ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the key dimensions of political development and highlights the obstacles to progress that may need to be confronted. It is concerned with some of the key attitudes of ordinary people to Afghanistan's political transition. The chapter deals with the position of elites and their role in shaping events in the last decade. It is also concerned with institutional development, with ways in which the incentives and constraints generated by institutions have influenced the political environment, and with the roles of political networks in shaping the ways in which institutions have functioned. The role of political elites in Afghan politics is pervasive, yet relatively few discussions have explored the implications of this role in any detail. Afghanistan has struggled since the Bonn Agreement has been that its provisions had major implications for bureaucratic-administrative development, but little thought was given at the time to what these implications might be.
