Introduction

Author: Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili

Designation: Associate Professor, Director of the Center for Governance and Markets @
University of Pittsburgh

Drawing from diverse research methods including field experiments, public opinion surveys, and
ethnographic fieldwork, Murtazashvili focuses her work on Central and South Asia, and the
former Soviet Union. She also has experience advising for the U.S. Department of Defense, the
United Nations Development Program, and UNICEF.

Awards
United States Agency for International Development, Superior Unit Citation for “designing and
implementing post-September 11 conflict mitigation programs vital to the stability of Central
Asia and critical to the achievement of U.S. foreign policy objectives,” 2002

Book Award (Social Sciences), Central Eurasian Studies Society (for Informal Order and the
State in Afghanistan), 2018.

Appointments
Elected executive board member of the Central Eurasian Studies Society
Elected executive board member of the Section for International & Comparative Administration
(SICA) of the American Society for Public Administration

Before going into the presentation proper, let us give you a brief summary of this article. It is
responding to the conventional view that spaces ungoverned by states within a given territory,
are automatically ungoverned spaces. Instead, the author argues that we ought to consider these
spaces as being self-governed by various forms of informal non-state systems. Some of these
self-governed spaces are “productive”. The international community in its state-building efforts,
in her view, ought to collaborate with such productive self-governance institutions and build on
them. In her view, this would not only reduce costs to state builders but also ensure the
legitimacy and thus sustainability of their state-building process.

Now we are going to critically analyze the issues raised in this article in light of the theory and
empirical evidence. There are three parts to our presentation. In Part 1, we will be dealing with
the theoretical origins, which underlie the current state-building approach to Afghanistan as well
as the consequent limits to such an approach (otherwise known as centralized state-building
according to the author). In Parts 2 and 3, we will be engaging with Murtazashvili’s proposed
alternative of “decentralized state building”. In part 2, we will review the advantages of such
approach. We will be doing this by referring to other sources, which flesh out some of the ideas
presented in the text before us. Finally, in Part 3, we will criticize some elements of
Murtzashvili’s proposition in light of empirical evidence and other works.

Part I: Classic Arguments supporting centralized top-down state-building

The author argues that the state-building tradition is a top-down process of state consolidation,
focused on capacity-building. In Part 1, I will go through the two identified theoretical
underpinnings of this tradition. Firstly, the inevitability of the modern state and secondly, the
necessity of a centralized state for political order. First, the inevitability of the modern state. This
tenet is founded upon canonical literature such as Charles Tilly and Max Weber.

Weber posited a theory of an inevitable and linear rationalization of society. This theory, applied
to political authority in terms of the types of legitimacy which the ruler of a society ruled with.
As society modernizes, traditional and charismatic authority is progressively replaced with
rational-legal authority as seen in the modern state today. This is demonstrated by the manner in
which the legitimacy of the state rests primarily on the belief in the legality of its orders.

In his bellicist theory of the state, Tilly conceives of state-formation not as a by-product of the
gradual extension of political and civic individual rights, theorized by liberal Enlightenment
discourse, but as a by-product of the progression of a society from feudalism to capitalism,
where the rationalization of tax systems led to centralization of state power and eventually
monopolization of means of violence to form the modern State. Even as he sought to refine his
theory, in his article “The Long Run of European State Formation”, Tilly posited a certain
inevitability to the state-formation process arguing that despite the different trajectories
European states undertook, all headed in a direction of greater concentration of capital and
coercion converging into their final form as a nation state.

Mur ta za shvili argues that the consequence of this perceived inevitability is that the
international community approaches state-building with a historical teleologism, where state-
building is a conscious endeavor to establish and maintain the capacity of the national
government in the mold of the modern State. However, this results in misplaced priorities where
administrative reforms and market institutions are deprioritized for efforts which promote
democracy elections and national institutions. While the State was formed from a gradual
process over centuries, the state-building efforts tend to reject that premise and result in the
continued fragility of these post-conflict states.

