The Power of Bargaining: Elections, Rents and War-to-Peace Transitions in Afghanistan (2001-2021)

Afghanistan's post-2001 elections were meant to swap bullets for ballots. Yet each presidential vote provoked new disputes, shifting politico-military alliances and, in 2021, the collapse of the political order built after the international intervention. This fellowship asks why those polls failed to deliver the stability and legitimacy donors expected and shows, through this cautionary case, what external interventions should not do. My doctoral research is grounded in more than fifty confidential interviews with Afghan presidential candidates, opposition figures and other key power-brokers. Their accounts point to a clear pattern: in war-torn and divided societies, elections are not one-off gateways to democracy but recurring bargaining rounds in which powerful actors renegotiate access to state resources and government positions. The relative bargaining power of each electoral camp—set during pre-election coalition formation and endorsement deals—largely shapes what happens on election day and afterwards. When an incumbent and external sponsors make their backing crystal clear, rival elites accept side-payments and step back; when that backing is ambiguous, violence—or the threat of it—is used to secure a better deal. Grasping this sequence is essential if future peace-support missions are to avoid Afghanistan's fate. During the twelve-month fellowship, I will translate these findings into outputs that serve scholars, policymakers and the Afghan public. First, I will write a book, The Power of Bargaining: Elections, Rents and War-to-Peace Transitions in Afghanistan, and publish a peer-reviewed article comparing elections in the midst of war. Second, I will prepare a concise policy brief and host a practitioner workshop for officials in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, relevant UN agencies and democracy-assistance NGOs, distilling how the configuration of pre-election elite coalitions—and the external signals that inflate or shrink their holding-power gap—rather than election-day logistics or anti-fraud technology, determines whether a vote ends in swift concession or in months of destabilising dispute. Third, I will script and release five short video explainers in Dari (Afghan Persian) and Pashto so that Afghans inside and outside the country can access—and debate—the research in their own languages. The fellowship is hosted by Durham University's Global Security Institute under the mentorship of Professor Roger Mac Ginty, a leading scholar-practitioner in peacebuilding whose networks link research to decision-makers. Durham's advanced training programme will deepen my skills in causal inference and in translating research for policy professionals, whilst a light teaching load (no more than six hours per week) will strengthen my publication record and classroom experience. By reframing elections as iterative power bargains rather than democratic finish lines, the project sharpens debates on democratic resilience, state fragility and external intervention. It offers donors concrete guidance on how pre-election coalition deals and external endorsements condition the risk of violence, whilst giving Afghans—journalists, students and activists—the tools to scrutinise future political openings more effectively.