WHO GOVERNS KABUL ? EXPLAINING URBAN POLITICS IN A POST -WAR CAPITAL CITY

Abstract

Amid intensifying international interconnectedness and simultaneous assertions that cities are positioned to supersede national governance, capital cities constitute collision points between political control and exclusion, wealth and poverty, as well as tradition and modernity. The ever-growing importance of cities as centres of political and economic power and as resources in developing countries is also increasingly prompting contenders to concentrate both peaceful and violent political campaigns in spaces of urban primacy. However, ensuing city-centred struggles are not only about resources and access to power but also take issue with the meanings and functions of the nation as a whole. It is argued that the result of such multi-layered conflicts in capital cities produce a kind of ‘over-determination ’ of political deliberation, putting additional weight on already ambitious urban development and governance agendas. This is especially true in post-war capital cities, where resulting ‘sovereign conflicts ’ at the fault lines of local, national and international institutions shape political and economic agendas in and for post-war capital cities. Supercharged with donor monies and reconstruction machineries, these cities once