Pashtunwali—Law for the lawless, defense for the stateless

Despite a large and growing literature on systems of law without coercive central authority, the overwhelmingly dominant view remains that law, as a public good, must be produced by the state. Defense against attempts to subjugate a community is even more widely viewed as a public good and therefore a necessary function of the state. This case study of the Pashtunwali – the customary law followed by the ethnic Pashtun tribes in Afghanistan and Pakistan – illustrates that both law and community defense can be effectively produced without the institutions of a state. The incentives created under Pashtunwali have provided the Pashtun with a decentralized system for maintaining order within and between the tribes for several centuries without the authority of a coercive state. In addition, they have generated a system of spontaneous decentralized defense that has allowed the Pashtun to retain/regain their independence from the states that have tried to colonize or subjugate them for centuries.