Taliban's return to power in August of 2021 caused everyone to ask why the two decades of institution building in Afghanistan failed. This book investigates the root causes of failed reforms in an important area of reform: trade and credit institutions. It explains why the efforts to reform and regulate the economic institutions in Afghanistan failed and what we can learn from their failure. It draws on more than eighty interviews with Afghan merchants, business leaders, money dealers, and government officials in five major provinces of Afghanistan to identify the barriers to access to credit and to understand the performance of formal institutions (banks) and their informal counterparts. This book finds that Afghan merchants were often unable to benefit from the offerings of formal institutions for three reasons: a highly volatile business climate, uncertain contract enforcement, and an unsupportive property rights system. Several informal institutions have emerged that alleviate some of the credit constraints on Afghan merchants. These informal institutions include risk-sharing trade credit operations, money dealers’ short-term working capital loans, Gerawee, and Sar qufli. Although these informal institutions have helped Afghan merchants survive, they are unable to support economic growth. This book argues that countries like Afghanistan should solve their institutional dilemma by adopting an approach which the author calls "Grounded Institutional Reform." Using this approach, a country would formalize existing informal institutions, a development that would vastly increase their effectiveness. While this book focuses on credit and trade in Afghanistan, the analysis of "formalizing the informal" can easily be extended to solve other types of economic problems in similarly situated countries. This book should be of great interest to scholars, policymakers, and development workers in the field of law, finance, and development.

The Foreign Affairs Committee concludes that the UK has an extremely close and valuable relationship with the US in specific areas of co-operation, for instance in the fields of intelligence and security; that the historic, trading and cultural links between the two countries are profound; and that the two countries share common values in their commitment to freedom, democracy and the rule of law. However, the use of the phrase 'the special relationship' in its historical sense, to describe the totality of the ever-evolving UK-US relationship, is potentially misleading, and its use should be avoided. The report examines key areas of co-operation: military and defence; intelligence; security; nuclear. Other sections cover: the FCO's US network (under unacceptable financial pressure); the British political approach to UK-US relations; the future of the relationship. The Committee believe the UK must continue to position itself closely alongside the US in the future, recognising the many mutual benefits which flow from close co-operation in particular areas. But the UK needs to be less deferential and more willing to say no to the US on those issues where the two countries' interests and values diverge.

In the form of a lexicon, artist Mariam Ghani describes, together with her father, the renowned anthropologist and political scientist Ashraf Ghani, the cycle of repeated collapse and recovery that Afghanistan has undergone over the course of the twentieth century. The lexicon comprises seventy-one mostly illustrated terms that include central figures and places, words that carry a specific (political) meaning in the Afghan context, and entries on recurring events and defining themes. The notebook's point of departure is a detailed reflection on the reign of King Amanullah Khan (1919–29), whose successes and failures yielded a model for reformers who succeeded him. These thoughts are followed by a series of terms related to, among other things, Dar ul-Aman Palace, now a ruin, which was part of Amanullah's design for a "new city," and which characterized—as a space of exception, a center of conflict, a prototype for future plans, and a symbol of past failures—twentieth-century Afghan planning policy. Mariam Ghani (*1978) is an artist based in New York and Kabul. Ashraf Ghani (*1949), author of Fixing Failed States (in English) and A Window to a Just Order (in Dari and Pashtu), lives in Kabul. Language: English

The relationship between aid and state building is highly complex and the effects of aid on weak states depend on donors’ interests, aid modalities and the recipient’s pre-existing institutional and socio-political conditions. This book argues that, in the case of Afghanistan, the country inherited conditions that were not favourable for effective state building. Although some of the problems that emerged in the post-2001 state building process were predictable, the types of interventions that occurred—including an aid architecture which largely bypassed the state, the subordination of state building to the war on terror, and the short horizon policy choices of donors and the Afghan government—reduced the effectiveness of the aid and undermined effective state building. By examining how foreign aid affected state building in Afghanistan since the US militarily intervened in Afghanistan in late 2001 until the end of President Hamid Karzai’s first term in 2009, this book reveals the dynamic and complex relations between the Afghan government and foreign donors in their efforts to rebuild state institutions. The work explores three key areas: how donors supported government reforms to improve the taxation system, how government reorganized the state’s fiscal management system, and how aid dependency and aid distribution outside the government budget affected interactions between state and society. Given that external revenue in the form of tribute, subsidies and aid has shaped the characteristics of the state in Afghanistan since the mid-eighteenth century, this book situates state building in a historical context. This book will be invaluable for practitioners and anyone studying political economy, state building, international development and the politics of foreign aid.

