ABSTRACT
Part II of this book examined the ways in which inter- and intra-agency disorder was spread across multiple areas of nation-building in Afghanistan. This arose from the failings of political leadership on the one hand, and differences in bureaucratic interests, perception, culture and power, on the other. Part III now turns to the mechanisms that were devised to bridge divisions between and within agencies, and assesses their effectiveness. As we have seen in some of the earlier examples, US agencies, and indeed factions within agencies, are aggressively territorial and resistant to change. Consequently, any institutional mechanisms designed to improve cooperation were always going to struggle to impact upon ingrained norms and behaviour. As Wilson observes, ‘no agency head is willing to subordinate his or her organization to a procedure that allows other agencies to define its tasks or allocate its resources’. 1 This statement distils one of the central problems confronting US nation-building in Afghanistan, and relates to one of the main reasons for institutional innovations that sought to overcome bureaucratic incoherence and discord. 2
