| This dissertation provides an assessment of statebuilding practices in Afghanistan, focusing on practitioner experiences in infrastructure and rural development projects. After numerous interventions and decades of international development, Afghanistan remains a failed state. This dissertation uses Afghanistan as a case study to address reasons why internationalized statebuilding projects in the post-Cold War period remain problematic and fraught with difficulty. Due to a Western denial of real responsibility, which casts international intervention as neutral assistance to nation states who must ultimately take responsibility for the success or failure of the policies implemented, Afghanistan's post-2001 transition into a standalone democracy has suffered considerable perverse effects and setbacks. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.). |
