Improving the fragile states' budget transparency: Lessons from Afghanistan

What drives improvements in the budget transparency of fragile states? By investigating the dynamics of budget transparency in post 9/11 Afghanistan, this paper demonstrates that factors such as budget reforms, aid conditionality, legislature and civil society (and media) demands for information partially explain the improvements in budget transparency, as measured by Open Budget Index. It is important how these factors interact. Government ownership, continuity and stakeholders' interests thus matter. Budget transparency tends to improve when the government leads the budget reforms, continuity in the reforms exists and multiple actors' interests - government, legislature, donors and civil society - are aligned and reinforce the transparency efforts. This paper may offer two main lessons for fragile states. Firstly, the implementation of governance reforms, though complex, is possible in fragile states. When stakeholders easily understand a set of reforms, ownership is clearly defined and actors have consensus about the expected outcomes, the likelihood of success tends to be high. Secondly, as spending through the recipient budget tend to be more transparent than donors direct spending, as far as concern about transparency, it is more efficient for donors to channel a greater portion of their aid through the recipient budget

The institutions and policies of aid-recipient countries and aid effectiveness: The case of Afghanistan

The aid effectiveness principles have limits if the recipient is fragile. The problem of relevance exists if the recipient has an authoritarian or totalitarian regime. In situations of weak statehood and fragility, a large portion of aid would likely bypass the state because of high demand for service delivery, weak state capacity and because the principles exclude military assistance. If a regime lacks national and international legitimacy and violates citizens' fundamental rights and international norms, aligning aid to the objectives of such a regime may be counterproductive. However, the termination of aid will hurt people who already suffer. This paper argues that it is imperative to redefine the aim of aid and adopt a more flexible set of principles. Evidence for this is provided by examining the interactions between donors and recipients looking at the case of Afghanistan during two periods: democratic regime 2002-2021, totalitarian regime 2021 onward

Aid Paradoxes in Afghanistan: Building and Undermining the State

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

Continuity, aid and revival: State building in South Korea, Taiwan, Iraq and Afghanistan

Under what conditions does foreign aid in a post-conflict environment foster state building and consolidation? This paper argues that in the aftermath of war for an aid regime to reinforce state building it needs to ensure continuity in strength of the state and to use recipient mechanisms and finance policies that generate a greater state capacity. The existence and continuity of a Weberian state increases the likelihood of effective state building, regardless of the aid regime. If the state is a relatively strong state with a Weberian bureaucracy, aid can further reinforce it when aid is spent through national systems, with efforts to ensure that the recipient leaders reinforce state effectiveness by implementing policies that require greater state capacity. However, even under more adverse initial conditions - a neo-patrimonial state - the aid regime and state building strategy matter. Under these conditions aid undermines state building if it induces discontinuity in the existing state capacity and creates parallel institutions to those of the state. With these policies, leaders will be preoccupied with the politics of patronage that maintain a weak state. Evidence for this argument is provided through pairwise comparison of state building patterns between South Korea and Taiwan, on the one hand, and Iraq and Afghanistan, on the other. These countries received significant amounts of aid in different periods; their situations differed on the key variables of my theory; and they achieved diverse results

Petersberg Papers on Afghanistan and the Region

Since the 2001 Bonn Conference and the subsequent extensive international engagement in Afghanistan ¿ both military and civilian ¿much has changed and much has been achieved. Afghans can point to significant successes in their country, from health and education, to reconstruction and development of infrastructure. But since Bonn, the situation in Afghanistan in 2008-2009 is far from where many expected it to be. The London Compact of 2006 began the second phase in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, emphasizing security, governance and rule of law, and social and economic development. But since then, there has been a considerable decrease in security, an increase in Taliban presence and operations, an increase in civilian casualties, an increase in corruption, and no substantial reduction of the drug trade. The August 2009 presidential elections only intensified the discussions about the future of Afghanistan, the role of the international community. created a foundation for modern Afghanistan. This report considers these issues from domestic, regional, and international perspectives.Carnegie Corporation of New Yor