In this book the authors seek to explain the experience of the post-coup period by relating Afghanistan's political and social systems to broader theoretical propositions about regime maintenance and political legitimization.

This book is a study of regime change in an underdeveloped country with a weak state and strong autonomous social organizations. Regime change is in many countries a traumatic and disruptive experience, but few countries have paid as high a cost to retain traditionally accepted relationships of authority as has Afghanistan since the communist coup