Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

Contention and Instability in Absence of Representation

Over the last ten years, Afghan government as well as international community has been making a choice between security and governance, representation and stability. But the assumption to choose security and stability versus governance and representation has proved fatally wrong. The kind of institutional and electoral designing that was made in Afghanistan paved the way for emergence of individual-based and personality-driven politics.

The Single Non-Transferable System (SNTV) was adopted as electoral system, which has not been conducive to development of strong political parties that could aggregate scattered demands and provide a channel for participation of citizens. In fact, this was intended to exclude political parties from the political system and electoral processes.

But what is seen is the bitter fact that patron-client networks have taken the role of political parties. President Hamid Karzai himself is not affiliated with any political party but he has established corrupt networks to provide him with the support he might need.

Although international community has backed down from their initial position of support to build a democracy in Afghanistan, they backed the institutional and electoral designing at the time when they wanted to install democracy in the country. But they did not pay attention to the fact that as in E.E. Schattschneider's word "Political parties created democracy and modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties." International community has announced to leave Afghanistan, which has given rise to concerns among Afghan people due to the fact that the country is aid-recipient and relies largely on international aid.

The concerns become more legitimate when it comes to think of the political fragmentation in the country and aggressive interferences by the neighboring countries. Lack of good governance has served as a source of increasing violence and insecurity.

Lack of representation has caused contention and political instability in the country. Today, Afghanistan is politically less stable. This is because there is not any proper channel and mechanism for participation and representation.

Both the presidential system, which has centralized power in the hand of the president, and the SNTV system, which is conducive to individualist politics are failing to provide the mechanism and channels for participation and representation. Samuel Huntington has rightly argued, "Violence, rioting and other forms of political instability are more likely to occur in political systems without strong parties than in systems with them."

Now that international community is en route back home and talks about "responsible exit," it is not possible without beginning to address the issue of good governance and representation. This will help ensure security and stability.