Anthony Hyman Memorial Lecture 2021 | Afghan State-building in the Era of Counterterrorism | SOAS
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2021-05-11

The Palace Politics of 'Precarious' Sovereignty: Afghan State-building in the Era of Counterterrorism was a lecture by Dipali Mukhopadhyay (University of Minnesota) on the 5th May 2021. Find out more at https://www.soas.ac.uk/cccac/events/anthonyhyman/05may2021-anthony-hyman-memorial-lecture-2021---the-palace-politics-of-precarious-sovereignty-afghan.html

Since September 11, 2001, the United States and its allies have involved themselves in matters of governance abroad, not out of an altruistic commitment to the spread of liberal democracy, but, rather, as a function of concerns about the presumed nexus between weak statehood and globalized violent extremism. How are fledgling regimes to navigate their own internal politics as a function of their status as clients in the greater Western effort to counter terror? Their approach to governance is often characterized as weak and corrupt and, therefore, an existential obstacle to the effort at hand. But what if that venality is not a bug but, rather, a feature of state-building in the shadow of counterterrorism, given the profound limits interveners place on the very regimes they claim to embolden? Can the kind of competition management a fledgling government must pursue under these terms succeed in advancing the consolidation of the state just the same?