Introduction 1. Aid and State Building 2. Reliance on External Revenue: Afghanistan from 1747 to 2000 3. Rebuilding an Aid-based Rentier State 4. Reforms and Setbacks: Rebuilding the Revenue System 5. Budget Spending: Fiscal Fragmentation and Patronage 6. Interactions between the State and Society Conclusion

This book examines how foreign aid has affected Afghanistan's weak state since US intervention in 2001. It argues that the relationship between aid and state building is highly complex and that the effects of aid on weak states depends on donors' interests, aid modality and the recipient's pre-existing institutional and socio-political conditions.

Nematullah Bizhan is a Research Fellow at the Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government. He is also a Senior Research Associate at the Oxford University's Global Economic Governance Program and a Fellow of Asia Pacific College of Diplomacy and Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. He has a PhD in Political Science and International Relations from the Australian National University and was previously a high-level participant in the post-2001 government of Afghanistan.