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sing ISAF’s security involvement in Afghanistan as an example, this article asks: Does the perceived provision of goods and services affect the empirical legitimacy attributed to external governance actors in areas of limited statehood? The study applies multilevel analysis to survey data for 2009–2013 from Northeast Afghanistan. The results support arguments of performance-based legitimacy. Perceptions of goods and service provision as effective have a positive impact on the legitimacy of external governance actors. However, the analysis underlines that this relationship is no automatism and that it depends on the attribution of governance effectiveness to a specific governance actor. In other words, no attribution, no legitimacy. Successfully linking more effective governance with more legitimacy is a possible impetus for a virtuous circle of governance.