The second tenet, supported by the works of Thomas Hobbes and Weber, is the necessity of a
centralized state to maintain political order and provide public goods.

Hobbes posits that without a State, the state of nature prevails, and conflict is inevitable. This is
where each person is free to decide what she needs and is owed, free to decide all of the
questions for the behavior of everyone else and act on the judgements as she thinks best. With
no common authority to resolve disputes, the state of nature is thus a state of war of all against
all. It is this only consent, born out of fear of violence, to the Leviathan, guaranteeing protection,
legal security and peace to those who subordinate themselves to its dominion, which ends the
potentially murderous violence of all against all, suspending the state of nature.

Separately, Max Weber argues that the monopolization of legitimate violence is necessary for a
State to exist. Furthermore, Weber interpreted the emergence of the modern state as a
comprehensive process of not just monopolization but also centralization of power in state
structures. In the development of the modern state, a necessary consequence is the
centralization of administration to buttress state bureaucracy and reinforce its supremacy of
power. Interestingly, Ashraf Lockhart and Clare Ghani (former World Bank employees who
wrote much of the 2001 Bonn Agreement that prescribed the state-building project for
Afghanistan) assert that Weber articulates a ‘clear, functional view of the state

The consequence of these theoretical premises is that the state-building approach adopted by
the international community is one which is preoccupied with consolidating the State and
building state capacity, while dogmatically avoiding any form of decentralization. In a bid to
establish a strong central state, state-building emphasizes election of national institutions,
neglecting local institutions and governance. This results in the same local administrative
structures which often precipitated conflict remaining in place, while huge levels of assistance
are invested into national ministries which are unable to handle the new demands placed by
these investments. Mur ta za shvili argues that this obsession with a strong state, borne out of
the fear of disorder and conflict without a centralized political authority is unfounded given the
existence of enduring local social institutions mean that communities are not left ungoverned.
Elinor Ostrom’s Collective Action Theory in rebutting the tragedy of the commons thesis, proves
that the lack of a common authority does not necessitate the breakdown of governance and
order.

Transition
State-building thus far, according to JM, is mostly focused on these two interrelated notions of
the inevitability and the necessity of the state in governance. JM however, fights against this
notion, presenting a new policy option of decentralized state building, focuses less on the
creation of a centralized state and more on the collaboration with pre existing customary and
traditional authority governing these seemingly “ungovernable” spaces.

The article written by her is a good summary of the larger corpus of her work in this field.

Part II: Jennifer’s Arguments supporting decentralized state building - Sab

As we saw in the previous part, state building efforts are heavily focused on the national
elections as a measure of success of international intervention.

According to JM, the Decentralized State-Building would entail two types of reforms:
administrative and market reforms.
Reform of administrative and governance structures (reform of state institutions) - including
partnering with governance in areas outside the capital

Reform of Markets

For achieving both of these reforms, JM believes it is extremely important for intl community to
partner with existing customary and self-governance structures in areas outside the capital

Her approach differs significantly from the prevailing approach because a very important
conceptual distinction; the two sides view a state of anarchy very differently.

Whereas conventionally anarchy is associated with disorder, JM nuances this to a great deal
and instead refers to Anarchy as simply being absence of state control, shouldn’t be
immediately associated with disorder

But she concedes that under anarchy, there could be different types of governance
➔ Rebel governance
➔ Warlords
➔ Customary and self-governance

Her focus in this article is on how customary authorities in Afghanistan are actually critical to
state building efforts.

Thus, in this part, we are going to be looking at how under this type of self-governance, there is
both order and efficiency -> both of which the centralized afghan state was unable to create.

A. Disorder under State and Order under Anarchy

What is customary authority?

● Village representatives (maliks)
○ I define a malik as the individual who represents community interests to formal
government institutions. He is the village executive
○ 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
○ 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
○ 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).
● Village councils (shura/jirga)
○ 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
○ 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
● Religious figures (mullahs)
○ Due to the decentralized nature of religious leadership in Islam, mullahs can
operate autonomously from religious administration and hierarchy.
○ 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. F
○ 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).
○ 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).”

