| Abstract: | "On the October 7, 2001 American and British forces began to bomb the Taliban's positions in Afghanistan. On November 14, 2001, the nation's capital Kabul fell and the war appeared to be over. Afghanistan was liberated. Life quickly resumed to the streets and the victorious parties met in Bonn, Germany to to strike a deal for Afghanistan's future and the establishment of a new Afghan state, which governed on the basis of human rights as well as democratic, traditional, and Islamic principles. They promised a state that the people of Afghanistan as well as the international community would see as legitimate. In the winter of 2020, after fifteen years, the United States was negotiating a withdrawal from Afghanistan with the Taliban, which occured in full in September 2021. Why did the Afghan state never gain legitimacy? Will the Taliban, now formally in power, suffer a similar crisis of legitimacy? In Waiting for Dignity, Florian Weigand investigates the composition of legitimacy and authority in Afghanistan, confronting the common assumptions of how to build legitimacy in conflict zones by delivering services, holding elections, or adopting traditional institutions. He argues that in Afghanistan's volatile political order, people are suspicious of all authorities and the claims they make. Instead, people judge authorities on the basis of personal experiences when interacting with them, waiting for dignity and hoping for interactions that show that authorities want to serve the public rather than exploit it. The extent to which people perceive interactions to be fair, inclusive, and respectful is vital for the construction of lasting legitimacy and matters more than how an authority gained power, the ideology it advocates, or the scale of service delivery. Waiting for Dignity is based on more than 250 interviews with ordinary Afghans as well as well as various authorities in Afghanistan including insurgents, warlords, and government officials"-- |
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