Legitimacy and Statebuilding: Comparing Provincial Reconstruction Teams

• In Event: Building State Legitimacy

Abstract

Do policy, strategy, or tactical choices significantly impact the outcome of an armed statebuilding operation, or are these operations determined before they begin based on the pre-existing conditions of the target country? (structure versus choice) To address this question, Afghanistan is divided into its component regions to control for a multitude of differences between them. The legitimacy generated for provincial governments in two analyzed provinces are then compared to all provinces in the same region (during the US led intervention). Each of the three regions presented in this article illuminated different aspects about the theoretical question. Similar reconstruction strategies in the North show how deterministic prior circumstances are to the outcomes. In the West, two different reconstruction strategies were applied to very similar provinces with no significant difference in the legitimacy they were able to produce. The South provides the only cases where political, strategic, and tactical choices had an impact. Helmand province bore the brunt of the coalition’s military surge, and subsequently, showed much higher levels of resentment. The evidence suggests that armed statebuilding operations are overwhelmingly determined by pre-existing structural conditions, but that there is a small window of opportunity for choices to have an impact (both positive and negative).

Author

• Adam Wunische, Boston College