In the first few years of post-2001, afghan government officials, international patrons and many
scholars of the country believed that such customary authority was essential to keeping order.
But they came to, what she calls, an erroneous conclusion by believing that customary
governance structures had irreparably broken down. According to her, they had merely
dissimulated during periods of conflict (soviets, civil war, taliban rule).

But customary authority had not broken down. Resilient and adaptive system of governance

Caveat here: they take different forms across different villages

Evidence of Order: Dispute resolution

● Under government-supported CDCs placed into their communities, more likely to have
disputes, and less likely to solve them on their own than if these disputes were handled
by community structures
● World Bank supported this finding

Order because
● There is a balance of authority (checks and balances that constrains the power of local
authority), multiple forums to resolve conflicts
● Public trust in these institutions was very high (as seen on this slide, page 12)
● analysis/inference: There are local notions of legitimacy, very different from Weber’s
highest form of legitimate authority being based on rational-legal foundations

Consequence on State-Building Approach: Decentralized State-Building = Customary authority

can complement democratizing central governments

B. Inefficiency of State and Efficiency of Anarchy

But she doesn’t just focus on order. Customary authority is also good even if we adopt a very
rational approach and think about efficiency in the public goods that customary authority brings
to the people. She refers to self-governance as being “productive self-governance”, and in other
texts that she has written, talks about “efficient anarchy”.

As we mentioned earlier, there are two prongs to decentralized state-building -> administrative
reform and market reform. Here we talk about the relationship between customary authority and
market reform.

Efficient Anarchy as a concept explicitly considers whether state intervention in community

economic relations is wealth maximizing (Ellickson 1991; Leeson 2006, 2014), rather than
presuming the inevitability of the efficacy of state intervention

Specific example of legal titling

● Definition: ownership of real property or personal property, which stands against the
right of anyone else to claim the property. In real property, title is evidenced by a deed
(or judgment of distribution from an estate) or other appropriate document recorded in
the public records of the county.
● Private property rights are fundamental to market operations
● Conventionally agreed that the state is the most efficient and legitimate/most important
source of private property rights
○ As Bromley (2006) explains, claims to ownership without the backing of the state
are merely aspirational since the concept of a right—including a property right—
implies that individuals can call on the state to enforce it
○ legal title over a piece of property is recognized under the laws promulgated by
the state
○ State as an efficient solution to the problem of property insecurity
○ So even where there is a robust informal system of property institutions, the
typical policy option is to formalize this and bring it under the purview of the state
○ Land governance remains highly centralized under the Land Management Law,
adopted in 1965
■ creation of an Independent Land Authority, were implemented in post-
conflict era, but those reforms maintained the centralized system of land
adjudication, with authority centered on primary state courts, without any
formal role for customary governance (Alden Wily)
● But in this case, she argues that the Afghan state (a predatory state) has often used
property insecurity as a way to control people and places and expropriate form citizens
○ In addition, the current Land Management Law, revised once again in 2008, does
not provide a clear role for customary deeds or adjudication
○ More disputes -> taliban has found an area to exploit in terms of resolving
disputes
● On the other hand, she believes customary authorities respect property rights because
they are constrained by citizens and other organizations in their communities
 ○ Analysis: She doesn’t explain how exactly they are being constrained
○ anarchy in land governance may be a better public policy option than legal titling
● Non-state sources of public property rights -> hits back at the notion of the state as
being the provider of public goods and services

Customary authorities able to provide public goods also because they are able to raise local
revenue (while being constrained unlike Warlords) -> they don’t get revenue from external
sources

COMMON THEME Across both parts: don’t need to immediately formalize customary
arrangements in order to achieve a conventional state objective

Part III: Our arguments (evaluating which one is better or whether there is a third way)

While her framework does seem to present a clear alternative to the current state-building
approach, there are some issues even with this perspective. We’ll be analyzing the limits of her
framework empirically.

Empirically which framework is more accurate??

