When statebuilding efforts are underway, we tend to focus on institutions and state agencies, economic development (growth) or the establishment of the rule of law. Little attention, however, is paid to how the new state organizes its economic reproduction. When external funds, which can be understood as rents in a sense well established in economics, dominate public budgets, political considerations will circle around securing the rent rather than responding to public demands for goods and services. However, states where rents originate from still paradoxically lack influence in theoncerned political process. In any way, state elites fail to acquire legitimacy that would be needed to secure sufficient public support and, in turn, stabilize the state. This presentation looks at how rentier mechanisms work, also taking the role of Afghanistan's drug rentiers into account. Counterintuitively, it argues, less funds and better targeted funds are important to provide legitimacy.