Tokyo has differed from similar pledging conferences of recent years in one important respect: unlike in the cases of Bosnia, or Kosovo, or even East Timor, no formal international structure is being set up to co-ordinate the reconstruction effort and to shoulder much of the burden of administering a country that, after more than 20 years of strife, has only the most rudimentary governmental mechanism of its own.

ECONOMIST: Helping Afghanistan

At present, the Science and Technology Council, the government's top policymaking body in the field, is meant to set priorities and to co-ordinate research.

ECONOMIST: The land of disappointments

The Geneva-based United Nations Economic Commission for Europe was set up in 1947 to co-ordinate reconstruction in shattered post-war Europe.

ECONOMIST: Bureaucracies grow faster than they can be pruned