A. Limits to her argument - oversimplifies traditional state-building approach - Sab
a. How centralized has state-building actually been in the post-2001 era?

The strength of a policy approach however must be determined based on the objective. In this
case, what is the objective? This is where we think JM is being slightly over-idealistic. We think
the long-term challenge is actually more to do with stemming the power and influence of
warlords.

In this regard, we see that without formalization and explicit co-optation by the state many
informal institutions have been hijacked by strongmen and primed to benefit their particularistic
interests at the expense of local populations. In nangarhar, for instance, warlords enjoy a
privileged position by virtue of their arms and money, which hardly affords a constructive role for
traditional leaders and institutions. The case study concludes that the situation described by Jon
W. Anderson in the late 1970s and later on validated by subsequent scholarship starting in the
1990s (Rubin 1995) and well into our present time (Dorronsoro 2005; Giustozzi 2009) that 'there
are no khans anymore' continues to hold true in the case of Nangarhar. Tribal leaders like
khans and maliks have been replaced by commanders, warlords and insurgent leaders, as well
as militant mullahs, making escape from 'armed politics' a long term challenge for Afghanistan
(Giustozzi 2011)

Because of the war, the men of religion and arms saw their power and prestige increase and
'the mullahs are not short-term figures but are part of strong institutions, madrasas, and political
parties, able to mobilize much more resources than any tribes' (Dorronsoro 2012, 42).
In many ways, we feel that she constructs this authentic local authority that channels local
aspirations when even on the local level power politics is at play.

B. Even otherwise, her argument is limited, falls within the same paradigm/same biases…

This article sets out to critique the state-building tradition, however, fundamentally,
Mur ta za shvili’s position is still situated within the same liberal peace-building paradigm. While
she critiques the top-down approach which dismisses the possibility of self-governance, she
continues to adhere to much of the consensus which has often been criticized as being
ideologically charged and reminiscent of colonial indirect rule. In effect, this article continues to
drive towards the same goal of developing post-conflict states like Afghanistan in the image of
Western neoliberal states. Rather than any fundamental shift in direction, Mur ta za shvili’s
suggestion of prioritizing market institution reform demonstrates a continued emphasis on the
importance of free markets, and growth led bv the private sector as a basis for sustainable
development. It is clear that her envisaged role of the State is one purposed to constitute
efficient capitalist markets, with a policy mix centred on privatization, market deregulation and
fiscal austerity. Critics such as Julien Barbara have argued that the problem does not lie in the
investment into the State but lies in the priorities and conditions which these investments from
the international community come with. Barbara suggests that it is precisely because the state-
capacity building is with an intently neoliberal purpose that the reconstruction of the Afghan
state has struggles. Instead, he believes that investment of the State should continue but offers
the developmental state as an alternative model for international state building. The
developmental state, one which contravenes much of neoliberal consensus on the role of the
State vis-à-vis the economy and market institution structure, is argued to be better suited to
overcoming the developmental challenges that face post-conflict states. As a result, one might
argue that when what is required is a paradigmic shift, this article in only offering tweaks to the
state-building approach, still fundamentally fails to offer a path forward for Afghanistan.

To conclude, through this presentation, what we have sought to achieve is to briefly summarise
this article, and then to explore in depth the different angles present - the traditional state-
building approach and its theoretical underpinnings, her arguments and its application in
Afghanistan, and finally possible critiques and evaluations of her arguments. While
Mur ta za shvili has effectively critiqued the current state-building consensus for its
preoccupation in forming a strong centralized State, rooted in classical theories of the state,
arguably her prescriptions of “self governance” continue the faults of the international
community in assuming that one can possibly plan and dictate the developmental pathway of
Afghanistan. For example, the article, as reflected in this presentation does not address ethnic
disunity and separatism present within the Afghan state. The concept of “decentralised state
building” clearly still requires further discussion and examination. A question we would therefore
like to leave the class is “In Afghanistan, how will “decentralised state building” exacerbate
ethnic separatism?”