Armed only with law textbooks, six Stanford law students and faculty advisor and senior research scholar Erik Jensen landed in Kabul, Afghanistan on Feb. 6 on a mission that would last six days.

The group made up Stanford's Afghanistan Legal Education Project (ALEP), a student-led law school project funded by the U.S. State Department that creates textbooks on Afghanistan's legal system specifically for the instruction of Afghani students.

Stanford students in the Afghanistan Legal Education Project (ALEP) meet with Supreme Court Chief Justice Abdul Salam Azimi during their six-day visit to Kabul. (Courtesy of Daniel Lewis)

Working with the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF), the project is creating a new generation of lawyers to shape Afghanistan's future.

Since it was founded in 2007 by Stanford law alums Alexander Benard J.D. '08 and Eli Sugarman J.D. '09, the project has published four textbooks. These include an introductory text to the laws of Afghanistan and textbooks on commercial, criminal and international law. Students are currently writing a textbook on constitutional law.

"The whole project is indigenously oriented," Jensen said. "The textbooks are written in response to needs and demands of Afghan students, and we try to contextualize our work as much as we can to the politics, economics and social order in Afghanistan."

The purpose of the recent trip to Kabul was to explore the future and progress of the project. Students attended classes that are currently taught using ALEP textbooks, got feedback from Afghani students and professors and interacted with administrators at the AUAF to see where the project is headed.

"Sitting in on the classes and meeting with the students was for us a priority, because that's the best way we can get feedback on our books and make the project better," said Daniel Lewis LAW '12 and ALEP co-executive director.

After meeting with the president of AUAF, the group agreed that the ultimate goal for the project is to build a complete law school curriculum.

"The time frame is uncertain, but we're expanding really quickly," Lewis said.

In addition to rolling out the new textbook, ALEP plans to introduce new classes in the fall on Islamic law and the informal justice system in Afghanistan, taught by a collaborating Afghan professor and an affiliated postdoctoral fellow. Workshops on practical skills such as negotiation and writing are also on the horizon, as well as translations of the books into Dari and Pashto.

The group met other notable Afghan and American officials, including the dean at the Kabul University School of Law, university professors from the most populated provinces and Ambassador Hans Klemm, coordinating director of rule of law and law enforcement at the Embassy of the United States in Kabul.

"All the high officials we met with were extraordinarily supportive of the project," Jensen said.

"We'd gone over there expecting it wouldn't really be easy getting our books out there [past AUAF], or that there would be some hostility," Lewis said. "But that really wasn't the case. The feedback was that they were excited to have another resource that was new and updated."

Other universities are not the only other audiences attracted to the project's textbooks, which are available publicly, and for free, online.

"Over the past year or so, people have been downloading them [the books] and using them, some of which we know about and some of which we don't," said Rose Ehler LAW ‘12, another ALEP co-executive director.

The U.S. military has also used the textbooks to familiarize officers with Afghani law. According to Jensen, retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal was "very familiar" with the textbooks.

The Afghan Ministry of Justice, leading judges and legal academics have also expressed interest in the project, according to Lewis.

"It was fascinating to be [in Kabul] as Stanford law students talking to these really important people in Afghanistan...in a knowledgeable way," Lewis said.

But strengthening the AUAF law school and spreading legal education are only the beginning of ALEP's goals.

"The development of the rule of law is historical process. It takes time; there are fits and starts," Jenson said.

"The problem is when you are at Afghanistan's level of development, it will go through years and years of fits and starts...and as society goes through these episodes, it will need a new cadre of leaders to lead to positive episodes," he added.

ALEP seeks to contribute to the formation of these future leaders, not only in the legal profession but also in the country as a whole. By using analytical methods to teach students critical thinking, they hope to bridge the gap between American style legal education and the Afghan reality.

"They [the Afghan students] will see opportunities that we can't see from Stanford, but they can see on the ground in Afghanistan," Jensen said, describing the project as one that is about imagining alternatives so as to prevent oppression.

The law students' person-to-person contact with the Afghani students made it clear that this project extends far beyond what can be seen on paper.

"The passion that we all saw in the students in Afghanistan just increased our passion for the project at Stanford...the heart and soul of the Stanford group is derived from the heart and soul of the Afghan students."

