Managing Money And Discord In The Un

This book studies the budgeting procedures in over 20 organizations of the United Nations system, in particular of the UN in New York, ILO and WHO in Geneva, and UNESCO in Paris.

How do international organizations in the United Nations system put together their budgets? What is the role of complex principals - most notably member states - and the complex agents in the bureaucracies of international organizations in budgeting processes? And what does a focus on budgeting tell us about the changing nature of the system of international organizations? This book provides answers to these questions through a detailed examination of budgeting in the UN system. The analysis draws on both quantitative and qualitative observations for a total of 22 UN system organizations and detailed case studies for the United Nations, ILO, UNESCO, and WHO. The findings demonstrate the importance of three key organizational outcomes— proceduralization, routinization, and budgetary segmentation - as international organizations grapple with managing discord over priorities as a result of complex principal— agent constellations. Contrary to a common view of international bureaucracies as pathological organizations, core budget routines are mostly successfully maintained. However, principal constellations become more complex, notably through the rise of voluntary contributions and non-state donors; budgetary segmentation advances, in some cases even leading to the setting up of new international organizations; and budgeting and resource mobilization become ever more intertwined. As a consequence, the capacity of international bureaucracies to fulfil their budgeting responsibilities is stretched to the limits and beyond. Transformations in Governance is a major academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, and environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states to supranational institutions, subnational governments, and public-private networks. It brings together work that advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars. The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.

Since its foundation, the United Nations is confronted with heavy financial problems. The payment morale of fulfilling the membership dues is extremely low. The author offers an overview of the methods and scope used to finance the activities of the UN. The main focus is on the mandatory funding of the UN Organization and of its peace-keeping activities. Furthermore, the quantity and the quality of voluntary contributions to seven UN Special Funds and Programmes are analysed. It shows that the unbalanced move towards earmarked contributions for specified programmes, projects or countries change the working character of the UN. In addition, innovative financing sources presented by the UN Secretary- Generals and by experts are presented and discussed. An overview about the financing of UN Specialized Agencies and a finance tableau about the whole UN system are given in an appendix. Also, the book includes a glossary which contains technical and institutional terms.

In 2016, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) became part of the United Nations. With 173 member states and more than 400 field offices, the IOM—the new ‘UN migration agency’—plays a key role in migration governance. The contributors in this volume provide an in-depth and comprehensive insight into the IOM, its transformation, current structure and projects, as well as its capacity, self-understanding and political agenda.

How do international organizations change? Many organizations expand into new areas or abandon programmes of work. Advocacy and Change in International Organizations argues that they do so not only at the collective direction of member states. Advocacy is a crucial but overlooked source of change in international organizations. Different actors can advocate for change: national diplomats, international bureaucrats, external experts, or civil society activists. They can use one of three advocacy strategies: social pressure, persuasion, and 'authority talk'. The success of each strategy depends on the presence of favourable conditions related to characteristics of advocates, targets, issues, and context. Institutionalization of new issues in international organizations as a multi-stage process, often accompanied by contestation. This book demonstrates how the advocacy-focused framework explains the origins of three workstreams of contemporary UN peacekeeping operations: communication, protection, and reconstruction. The issue of strategic communications was promoted by UN officials through the strategy of persuasion. Protection of civilians emerged due to a partially successful social influence campaign by a coalition of elected Security Council members and a subsequent (and successful) persuasion efforts by Canada. Quick impact projects entered peacekeepers' practice as the result of 'authority talk' by an expert panel. The three issues illustrate the diversity of pathways to change in international organizations, representing the top-down, bottom-up, and outside-in pathways. Moreover, they have achieved different degrees of institutionalization in UN's policies, structures, and frameworks: protection of civilians is the most institutionalized, as evidenced by measures to hold peacekeepers accountable for non-implementation, while quick impact projects are the least institutionalized.

This book examines the rise and agency of International Organizations (IOs) and their bureaucratic bodies— the International Public Administrations (IPAs)— as a reflection of an ongoing transfer of political authority and power from the domestic to the international level. It shows that IPAs represent actors per se, with autonomy and resources that allow them to exert an independent influence on global policy-making processes and outputs. Providing a combination of novel conceptual lenses and research design to capture IPAs as an empirical phenomenon, the book takes an open, theoretically and methodologically diverse approach to show that IPAs are far from being negligible actors in global public policy and must be taken seriously as actors in policy-making beyond the nation-state. This book will be of key interest to students, scholars, and practitioners in Public Policy and Public Administration, International Relations, International Political Economy, as well as Organizational Studies.

Evaluation has become a key tool in assessing the performance of international organizations, in fostering learning, and in demonstrating accountability. Within the United Nations (UN) system, thousands of evaluators and consultants produce hundreds of evaluation reports worth millions of dollars every year. But does evaluation really deliver on its promise of objective evidence and functional use? By unravelling the internal machinery of evaluation systems in international organizations, this book challenges the conventional understanding of evaluation as a value-free activity. Vytautas Jankauskas and Steffen Eckhard show how a seemingly neutral technocratic tool can serve as an instrument for power in global governance; they demonstrate and explain how deeply politics are entrenched in the interests of evaluation stakeholders, in the control and design of IO evaluation systems, and to a lesser extent also in the content of evaluation reports. The analysis draws on 120 research interviews with evaluators, member state representatives, and IO secretariat officials as well as on textual analysis of over 200 evaluation reports. The investigation covers 21 UN system organizations, including detailed case studies of the ILO, IMF, UNDP, UN WOMEN, IOM, UNHCR, FAO, WHO, and UNESCO. Shedding light on the (in-)effectiveness of evidence-based policymaking, the authors propose possible ways of better reconciling the observed evaluation politics with the need to gather reliable evidence that is used to improve the functioning of the United Nations. The answer to evaluation politics is not to abandon evaluation or isolate it from the stakeholders but to acknowledge surrounding political interests and design evaluation systems accordingly.

This book challenges the traditional view that meaningful analogies cannot be drawn between domestic and international politics. Alexandru V. Grigorescu shows that there are important parallels to be drawn across these two realms, if political interactions among states over the past two centuries are compared to those within states going back about a thousand years. He focuses specifically on the evolution of institutions that restrain concentrated power, such as courts, assemblies, and bureaucracies. Restraining Power through Institutions begins by developing a set of theoretical arguments about the emergence, change, and consolidation of institutional restraints on power. These are primarily derived from literature focusing on domestic politics going back to events such as those surrounding the signing of the Magna Carta and the emergence and evolution of the Curia Regis in England, or of the Estates General and Parlements in France. It then assesses the relevance of such arguments for the evolution of numerous international institutions: international courts, such as the Permanent Court of Arbitration, International Court of Justice, and International Criminal Court; international assemblies and parliaments, such as the Assembly of the League of Nations, UN General Assembly; and European Parliament; and international secretariats, such as those of the Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine, League of Nations, UN, and World Bank. The similarities between developments in the domestic and international realms lead to a number of important conclusions about future expectations for international institutions and for world politics more broadly. In particular, the book argues that complementing the traditional focus on efforts to acquire power with the "Lockean" focus on restraining power offers a more complete depiction of international politics. This novel perspective consequently shifts the focus from the interests and actions of a handful of powerful states to those of virtually all states and groups of states, regardless of how powerful they are.