Brokers, Bureaucrats, and the Quality of Government: Understanding Development and Decay in Afghanistan and Beyond

Brokers, Bureaucrats, and the Quality of Government: Understanding Development and Decay in Afghanistan and Beyond by Khalid Homayun Nadiri A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland January 2017 ⃝c 2017 – Khalid H. Nadiri All rights reserved Abstract Why do public institutions decay or break down? And why are they often so difficult to put back together? These questions have been the subject of a large body of academic literature in the social sciences, but we still do not have a good theoretical and empirical understanding of contemporary institutional development in countries with limited human capital, material resources, and the rule of law. External or internal conflicts often do not motivate governments to develop more robust institutional structures. Ethnic differences do not necessarily given rise to institutional dysfunction or conflict. And ideology frequently does not influence whether a government is able to design and implement policies that benefit the public at large, predictably enforce laws and property rights, or develop a monopoly of control over the national territory. In order to gain deeper insight into the processes by which contemporary institutions may develop or decay, this research closely examines a longitudinal case of initial institutional im- provement and subsequent failure that is not consistent with existing explanations: Afghanistan. In this puzzling case, I show that government institutions became progressively more institution- alized during the early and middle periods of the 20th century but ultimately failed to consolidate these gains, developing a recurrently unstable political system and an unproductive economy. To make sense of these outcomes, this research proposes an explanation that centers on organizational capital and external coherence. When institutions are insulated from elite polarization and embedded in society, they are more likely to recruit and promote officials on the basis of merit, to coordinate information more effectively, and to formulate and implement mutually agreeable policies at the grass roots level. Moreover, when external support is aligned between political and development objectives, and coordinated among donor organizations, institutional upgrading in recipient countries is more likely to take place because the costs of programming, monitoring, and objectively evaluating such assistance are lower. Together, organizational capital and external support help to make sense of the haphazard path of institutional development in Afghanistan. In general, when Afghan elites have been cohesive, as was the case during middle 20th century, they have been able to develop increas- ingly merit-oriented and productive institutions of government. When elite cooperation began to break down, as happened during the late monarchy, the communist period, and the post- Bonn governments, both the army and bureaucracy became vulnerable to politicization, setting the stage for coups, insurgencies, and institutional dysfunction. External donors have also con- tributed to institutional outcomes in Afghanistan through the alignment and coordination of ii their assistance. Alignment between security and development objectives and relative coordination of foreign aid provided for institutional upgrading of both the army and bureaucracy during the middle 20th century. However, the rise of US-Soviet geopolitical competition in Afghanistan decreased aid effectiveness and produced politicization in government institutions in the final decades of the monarchy, providing the conditions for the republican and communist coups d’état of 1973 and 1978, respectively. The subsequent Soviet and post-2001 interventions in Afghanistan did not resolve this problem of divergent security and development objectives, which impeded the development of government institutions over time. PH.D. COMMITTEE Advisor: 1. Walter K. Andersen, Director, South Asia Studies, Johns Hopkins SAIS (Advisor) Chair: 2. Peter Lewis, Professor, Johns Hopkins/SAIS Other committee members: 3. Francis Fukuyama, Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow, Stanford University & Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Institute 4. Vali Nasr, Dean, Johns Hopkins/SAIS 5. Professor Nazif Shahrani, Professor, Indiana University iii Dedicated to my father and mother, Drs. Ishaq Nadiri and Tahira Homayun, and my brother, Youssof, for encourag- ing me to ask questions. iv Acknowledgements This dissertation project took shape over many years. It began with questions about Afghanistan that I had been asking myself as a teenager born and raised in the United States. It developed into vague notions of politics and society in Afghanistan, informed by consuming books