Afghanistan has had a difficult time transitioning to democracy. The country has endured years of conflict and invasions. Formed originally as a buffer state between the Russian and British empires, the country has had little experience with institutions building. The state was already weak to begin with, but had been hollowed out further after years of war and destruction. The political development of the country had also never got off the ground.  Years of authoritarian rule under Mohammed Zahir Shah (the king), was followed by a Soviet backed regime, and later the Taliban in the late 1990s. As a result, the Afghan people have not had much experience with democratic practices and norms. 

Thus the biggest institutional and cultural change would be the implementation of national elections for both the president and the parliament. The 2001 Bonn Agreement called for the scheduling of such elections in 2004. The 2004 presidential elections saw the election of US-backed leader Hamid Karzai while delayed parliamentary elections resulted in the election of warlords and their followers gaining the majority of seats and accusations of fraud.  Subsequent presidential elections in 2009 faced the same accusations of widespread ballot stuffing and intimidation. Over 1 million votes were never recorded.

The 2010 parliamentary elections also faced similar types of problems. During the run-up to the elections the Taliban intimidated villages to prevent them from voting. Anyone whose finger had indelible ink from voting were warned that their fingers would be cut off. More than 20 candidates were barred from participating due to alleged fraudulent activity, which was suspicious given that 19 of the candidates were in the lead based on partial election results.

The April 2014 presidential election was a milestone for the country. It was the first time that incumbent president Hamid Karzai would not be allowed to run. The election however was mired in allegations of fraud that tainted the final results. This led to a recount of 1,900 of the 23,000 polling stations on the request of frontrunner, Abdullah Abdullah. Ashraf Ghani was declared the winner on September 2014. These allegations of fraud reduced Afghan confidence in the electoral processes and the value of their votes. A year later the country was tasked with electing a new parliament for the second time since the Taliban fell in 2001. The elections were organized by the Afghan Independent Election Commission (IEC) which was funded by the UN Development Programme.

There are several challenges that Afghanistan continues to face in implementing its electoral processes. First, the electoral system which Afghanistan currently uses may not be a good fit for such a diverse country. The electoral system used in Afghanistan is the single non-transferable vote system (SNTV) in which candidates stand as individuals, not as members of a party list. Thus, each voter casts a ballot for only one candidate for the lower house of the parliament, even though there can be multiple representatives per province. For instance, in the 2005 parliamentary elections the number of candidates per province varied from two candidates in the Panjsher province to 33 candidates in the Kabul province. The same electoral system has been used in the 2010 elections. There is a well-established literature on the political consequences of electoral laws and, specifically, electoral systems in established democracies. A number of influential studies have also emerged on the importance of electoral system design in new democracies or transition states. Thus, the choice of electoral system is considered to be one of the most important institutional decisions to be made in any democratizing country because, if chosen correctly, the suitable electoral system would contribute to fair representation, strengthen voter–candidate relations, help institutionalizing and stabilizing the party system, limit polarization and alienation of certain social groups, and, in general, would lead to political stability and democratic consolidation. (See Chapter 15 for more discussion about electoral systems and institutional design in new democracies.)

In the Afghan case, some experts indicate that the country needs such an electoral system that would translate votes into seats in a more proportional way. However, the country might simply not be ready for a proportional representation (PR) electoral system as the party system is still quite weak and very few candidates choose to declare their affiliation with a particular political party. Some reports suggest that political parties are not popular in Afghanistan and are among the least trusted political institutions by the population because of bad practices employed by the mujahideen parties and their links with the foreign governments during the anti-Soviet war. Political parties are not based on political ideologies but are based on ethnic and tribal ties. Politicians appeal to voters on sectarian and ethnic appeals and personal connections rather than concrete issues.  In the 2010 elections, former mujahideen comprised of at least 20 per cent of the candidates, who used their power and influence to affect voter preferences. The fact that many of the candidates are former mujahideen fighters, who beat back the Soviet invasion in the 1980s, is not helping the emerging Afghan party system.

There also continues to be concerns about security, where terrorist attacks against civilians have not dissipated. In the 2005 elections seven candidates were killed by the Taliban and another 15 people were killed in election-day violence and turnout was only 57 per cent.  Prior to the 2010 elections, attacks across the country by extremist groups resulted in 14 people being killed. The IEC reported that at least 8 per cent of the 5,816 polling stations had not been opened due to security concerns. Voter turnout dipped even lower to 40 per cent as a result. An attack on 22 April 2018 in a Shiite neighbourhood of Kabul killed 50 and wounded 120 civilians while they were in line to receive their voter identity cards. Hundreds of voter registrations centres in Taliban-controlled provinces have failed to open. The Afghan government only control 56 per cent of the country, with 30 per cent contested and 14 per cent under insurgent control. These continued insurgent attacks have not only undermined voter registration efforts but made Afghan citizens fear any type of political participation. These fears have translated into low levels of satisfaction with democracy. An annual survey conducted by the Asia Foundation found that satisfaction with democracy in Afghanistan has dropped tremendously. In 2006, 77 per cent of Afghans were satisfied with democracy. By 2017 there were only 57 per cent who were satisfied with democracy.

It is difficult to characterize Afghanistan as an electoral democracy because the country’s elections are by no means free and fair. The fact that elections take place in a relatively regular and timely manner is certainly an encouraging one, but this is only one part of the job for the Afghan would-be democratizers. Afghanistan has been trying to reform its voter registration laws, and now voters must register again and will receive new voting identification cards. But it is unclear that these reforms will be implementable. The hardest part is to make sure that elections are meaningful and represent true contests between the political elites. And this is something that the Afghan government has yet to achieve.

Critical thinking questions

• What is the role of elections in a transition state?
• What is the ‘fallacy of electoralism’? Is holding of regular and fair elections sufficient for democratization/democratic consolidation to occur? Explain your position.
• What is electoral democracy? What attributes do electoral democracies have? What are the weak points of electoral democracies? Is Afghanistan an electoral democracy? Is the concept of electoral democracy useful for analysing hybrid regimes in the world?
• How do you conceptualize democracy? In minimalist or maximalist terms? Why?