DOI: 10.5064/f6tzyr0y
title: Data for: Why efforts to promote the rule of law in Afghanistan failed

description: &lt;b&gt;This is an &lt;a href="https://qdr.syr.edu/ati"&gt;Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (ATI)&lt;/a&gt; data project. &lt;/b&gt; &lt;h3&gt;The annotated article can be viewed on the &lt;a href="https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/ISEC_a_00285#annotations:group:2Nopp9mx" &gt;publisher's website&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;h3/&gt;
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Promoting the rule of law in Afghanistan has been a major U.S. foreign policy objective since the collapse of the Taliban regime in late 2001. Policymakers invested heavily in building a modern democratic state bound by the rule of law as a means to consolidate a liberal post-conflict order. Eventually, justice-sector support also became a cornerstone of counterinsurgency efforts against the reconstituted Taliban. Yet a systematic analysis of the major U.S.-backed initiatives from 2004 to 2014 finds that assistance was consistently based on dubious assumptions and questionable strategic choices. These programs failed to advance the rule of law even as spending increased dramatically during President Barack Obama's administration. Aid helped enable rent seeking and a culture of impunity among Afghan state officials. Despite widespread claims to the contrary, rule-of-law initiatives did not bolster counterinsurgency efforts. The U.S. experience in Afghanistan highlights that effective rule-of-law aid cannot be merely technocratic. To have a reasonable prospect of success, rule-of-law promotion efforts must engage with the local foundations of legitimate legal order, which are often rooted in nonstate authority, and enjoy the support of credible domestic partners, including high-level state officials.
description: &lt;h3&gt;Case Selection&lt;/h3&gt;
The core of the empirical work of this article is a case study of U.S. engagement aimed at promoting the rule of law from the intervention in late 2001 through to the election of President Karzai’s successor in 2014. 

Afghanistan forms a compelling case study because it has had a major role in US foreign policy since 2001. Afghanistan’s connection with the 11 September 2001 Al Qaeda terrorist attacks and major international involvement in state-building after the fall of Taliban government in 2002 and the subsequent emphasis placed on rebuilding the country in a way that will prevent it serving as a haven for launching terrorist attacks have ensured that it will be of significant interest to policymakers in the US and beyond for the foreseeable future. Afghanistan constitutes a crucial test case for international state-building efforts as well as a rich source of “lessons learned” for policymakers.

This article looks at U.S. rule-of-law initiatives systematically over the arch of largescale U.S. engagement. It also surveys the Afghan justice sector holistically through a focused, structured comparison of major U.S. rule-of-law programming over time.

&lt;h3&gt;Methods&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Causal inference is based on process tracing.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Here it involves a close examination of the major US initiatives to promote the rule of law in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2014. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Process tracing demands extensive data. For my research, the availability of robust contemporary documentation and the ability to interview key actors makes process tracing feasible. It allows for additional methodological rigor, assists in both the generation of new insights and in testing their plausibility as well as increasing the explanatory power of potential explanations, while helping to eliminate competing accounts.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;The main sources of data used for identifying the relevant causal process observations are primary sources produced by relevant states, donors, NGOs, and other actors (for example, program reports and evaluations, strategy documents, and legislation), anonymous interviews with key informants, and secondary literature.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Materials produced by implementers, donors, and government agencies can illuminate their strategies, activities and goals. They reflect assumptions regarding causal mechanisms as well as the link between their activities and desired change. These materials articulate clear views on the motivations of key actors and institutions, which can then be subject to investigation. International judicial state-builders are quite forthright about their objectives (though not necessarily their motivations). This makes it possible to trace the evolution of rule of law efforts over time and how actors responded, or failed to respond, to unfolding events, as well as to critically examine the ends pursued and means selected.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;The bulk of interviews were conducted were extensive background interviews in Kabul, Afghanistan during January and February 2014 with additional interviews over Skype. It also drew on insights from a previous research visit to Kabul in May 2009.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;In situations that were unclear or contested, the strategy for making causal inferences was triangulation.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;In no instance has a claim been accepted based on an anonymous interview that has not been collaborated by another functionally independent source.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Overview of Materials Included in the QDR&lt;/h3&gt;

The material included in the repository focuses on the primary source written material cited in the published article.