Legitimacy: Who can generate it?

This is a huge question in Afghanistan. It was earlier a huge question in Iraq– but it turned out that Nuri al-Maliki had a wily (and previusly unrecognized) understanding of this question.
Does Abu Mazen understand it? Good question…
(Note: John Locke may have been a racist, an investor in the transatlantic slave trade, and had many other moral flaws. But he was, nonetheless, the prime author in western thinking of the concept that legitimacy stems from the consent of the governed.)
These days, generating “legitimacy” in Afghanistan is a deep, deep problem. So are elections, which are (a) very hard to organize, and (b) necessarily very divisive in post-conflict contents.
Back to the more inclusive loya jirga approach, maybe? December 2001.

2 thoughts on “Legitimacy: Who can generate it?”

  1. but it turned out that Nuri al-Maliki had a wily (and previusly unrecognized) understanding of this question.
    I don’t know Helena what you means by Maliki understanding?
    He still with his mate living in Green zone they can not move from it unless secretly or with heavy security forces.
    Do you mean in your question that he is doing what been told to do?

  2. Ryan Crocker. Speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School on Friday he told a large crowd not to kid themselves that America’s adventure in Iraq is all but over. “It’s still just getting under way,” he said. “Huge challenges that neither we nor they can identify, will emerge in the future.”

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