Bureaucratic Politics,Role Conflict,and the Internal Dynamics of US Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan

Abstract

Among the many challenges confronting the United States and its allies in Afghanistan were cohesion and communication problems in state-building programs. Merging role theory and bureaucratic politics approaches, this article argues that US Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), the composite groups charged with implementing these programs, suffered from incompatibilities between sectors of government, among which the military was dominant. US PRTs were affected by role conflict, resulting from varying and often competing organizational cultures with divergent role conceptions.