Safety and Security Issues, Asia Foundation Survey of the Afghan People (2007)
[44]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Works Cited
Agrawal, Arun, and Clark C. Gibson. 1999. “Enchantment and Disenchantment: The Role of Community in
Natural Resource Conservation.” World Development 27(4):629-649.
Aras, Bulent, and Sule Toktas. 2008. “Afghanistan's Security: Political Process, State-Building and
Narcotics.” Middle East Policy 15(2):39-52.
Asia Foundation. 2007. Afghanistan in 2007: A Survey of the Afghan People. Kabul, Afghanistan: The Asia
Foundation. Available at: http://www.asiafoundation.org/resources/pdfs/AGsurvey07.pdf.
Bardhan, Pranab. 2006. Decentralization and Local Governance in Developing Countries: a Comparative
Perspective. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Barnett, Michael, Songying Fang, and Christoph Zuercher. 2008. “The Peacebuilder's Contract.” Working
Paper.
Bates, Robert H. 2001. Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development. New: W. W.
Norton.
Boettke, Peter J., and Christopher J. Coyne. 2005. “Methodological Individualism, Spontaneous Order,
and the Research Program of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis.” Journal of
Economic Behavior and Organization 57:145-158.
Carey, John M. 2000. “Parchment, Equilibria, and Institutions.” Comparative Political Studies 33(6-7):735761.
Carter, Lynn, and Kerry Connor. 1989. A Preliminary Investigation of Contemporary Afghan Councils.
Peshawar, Pakistan: Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR).
Clapham, Christopher. 2002. “The Challenge to the State in a Globalized World.” Development and
Change 33(5):775-795.
Deaton, Angus. 1997. The Analysis of Household Surveys. Washington, DC: World Bank Publications.
Donini, Antonio, Norah Niland, and Karin Wermester, eds. 2004. Nation-Building Unraveled?: Aid, Peace
and Justice in Afghanistan. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.
Dorronsoro, Gilles. 2005. Revolution Unending: Afghanistan, 1979 to the Present. New York : Columbia
University Press.
Ellickson, Robert C. 1991. Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes. Harvard University Press.
Elphinstone, Mountstuart. 1839. An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, and Its Dependencies in Persia,
Tartary, and India; Comprising a View of the Afghaun Nation and a History of the Dooraunee
Monarchy. London: Richard Bentley.
Englebert, Pierre, and Denis M. Tull. 2008. “Postconflict Reconstruction in Africa: Flawed Ideas about
Failed States.” International Security 32(4):106-139.
[45]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Ertman, Thomas. 1997. Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern
Europe. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
Favre, Raphy. 2005. Interface between State and Society: Discussion on Key Social Features affecting
Governance, Reconciliation, and Reconstruction. Unpublished Manuscript.
Fearon, James D., and David D. Laitin. 2003. “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War.” American Political
Science Review 97(01):75-90.
Ferguson, James. 1994. The Anti-politics Machine. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Fukuyama, Francis. 2006. Nation-building: Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq. Baltimore, MD: JHU Press.
Fukuyama, Francis. 2004. State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Ghani, Ashraf, and Clare Lockhart. 2008. Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured
World. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gibson, Clark C., M. A. McKean, and Elinor Ostrom. 2000. People and Forests: Communities, Institutions,
and Governance. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Giustozzi, Antonio. 2000. War, Politics and Society in Afghanistan, 1978-1992. Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press.
Giustozzi, Antonio, and Noor Ullah. 2006. "Tribes" and Warlords in Southern Afghanistan, 1980-2005.
London: London School of Economics, Crisis States Research Center.
Goodson, Larry P. 2001. Afghanistan's Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the
Taliban. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Gregorian, Vartan. 1969. The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan: Politics of Reform and Modernization.
Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Gupta, M Das, H. Grandvoinnet, and M. Romani. 2004. “State–Community Synergies in CommunityDriven Development.” Journal of Development Studies 40(3):27.
Hyman, Anthony. 1984. Afghanistan Under Soviet Domination, 1964-83. New York : Palgrave Macmillan.
Jones, Seth G. 2008. “The Rise of Afghanistan's Insurgency: State Failure and Jihad.” International Security
32(4):7-40.
Kakar, Palwasha. 2005. Fine-Tuning the NSP: Discussions of Problems and Solutions with Facilitating
Partners. Kabul, Afghanistan: Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU). Available at:
http://www.areu.org.af.
Kandori, Michihiro. 1992. “Social Norms and Community Enforcement.” Review of Economic Studies
59(198):63-80.
[46]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Leeson, Peter T. 2007. “Better off Stateless: Somalia before and after Government Collapse.” Journal of
Comparative Economics 35(4):689-710.
Lijphart, Arend. 1999. Patterns of Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Maley, William. 1998. Fundamentalism Reborn?: Afghanistan and the Taliban. New York: NYU Press.
Maley, William. 2002. The Afghanistan Wars. New York: Palgrave.
