Order in the Bazaar: The Transformation of Non-state Law in Afghanistan’s Premier Money Exchange Market

Based on fourteen months of ethnographic research the central money exchange bazaar in Kabul, Afghanistan—Sarai Shahzada—this article examines micro-dynamics legal change within a close-knit community fragile setting. For most its history, has been governed by informal norms. New state-building measures after 2001 led to increased efforts state regulate bazaar, causing exchangers initiate internal transformations protect their autonomy. While scholarship generally argues that coercion substitutes for private norms, this study shows centrality consolidating system. Exchangers have cast non-state system image formalizing new operating rules introduced management structure and dispute resolution forum. licenses also helped safeguard boundaries bazaar. This contributes governance pluralism revealing community, even state, may be capable maintaining an autonomous not spite of, but rather depending on, state.