Escaping the Isomorphic Bias: Towards a Legitimacy-Centered Approach to State-Building

Abstract

Despite its pivotal role for virtuous circles of governance, legitimacy is rarely operationalized in state-building programmes. We question the nexus between legitimacy and statehood that is prevalent in most donor approaches. We argue that different legitimacy audiences as well as institutional isomorphic bias are keeping external actors from adopting legitimacy-centered approaches. However, tracing the evolution of the German approach to stabilization in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014, we find that external actors may gradually adopt such an approach when subjected to domestic political pressure and given a threshold level of goal alignment between different audiences.