Mansuri, Ghazala, and Vijayendra Rao. 2004. “Community-Based and-Driven Development: A Critical
Review.” The World Bank Research Observer 19(1).
Milliken, Jennifer. 2003. State Failure, Collapse, and Reconstruction. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, and Central Statistics Office. 2007. The National Risk
and Vulnerability Assessment 2005. Kabul, Afghanistan : National Surveillance System. Available
at: http://www.nss-afghanistan.com.
Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development . 2008. “National Solidarity Programme (NSP).”
Available at: http://nspafghanistan.org/media/downloads/NSP_Brochure_April_2008.pdf.
Moore, Barrington. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making
of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon Press.
Newell, Richard S. 1972. The Politics of Afghanistan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Noelle-Karimi, Christine. 2006. Village Institutions in the Perception of National and International Actors
in Afghanistan. Bonn, Germany: Center for Development Research, University of Bonn.
Nojumi, Neamatollah, Dyan Mazurana, and Elizabeth Stites. 2004. Afghanistan's Systems of Justice:
Formal, Traditional, and Customary. Medford, MA: Tufts University.
North, Douglass. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
North, Douglass C., and Barry R. Weingast. 1989. “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of
Institutional Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England.” The Journal of Economic
History 49(4):8002-832.
Olesen, Asta. 1995. Islam and Politics in Afghanistan. 1st ed. Surrey, UK: Routledge Curzon.
Olson, Mancur. 1993. “Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development.” The American Political Science
Review 87(3):567-576.
Olson, Mancur. 1971. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
[47]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Ostrom, Elinor. 2005. Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Persson, Torsten, Gerard Roland, and Guido Tabellini. 1997. “Separation of Powers and Political
Accountability.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 112(4):1163-1202.
Persson, Torsten., and Guido Enrico Tabellini. 2003. The Economic Effects of Constitutions. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Platteau, Jean-Philippe. 1991. “Traditional Systems of Social Security and Hunger Insurance: Past
Achievements and Modern Challenges.” In Social Security in Developing Countries, eds. Ehtisham
Ahmad et al. New York: Clarendon Press.
Rahmani, Ahmad Idrees. 2006. The Role of Religious Institutions in Community Governance Affairs: How
are Communities Governed Beyond the District Level? Open Society Institute, Central European
University Center for Policy Studies.
Rashid, Ahmed. 2002. Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia. London: I.B.Tauris.
Reno, William. 2002. “The Politics of Insurgency in Collapsing States.” Development and Change
33(5):837-858.
Rotberg, Robert I. 2004. When States Fail: Causes and Consequences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Rubin, Barnett R. 2002. The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the
International System. Second. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Saikal, Amin, and William Maley. 1991. Regime Change in Afghanistan: Foreign Intervention and the
Politics of Legitimacy. Boulder, CI: Westview Press.
Schetter, Conrad, Rainer Glassner, and Massoud Karokhail. 2007. “Beyond Warlordism: The Local Security
Architecture in Afghanistan.” International Politics and Society (2):136-152.
Scott, James. 1976. The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Shugart, Matthew Soberg, and John M. Carey. 1992. Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design
and Electoral Dynamics. New York : Cambridge University Press.
Skaperdas, Stergios. 2008. “An economic approach to analyzing civil wars.” Economics of Governance
9(1):25-44.
Skocpol, Theda. 1979. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Stanfield, J. David et al. 2008. Community-State Administration of Private Property Records in Rural
Afghanistan. University of Gloucestershire, UK: International Association for the Study of the
Commons, Annual Conference. Available at:
http://iasc2008.glos.ac.uk/conference%20papers/papers/S/Stanfield_211301.pdf.
[48]
Brick. The Political Economy of Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan
Tapper, Richard. 1984. “Ethnicity and Class: Dimensions of Intergroup Conflict in North-Central
Afghanistan.” In Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan: Anthropological Perspectives, eds. M.
Shahrani and Robert L Canfield. Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies, University of
California, Berkeley, p. 211-229.
Tilly, Charles. 1992. Coercion, Capital, and European states, AD 990-1992. Cambridge: Blackwell.
Tilly, Charles. 1975. The Formation of National States in Western Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Tsai, Kellee. 2006. “Adaptive Informal Institutions and Endogenous Institutional Change in China.” World
Politics 59:116-141.
Tsebelis, George. 2002. Veto players : how political institutions work. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Varughese, George, and Elinor Ostrom. 2001. “The Contested Role of Heterogeneity in Collective Action:
Some Evidence from Community Forestry in Nepal.” World Development 29(5):747-765.
Wade, Robert. 1988. Village Republics: Economic Conditions for Collective Action in South India. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Weingast, Barry R. 1997. “The Political Foundations of Democracy and the Rule of Law.” The American
Political Science Review 91(2):245-263.
Zartman, I. William, ed. 1995. Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate
Authority. Lynne Rienner Publishers.
[49]