Erosion of Legitimacy: The Vicious Cycle of Disputed Elections and Poor Governance in Afghanistan

This article focuses on the interplay between disputed elections, political legitimacy, and effective governance in fragile contexts like Afghanistan, using the case of Panjshir Province to illustrate complex center-periphery dynamics. I draw evidence from the unsuccessful police operation (conducted by security forces deployed from the capital) against the fugitive Keramuddin Keram in Panjshir, which led to a standoff with armed residents, just a year before the collapse of the central government in August 2021. The reactions to the operation were part of a larger, much longer set of grievances that had come to define the relationship between Panjshir and Kabul. Panjshiri elites who once constituted one of the main pillars of power in the early post-2001 order, had increasingly found themselves marginalized, and their four attempts to win the presidency failed. I argue that the unsuccessful police operation is reflective of the way entrenched grievances intersect with the perceived (il)legitimacy of government in consequential ways. Drawing on interviews and observations from fieldwork (2019–2020) and the existing scholarly literature, this article problematizes arguments that reduce the challenges of subnational governance to push-and-pull between the central government and local elites. It draws attention instead to how disputed elections shape, animate and entrench local perceptions about the political system. It also calls into question the externally-led state and democracy-building trajectory, which overvalues the role of competitive elections in advancing the legitimacy of the client government.