This book addresses critical questions about how legal development works in practice. Can law be employed to shape behavior as a form of social engineering, or must social behavior change first, relegating legal change to follow as ratification or reinforcement? And what is legal development's source of legitimacy if not modernization? But by the same token, whose version of modernization will predominate absent a Western monopoly on change? There are now legal development alternatives, especially from Asia, so we need a better way to ask the right questions of different approaches primarily in (non-Western) Asia, Africa, the Islamic world, plus South America. Incoming waves of change like the 'Arab spring' lie on the horizon. Meanwhile, debates are sharpening about law's role in economic development versus democracy and governance under the rubric of the rule of law. More than a general survey of law and modernization theory and practice, this work is a timely reference for practitioners of institutional reform, and a thought-provoking interdisciplinary collection of essays in an area of renewed practical and scholarly interest. The contributors are a distinguished international group of scholars and practitioners of law, development, social sciences, and religion with extensive experience in the developing world.

South Asia has experienced a long period of robust economic growth. While many regulatory policies have helped usher in this prosperous growth, some markets have plateaued due to hardships such as the decline in foreign remittance and international credit lines, and a contraction of exports. To continue to grow, the nations in this region must begin to integrate into the globalized world economy. Financial Market Regulations and Legal Challenges in South Asia addresses the difficulties and challenges of the regulatory environment in South Asia. This research-based publication outlines the apparent issues and resolutions as these developing nations transition into global economic players. This book is an excellent resource for policy makers, researchers and students in the financial field, government officials, bankers, and financial market regulators.

USAK Yearbook of Politics and International Relations, the fifth edition of which was published in 2012, is an annual, peer-reviewed, English language scholarly journal. The Editorial Office of the Yearbook is in the central building of the International Strategic Research Organization (USAK) in Ankara, Turkey. However, the Yearbook is an independent publication in terms of scholarly research and the editors decide its publication policies. Esteemed academics dispassionately evaluate all submitted articles to ensure their conformity with academic rules and formats. The review reports are confidentially stored in the Yearbook's archives for five years. While the focal points of published articles converge on international relations, international law and political science, essentially; subjects regarding Area studies of the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Europe are also spared considerable space. Additionally, pieces concerning international security, sociology, and anthropological studies are also regularly included in the Yearbook. Now entering its sixth year of compilation, the Yearbook provides a scholarly platform for academics and researchers throughout the world. The USAK Yearbook of Politics and International Relations is gifted to every dual subscriber to the Review of International Law and Politics (UHP) and the Journal of Central Asia and the Caucasus (OAKA) after their first year of subscription. Indexes through which our followers can browse and access Yearbook are as follows: Hein Online, International Political Science Abstracts (IPSA), PAIS International, CSA Worldwide Political Science Abstracts, CSA Sociological Abstracts, CSA Social Services Abstracts and ULAKBİM.

This book examines the evolution, impact, and future prospects of the Security Sector Reform (SSR) model in conflict-affected countries in the context of the wider debate over the liberal peace project. Since its emergence as a concept in the late 1990s, SSR has represented a paradigm shift in security assistance, from the realist, regime-centric, train-and-equip approach of the Cold War to a new liberal, holistic and people-centred model. The rapid rise of this model, however, belied its rather meagre impact on the ground. This book critically examines the concept and its record of achievement over the past two decades, putting it into the broader context of peace-building and state-building theory and practice. It focuses attention on the most common, celebrated and complex setting for SSR, conflict-affected environments, and comparatively examines the application and impacts of donor-supported SSR programing in a series of conflict-affected countries over the past two decades, including Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The broader aim of the book is to better understand how the contemporary SSR model has coalesced over the past two decades and become mainstreamed in international development and security policy and practice. This provides a solid foundation to investigate the reasons for the poor performance of the model and to assess its prospects for the future. This book will be of much interest to students of international security, peacebuilding, statebuilding, development studies and IR in general.

George Bernard Shaw once said that reasonable people adapt themselves to the world but unreasonable people adapt the world to themselves. In a sense, this book explores how these so-called ‘unreasonable people’ may interact to re-fashion the world around them in fragile economic development. Drawing on empirical research in the volatile and traditional context of Afghanistan, the study investigates the challenge of poor women’s participation in business and diverse outcomes for local development. Institutional Innovation and Change in Value Chain Development takes a unique look at nuanced institutional phenomena through the lens of social institutions, with a subtle appreciation of the interaction of structure and agency. Drawing on in-depth qualitative research in Afghanistan, the case studies specifically investigate the transformation of the women’s norm of purdah, and the subsequent development of new market institutions in three women’s enterprises. Shedding new light on the opaque process of institutional change, the research shows that external actors (such as NGOs) can both initiate and guide institutional development in fragile environments. Yet there may be limitations to their endeavours, with strong resistance from local power holders. Meanwhile, dominant entrepreneurs are shown to play a major role in fostering institutional development pathways. This influences the scope of inclusion and exclusion in enterprise and value chains, and broader streams of socio-economic development.