Creating a stable Afghanistan was never fundamentally a military problem. States survive or collapse on the strength of their political foundations — and Afghanistan is rough terrain for establishing a viable democratic state. As two political scientists who, between 2004 and 2012, advised the U.S. State Department on institutional design in Afghanistan, we witnessed multiple missteps that helped seal Afghan democracy’s fate. At a very basic level, the founders of the new state chose the wrong governing institutions — ones that were either unsuited to existing power dynamics or that were intrinsically likely to foster division rather than compromise.

The United States had unparalleled influence on the design of Afghanistan’s new democracy, so it bears considerable responsibility for these errors. It oversaw the creation of a highly centralized national government rather than investing in regional autonomy that better reflected conditions on the ground. It rejected a parliamentary system in favor of a presidential system — a kind of government that fosters a winner-take-all posture among politicians and the electorate, and self-aggrandizement in the president himself. Afghanistan’s founders — under American influence — also embraced a method of voting in multi-member districts that political scientists know is intrinsically flawed. The constitution’s designers, moreover, discouraged the development of party politics, even though parties underpin democracy by organizing factions and facilitating cooperation.

These choices generated powerful incentives for a politics of individualism and factionalism rather than coalition building. All of this was well known, and noted, at the time.