Mohammad Qadam Shah

This paper test the hypotheses of efficiency and public choice theories to explain the allocation of discretionary development budget among Afghan provinces during three fiscal years of 2016–17, 2017–18 and 2018–19. Findings indicate Afghanistan’s central government’s approach does not focus to achieve normative criteria of improved participation, predictability, transparency, and equity. Instead, Its central government considers certain political criteria such as political affiliation – ethnic affiliation and alignment with central government policies – political importance, and strength and weakness of local actors.

This paper examines why transition to modern democracy is challenging in developing nations like Afghanistan. It specifically explores the role of foreign powers in influencing the type of governance structure and institutions, which mostly happen not matching the local, informal institutions. Afghanistan’s experience shows that such a mismatch between formal and informal institutions–once decided and influenced by foreign powers had persistent effects in Afghanistan.

This study draws on results of an opinion survey about public views in Afghanistan regarding concepts related to federalism. We argue that concepts such as unitarism, federalism, centralization, and decentralization are highly politicized and often misunderstood when they enter the public discourse. As the survey results indicate, the association of ethnic groups with different systems of governance, although popular in Afghanistan, is misleading. A concurrent majority of ethnic groups takes a more nuanced approach of favoring central authorities on some issues, local authorities on others, and shared or divided authorities on the rest. The findings are helpful in contributing to a better understanding of how Afghans view federalism, and also by providing guidance to constitution-makers in designing institutional arrangements and distributions of power that address society’s needs.

This paper explores why Afghanistan’s centralized planning and budgeting policies, despite consistent failure to improve local participation and allocative efficiency, remained stable. Based on policy feedback theory, there are two explanations. First, policy actors, given their interests, often tend to keep the status quo unchanged; and second, policymaking processes play a facilitative role for policy actors. This paper explains how centralized policymaking processes enable policy actors to bypass specific constraints of institutional environment such as agenda setting, principalagent dynamics, information symmetry, and credible commitment to keep certain policies unchanged. With the recent collapse of Afghan state, the Taliban would most likely continue the centralized planning and budgeting policies given their past governance approach and their recent performance.

It has been long recognized that public participation plays a vital role in dealing with spatial planning laws. However, mechanisms for the inclusion of public participation have been criticized worldwide for lacking the hallmarks of actual participation, as this trend has also occurred in Indonesia. This paper aimed to analyze the significance of public participation in Indonesia’s spatial planning and whether the current Job Creation Law can solve the lack of public participation. There are no legal consequences or sanctions if the government fails to conduct public participation, while the Job Creation Law is regarded to encourage public participation by enabling the public to be actively involved in every stage of spatial planning. By employing normative research, this paper shows that the Job Creation Law reiterates the same flaws by neglecting the importance of legal consequences for not conducting public participation. The implementing regulation rests uncertainty that can reduce and discourage public participation. As the Job Creation Law was highly expected to cope with the issue, it cannot involve the public properly in spatial planning.

The establishment of the dispute settlement procedure that consists of the Panel Report and the Appellate Body has been the most remarkable characteristic of the World Trade Organization. Beside the most productive international dispute resolution process, it has consistently adopted a rule-oriented procedure in enforcing the commitments made during trade negotiations. Since the last five years, however, the dispute settlement process has confronted an existential crisis. While conflict resolution through consultations and panels continues, the process under the Appellate Body is forced to stop. The United States has impaired the appointment of additional judges to this body, preventing it from obtaining the quorum required to hear appeals. By employing a normative research, this paper aims to identify and analyze the deadlock of the appointment of the Appellate Body judges and its repercussions for international trade governance, including Indonesia. This deadlock could jeopardy the viability of global trading system as there would be no proceeding to hear the dispute at the appellate level. Some cases that involved Indonesia would also be affected, particularly if the parties are willing to continue this process to the Appellate Body.

This resource pack explores the constitution, the laws, and regulations of the Taliban. Coupled with the translation of the Taliban’s legal documents, this research provides an introduction to Taliban movement, their approach to governance, and some hints about the prospects of law and order in Afghanistan under Taliban’s rule.