NSA Professor Tom Johnson has recently had two new articles on Afghanistan published. The first is coauthored with Dr. Larry Goodwin and titled “Political Legitimacy: Why We Are Failing in Afghanistan,” published by Strategy Bridge. In the article, the authors review the history of Afghanistan from the 1970s on as background for the state’s problems with legitimacy. They also discuss U.S. strategic and governance efforts in Afghanistan. Finally, the authors conclude that the country “needs a serious anti-corruption campaign, effective service delivery, and national security institutions that see themselves as protectors of the people and not just an ethnolinguistic group or political faction” as well as breathing room and greater internal revenue.

The second article, “The Myth of Afghan Electoral Democracy: The Irregularities of the 2014 Presidential Election,” Professor Johnson systematically assesses the 2014 Afghanistan presidential election, the first transfer of power from President Hamid Karzai to an elected successor, using provincial voting data as well as explicit data from polling centers. He finds some “extremely strange voting patterns.” In combination with other analyses, his results raise the very real possibility that the Afghan 2014 election results were illegitimate.

To read the article “Political Legitimacy,” click here. 

To read the “The Myth of Afghan Electoral Democracy” and its accompanying appendix of data, click here.