and conversations with family members and friends throughout my undergraduate years. But it was only until I began to develop and research this work that I began to find my puzzle. In doing so, this dissertation clarified old questions that initially animated my interest in Afghanistan, and new ones that I accumulated along the way. While this research was, at times, solitary, it would not have been possible without the financial, intellectual, and emotional support of many institutions and individuals. The School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at The Johns Hopkins University funded my studies and fieldwork, and provided me the opportunity to instruct students inre- search methods over the course of three years. King’s College London provided generous funding to complete fieldwork in Afghanistan, and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) andIn- diana University-Bloomington offered opportunities to present portions of this research project. The desk and archival research for this dissertation was also made possible by the extraordinary support and resources I found as a researcher at the SAIS Library and the Library of Congress in Washington DC, and at the National Archives of Afghanistan (Arshif-e Melli Afghanistan) and the Afghanistan Center at Kabul University. During my fieldwork in Afghanistan, many people went out of their way to share contacts, help me secure interviews, or open up their homes to me. For that, I remain grateful to Fauzia As- sifi, Nasser Afzali, Gilles Dorronsoro, Nasser and Farshid Hakimyar, Murad Ali Madad, Jawid Noori, Fazl Omer, Wazhmah Osman, Rohullah Osmani, and Habib Zikria. I am deeply indebted to the series of Afghan government officials (former and concurrent), political activists, and members of donor governments for taking time to meet and share their accounts with me. At SAIS, I was fortunate to study with Sunil Khilnani, who encouraged me to revisit the historical antecedents to Afghanistan’s successive crises. I also had the privilege to learn from Peter Lewis, whose seemingly boundless knowledge of comparative development and democra- tization aided the framing and conclusions of this dissertation, and Vali Nasr, who offered deep scholarly guidance and first-hand knowledge of US policy formulation toward Afghanistan. I am also extremely grateful to have worked with Francis Fukuyama, who shaped much of my thinking about the origins of modern political institutions and the variety of ways in which in- v stitutions can decay. Finally, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my principal adviser, Walter K. Andersen, who encouraged me to write for a wider audience of readers and approach research with a healthy dose of pragmatism. Together with Minnie, he offered unflagging enthusiasm and wonderful dinners to keep me going. This dissertation would not have taken its current form without the critical influence of four mentors and colleagues who pushed me to rethink many of my priors and revisit key episodes in Afghan history: Saadollah Ghaussy, Omar Samad, Marvin Weinbaum, and Nazif Shahrani. Together, they shared their vast first-hand knowledge of past and present Afghan governments, and offered detailed insight into the perspectives of key personalities and episodes in Afghan politics. I am also indebted to friends and SAIS Ph.D. colleagues who supported and encouraged me throughout my studies: Baktash Ahadi, Ryan Brasher, David Bulman, Greg Fuller, John Gans Jr., Massud Ghaussy, Sulaiman Ghaussy, Ross Herbert, Sabina Henneberg, Teddy Kahn, Amanda Kerrigan, Seth Korman, Michael Leung, Courtney Rickert McCaffrey, Tom McCaffrey, Kian Messkoub, Anit Mukherjee, Amin Nojan, Khorshied Nusratty, Timur Nusratty, Avinash Paliwal, Leela Ramnath, Neil Shenai, Nancy Tran, Constantino Xavier, Zack Zimbalist, and Marlene Vidaurre. Finally, I would not have been able to complete this dissertation without the unconditional support and love of my parents Drs. Ishaq Nadiri and Tahira Homayun, my brother Youssof, and my extended family. My father, in particular, not only provided unflinching encouragement for this endeavor, but also profoundly shaped the intellectual trajectory of this project by allow- ing me to draw on his academic expertise and experiences in Afghanistan. I dedicate this work to them. Washington, DC, January 29, 2017. vi Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgementsv Abbreviations xv 1 Introduction1 1.1 Summary of Argument and Methods7 1.2 Contributions to Theories of Institutions and Studies of Afghanistan 12 1.3 Contributions to Practice 15 1.4 Plan of the Dissertation 16 2 Understanding Contemporary Institutional Development 19 2.1 Explanations of Institutional Development 20 2.2 Developing Institutions: Organizational Capital and External Alignment

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