Institutionalising fear, legal simulation, and the logic of authoritarian survival
Governance, Coercion, and Structural Insecurity in Contemporary Afghanistan
Editorial Status
This article is published as part of an independent research and analytical initiative.
The views expressed are solely those of the author.
Published: January 2026
Abstract
The Taliban’s recent promulgation of a new “principles charter” (اصولنامه) constitutes a significant moment in the institutional consolidation of their post-2021 rule. Rather than representing a coherent legal framework grounded in jurisprudential tradition, the document functions as a mechanism for codifying coercion, normalizing arbitrariness, and sustaining authoritarian governance under conditions of acute structural insecurity. This article argues that the charter should be understood not as religious law, but as a technology of domination designed to eliminate legal predictability, suppress social autonomy, and entrench discretionary power. Drawing on institutional theory, comparative authoritarian studies, and empirical analyses of Taliban governance, this study situates the charter within broader patterns of regime survival in contexts marked by legitimacy deficits, international isolation, and internal fragmentation.
1. Moving Beyond Moral Condemnation: An Analytical Imperative
The immediate international response to the Taliban’s اصولنامه has been dominated by moral denunciation, particularly from human rights organizations and international observers (Human Rights Watch, 2024; UNAMA, 2024). While normatively justified, such reactions risk obscuring the structural logic underpinning the document.
As political theorists of authoritarianism have long noted, regimes that govern through coercion rarely rely on brute force alone. Instead, they seek to institutionalize domination by embedding violence within formalized norms and administrative routines (Arendt, 1951; Fraenkel, 1941). The Taliban’s charter must therefore be analyzed not as an ideological manifesto, but as an institutional artifact—one that reveals how power is organized, justified, and reproduced.
2. Law Without Constraint: The Simulation of Normativity
A defining feature of the charter is its absence of core legal attributes traditionally associated with rule-based governance. Comparative legal scholarship identifies several minimal conditions for law to function as a constraint on power: generality, clarity, predictability, procedural safeguards, and institutional accountability (Fuller, 1964; North, 1990).
The Taliban’s charter systematically violates these conditions. Its provisions are formulated in vague moral language, enforcement mechanisms are undefined, and interpretive authority is monopolized by unelected religious-administrative actors. In this respect, the document exemplifies what Ernst Fraenkel famously described as the “dual state”: a system in which normative rules coexist with a prerogative sphere governed by unchecked discretion (Fraenkel, 1941).
Rather than limiting authority, the charter simulates legality while preserving the regime’s capacity to act arbitrarily. This legal ambiguity is not accidental; it is a deliberate design feature that enhances control by making compliance permanently uncertain.
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3. Governing Through Uncertainty: Fear as an Institutional Resource
Institutional theorists emphasize that predictable rules reduce transaction costs and enable social coordination (North, 1990). Authoritarian regimes facing legitimacy deficits, however, often invert this logic. By producing uncertainty, they discourage collective action and inhibit resistance (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012).
The Taliban’s charter institutionalizes fear in three interrelated ways:
1. Overcriminalization: Broad and indeterminate prohibitions ensure that virtually any individual can be deemed non-compliant.
2. Selective Enforcement: Punishment is applied inconsistently, reinforcing dependence on local power brokers rather than on rights.
3. Internalized Discipline: Individuals preemptively restrict their own behavior, a dynamic Michel Foucault identified as central to modern regimes of control (Foucault, 1977).
Empirical studies of Taliban governance since 2021 indicate that such uncertainty has profoundly reshaped everyday life, particularly for women, journalists, educators, and ethnic minorities (UNAMA, 2023; Amnesty International, 2023).
4. Religion as Political Instrument, Not Jurisprudential Foundation
Although framed in Islamic terminology, the charter diverges sharply from classical Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), which historically emphasized procedural standards, evidentiary constraints, and plural interpretive traditions (Hallaq, 2009). The Taliban’s approach instead collapses jurisprudence into executive command.
Scholars of political Islam caution against conflating authoritarian practice with religious doctrine. As Olivier Roy (2004) and Talal Asad (2003) argue, religious language is frequently instrumentalized by modern regimes to sacralize power rather than to constrain it.
In the Taliban’s case, religious references function to:
• remove governance from public contestation,
• frame dissent as moral deviance,
• and displace accountability from human institutions to divine authority.
This transformation produces what can be described as theologically armored authoritarianism—a system in which religion shields power rather than regulating it.
5. Structural Insecurity and the Logic of Regime Survival
Why does the Taliban regime rely so heavily on coercive codification? Institutional political economy offers a clear answer: regimes lacking legitimacy substitute repression for consent (North, Wallis & Weingast, 2009).
The Taliban face multiple, reinforcing sources of structural insecurity:
• absence of electoral or constitutional legitimacy,
• exclusion of women and minorities from governance,
• deep economic collapse and aid dependence,
• international non-recognition and sanctions.
Under such conditions, inclusive governance becomes structurally implausible. Instead, survival depends on monopolizing violence and suppressing uncertainty through force—even as the regime paradoxically governs by uncertainty.
Historical comparisons with revolutionary regimes and post-conflict authoritarian states suggest that such systems often intensify repression precisely when they are weakest (Levitsky & Way, 2010).
6. Bureaucratizing Violence and Diffusing Responsibility
One of the charter’s most consequential effects is the normalization of coercion through administrative routinization. Hannah Arendt’s analysis of totalitarian systems emphasized how violence becomes banal when embedded in bureaucratic procedures (Arendt, 1963).
By presenting repression as rule enforcement rather than discretionary abuse, the Taliban diffuse responsibility across the administrative chain. Local enforcers become executors of “principles,” not agents of violence. This dynamic:
• lowers moral barriers to repression,
• obscures accountability,
• and stabilizes coercion as an everyday practice.
Field reports from Afghanistan confirm that enforcement practices vary widely across regions, reinforcing the charter’s function as a flexible instrument of domination rather than a uniform legal code (UNAMA, 2024).
7. Conclusion: Managed Disorder as a Mode of Rule
The Taliban’s new principles charter does not constitute a legal order in the classical sense. It establishes managed disorder—a governance system in which instability, fear, and arbitrariness are not governance failures but central mechanisms of control.
By eliminating legal certainty, instrumentalizing religion, and institutionalizing coercion, the regime constructs a political environment in which resistance is structurally inhibited and domination is continuously reproduced.
For scholars and analysts, the charter should therefore be understood not as an expression of tradition, but as a contemporary technology of power—one shaped by insecurity, exclusion, and the imperatives of authoritarian survival.
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