| Summary: | Afghan constitutions have had a tendency to marginalize Afghan society. As a result, the continued ethnic fragmentation of Afghanistan has minimized the capacity of constitutions of the past to achieve societal stability. Instead, past Afghan constitutions have explicitly supported regimes rather than address the problems of the fragmentation of Afghanistan into small ethnic, linguistic, familial, and in some cases religious elements. While Afghanistan's current constitution accommodates the multi-ethnic pattern of Afghan society, it provides only a partial solution to the challenges of state building created by multi-ethnic societies. The central purpose of this thesis, therefore, is to determine the sustainability of Afghanistan's current constitution by analyzing the legacy and impact of past constitutions on the current document and its relationship with Afghan society and polity. Each of Afghanistan's constitutions of the past is missing important elements that prevented its impact on even the nearest reach of the rural tribal society. The realities of the 2003 Constitutional Loyal Jirga, the manner in which it represented the population, and the language that it codified in Afghanistan's 2004 constitution will therefore have a lasting impact on Afghanistan's future as well as reveal critical policy implications regarding state building.
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