Derailing Democracy in Afghanistan: Elections in an Unstable Political Landscape

Since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, researchers, policymakers, and the media have failed to consider the long-term implications of the country's post-conflict elections. Based on fieldwork in provinces across the country and interviews with more than seven hundred candidates, officials, community leaders, and voters, this book builds an in-depth portrait of Afghanistan's recent elections as experienced by individuals and communities, while revealing how the elections have in fact actively contributed to instability, undermining the prospects of democracy in Afghanistan. Merging political science with anthropology, Noah Coburn and Anna Larson document how political leaders, commanders, and the new ruling elite have used elections to further their own interests and deprive local communities of access to political opportunities. They retrace presidential, parliamentary, and provincial council elections over the past decade and expose the role of international actors in promoting the polls as one-off events, detached from the broader political landscape. This approach to elections has allowed existing local powerholders to solidify their grip on resources and opportunities, derailing democratization processes and entrenching a deeper disengagement from central government. Western powers, Coburn and Larson argue, need to reevaluate their most basic assumptions about elections, democracy, and international intervention if they hope to prevent similar outcomes in the future.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Chronology: Timeline of Elections and Other Major Historical Events in Afghanistan Democracy Derailed? Map of Afghanistan 1. Understanding Elections in Afghanistan 2. Of Ballots and Boundaries: A Brief History of Political Participation in Afghanistan 3. Electing the Peace? Afghanistan's Fast-Track Democracy 4. A House of Sand: The Fallout of the 2005 Parliamentary Election 5. Engineering Elections Locally 6. The Unintended Consequences of International Support 7. Violence and Voting 8. "They Make Their Ablutions with Bottled Water": Elites and the Decline of Accountability 9. International Intervention and Aspirations of Representative Governance Notes References Index

About the Author :
Noah Coburn is a political anthropologist at Bennington College in Vermont. He has conducted fieldwork in Afghanistan since 2005, focusing on political and economic life in Afghanistan, particularly on issues of violence, conflict, and local governance. His book, Bazaar Politics: Power and Pottery in an Afghan Market Town, was the first full-length ethnography of a Tajik community in Afghanistan. He received his doctorate from the Anthropology Department at Boston University. Anna Larson is an academic researcher focusing on democratization, governance, and gender in fragile states. She worked in Afghanistan between 2004 and 2010, leading research programs in governance for the Kabul-based Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU). She has published widely on issues of democratization, political party development, elections, gender, and parliamentary dynamics. She completed her doctoral studies in postwar recovery at the University of York, UK.

Review :
A fascinating look into how Afghan politics trump Western political theory, Derailing Democracy is readable yet filled with insight. The book is a serious critique of international democracy practice and funding that needs attention well beyond those interested in Afghanistan. It highlights the consequences of letting donor expediency sideline cultural understanding, including the multifaceted role of violence. -- Ronald Neumann, United States Ambassador to Afghanistan, 2005-2007 More snake oil than panacea, the promise of elections in Afghanistan has failed to create a representative government-and worse-has displaced other tested traditions of consensus building that Afghans have long relied upon. Derailing Democracy explains why this is the case, but the lessons it draws have much wider applicability well beyond Afghanistan. -- Thomas Barfield, author of Afghanistan: A Political and Cultural History Noah Coburn and Anna Larson refuse to describe the democratization process in Afghanistan in the simplistic terms of the success or failure of elections, but instead describe how the introduction of elections by the international community altered and reshaped Afghan power dynamics, paradoxically creating a less democratic politics and a more corrupt elite. -- Scott Seward Smith, director of Afghanistan and Central Asia Programs, United States Institute of World Peace, and author of Afghanistan's Troubled Transition: Politics, Peacekeeping, and the 2004 Presidential Election