"Everybody on the trip came away saying, ‘Wow, we're actually doing something that's useful here,'" Lewis said.

The trip left the group optimistic about the project's future.

"Student demand is high; we've been successful at retaining some of the best faculty, and we hope that that the [AUAF] law school becomes a center of educational excellence," Jensen said.

Despite the fact that ALEP is no longer the "sole source" of Afghan law textbooks, Jensen is confident about the books' prospects.

"I look forward to the marketplace of competition...I think our books will show themselves to be the best."

The central premise underlying Bussell's discussion this week is the reality that public service provision is often flawed in the developing world. Reforming public services entails significant efforts to increase the quality of public service, and there have been two important recent trends in this space: privatization and public-private partnerships and increased use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The one-stop services model (which has been adopted globally in various forms, from Singapore's eCitizen Centre to Germany's Buergerbuero or "Citizen's Bureau"), exemplifies current trends.

In her research, which focuses primarily on the case of India, Bussell asks the following questions: why do or don't governments reform public service delivery? And when governments decide to implement reforms, why do they or don't they employ ICTs in these reforms?

The Indian strategy to public service reform has been to create stand-alone, one-stop citizen service centers. These centers are computerized and frequently have private-sector participation. Aside from these typical characteristics, there is significant state-level variation on several points, including timing of policy adoption, quantity and type of services, degree of automation, and ownership and management models.

Bussell discusses a variety of hypotheses that offer insight into the potential factors influencing the character of Indian reforms. First, she notes that politicians faced mixed electoral incentives for and against reforms. After all, there is evidence that eServices can improve service characteristics and reduce corruption. On the other hand, reforms may also reduce politicians' opportunities to amass funds to run for re-election. After all, bureaucratic discretion and opaque processes enable the siphoning of funds and bribe taking in service delivery. Politicians use "transfer authority" over bureaucrats to access bribes. More transparent services, due the implementation of reforms, threaten this access to bribes. At the same time, reform may also offer new opportunity for rents. Private partnerships to run centers entail new contracting processes. Larger-scale bribes may be available from ownership and management negotiation.

Based on these mixed direct and indirect incentives, Bussell predicts that reform will require expected net benefits to ruling politicians. States with higher petty corruption should implement policy reforms later. Meanwhile, states with higher grand corruption might lead to more partnerships with private sector.

So what factors actually explain variation in when different Indian states adopted reform? According to Bussell's research, the level of corruption was the most statistically significant variable affecting the timing of reform adoption. However, whether or not there was a coalition government in power was also significant. This means that an increase of 1 point out of 10 in the state's corruption level led to a 63% decrease in the chance of a reform being adopted in a given year. The quantity of services covered varied widely in the sample of states from less than 10 to more than 40 services. On average, moving from a state with below average corruption to a state with above average corruption causes a drop of 14 in the number of services covered.

In addition to examining the variation in reform adoption across Indian states, Bussell also looks at the consequences of reform. Despite reforms in the state of Karnataka, to give one example, demand for services continues to outstrip supply. Visitors to Nemmadi (privately-run computerized centers) were able to access services faster, while paying less money, making less visits, spending less time waiting at each visit, and seeing a reduction (on average) in the number of days before receiving the service. Despite quantitative improvements in average efficiency, however, perceived efficiency actually declined. Now, there is a 7-day minimum for service delivery and a 21-day maximum. Although average has declined as a consequence of these new requirements, it is now impossible to bribe officials in order to achieve service delivery in one day.

According to Bussell, these results bring up some interesting policy implications. First, it is important to consider the institutional incentives underlying the established model in order to ensure that reforms are effective. The incentives faced by both top politicians and street level officials must be taken into account. Second, it may be best to design policies that establish a strong, if narrow, initial model. After all, growing citizen demand affects electoral benefits and the calculations of politicians. Third, more research must be done regarding the various factors that influence policy outcomes. According to cases in South Africa and Brazil, there is some evidence that differences in electoral competition can affect policy outcomes. In South Africa, for instance, less electoral competition has led to less incentive to reform. More research will help to clarify the factors of importance in public service reform implementation.