International Bureaucracies Research Articles

Behind closed doors: Informal influence on United Nations staffing and pathologies of international bureaucracies

AbstractThis research explores the mechanisms through which member states informally shape staffing decisions in the United Nations, extending the traditional view of influence beyond mere structural power within international organizations. Interviews with UN officials uncover three primary informal governance tactics: leveraging financial contributions, nurturing social networks, and fostering educational and institutional pathways for grooming candidates. These strategies subtly impact UN staffing, policy development, and access to sensitive information. The study points to the UN's structural challenges, such as reliance on voluntary funding and decentralized administration, which, coupled with the intertwined interests across organizational levels and the lack of effective oversight mechanisms, enable member states' informal influence. This environment not only restricts the involvement of developing countries but also undermines the UN's legitimacy and effectiveness. The findings illuminate the intricate dynamics of power within IOs, underscoring the need for a comprehensive understanding of influence and its implications for global governance.

Managers of complex change? How United Nations treaty secretariats jointly govern institutional interplay in global environmental governance

AbstractResearch on international bureaucracies, such as treaty secretariats, has predominantly focused on broadening our understanding of their role, function, and influence within their respective regulatory domains. However, the potential for treaty secretariats to manage situations of institutional overlap by coordinating with other agencies across policy areas has remained understudied. This article offers new empirical and theoretical insights for studying collective agency and coordination mechanisms in instances of institutional interaction within hybrid regime complexes. Specifically, it investigates how the treaty secretariats of the Rio Conventions under the United Nations employ joint interplay management as a means to improve institutional coherence within the climate change, biodiversity loss, and desertification nexus. Collectively, the public agencies aim to advance knowledge and discourse, influence norm‐building processes and regulation, or build capacity and support the joint implementation of policy objectives addressing the interlinked environmental problems. They do this by interacting with various actors across governance levels, including national governments, transnational initiatives, private actors, or civil society. By tracing the process linking joint activities with effects of such interactions, this qualitative case study makes a conceptual contribution by extrapolating a mechanistic theory for joint interplay management. The article demonstrates that treaty secretariats have to contend with challenges of resource allocation, diverging mandates, leadership priorities, and the degree of politicization and timing which frequently intervene stages of strategizing and executing joint activities. The results highlight that joint interplay management can be most impactful when secretariats employ orchestration practices through joint outreach and advocacy to advance coherent institutional responses to interdependent environmental problems.

U.S. Military Humanitarianism and the United Nations

While the United Nations (U.N.) is typically seen as a major humanitarian actor—that is, an organization committed to alleviating human suffering and improving human welfare, it is not often thought of as a military power. But that is one of the many functions that the U.N. has adopted since its origin in 1945. For over seventy years, the U.N. Secretariat—the international bureaucracy responsible for the U.N. organization's executive and administrative functions—has conducted long-term expeditionary military operations across the globe in the form of peacekeeping and observer missions. The military wing of U.N. operations has only continued to grow in the twenty-first century. As of July 2023, 87,544 peacekeepers were deployed on active operations. And that number is lower than in the recent past, down from a height of 107,805 in April 2015.1 During that time, only the United States has regularly maintained more foreign-deployed forces than the U.N.

“IPCC-envy”? Shaping global soil and land governance through science-policy activism

AbstractUnderstanding the relationship between science and policy, including the role of actors engaged in facilitating science-policy interplay, is crucial in the study of global environmental governance. In spite of this, theorization of agency in science-policy relations has been limited in the IR field. Concomitantly, limited knowledge exists about the role played in this respect by international bureaucracies. This paper addresses these issues by introducing the concept of science-policy activism. The paper is based on the study of two UN institutions, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the Global Soil Partnership (GSP) of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which operate in the issue—area of soil and land degradation. Informed by a combination of elite interviews and participant observation, the study investigates the ways in which the UNCCD and GSP secretariats steer the interplay between scientific advice and policymaking. The qualitative analysis reveals that, although both secretariats engage in normative narratives of cooperation, they actively and competitively pursue self-interested agendas. Unearthing the key role of secretariats in comparison with other relevant actors, such as member states and epistemic communities, the study shows that science-policy activism is conducive to “regime conflict,” limiting opportunities for interplay management and ultimately benefiting the interests of international bureaucracies themselves.

Organizational Overlap and Bureaucratic Actors: How EU–NATO Relations Empower the European Commission

AbstractOrganizational overlap is a ubiquitous feature in regional governance. Most studies have focused on member states, demonstrating that overlap enables states differently. We still know little about whether and how overlapping organizations impact international bureaucracies and how this shapes the relationship between bureaucratic actors within organizations. We argue that overlap can empower international bureaucrats, but not equally. Those with autonomous resources from member states are the most attractive interlocuters for bureaucrats from other organizations and, hence, likely to become most empowered. Substantive expertise and formal competence are less consequential in this context. We unpack this argument by looking at a policy domain understood to be heavily guarded by member states, security and defence policy. Based on primary documents and interviews, we show that the European Union (EU)–North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) overlap has enabled the European Commission to leverage its position within the EU to its advantage and further encroach on the EU's security and defence activities.

International bureaucrats’ attitudes toward global climate adaptation

The 2015 Paris Agreement has fueled debates about how the international bureaucrats driving international organizations’ engagement with climate adaptation ought to address adaptation challenges. While previous research has predominantly focused on the structural constraints in adaptation governance, this paper develops a distinct argument about the cognitive frames through which international bureaucrats view climate risks. The evidence comes from a survey among bureaucrats in three organizations that have engaged with adaptation to different extents: United Nations Environment, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the World Health Organization. The results suggest that the majority of the surveyed bureaucrats view climate risks as a multidimensional problem. The evidence indicates that bureaucrats are more likely to view climate risks through multiple than through single issue frames, the more certain they perceive the knowledge about climate impacts in their issue area to be. By way of conclusion, the paper sketches broader implications for adaptation and international bureaucracy research.

Crisis management in international organisations: the League of Nations’ response to early challenges

How do international organisations (IOs) respond to existential challenges such as membership withdrawals or budget cuts? Some IOs manage to ignore the challenge or adapt to the demands of the challenging state whereas others build institutional capacities to resist the pressure. Yet, we know little about the internal dynamics that shape IOs’ responses to such challenges. This article investigates to what extent IOs’ threat perception determines the intensity and direction of their responses to crises. Using the League of Nations’ responses to early crises as an explorative historical case study, the analysis shows that a timely and homogenous perception of a crisis leads to a more assertive and substantial response. Two broader conclusions can be drawn from the analysis for IO research. First, the role of international bureaucrats should not be underestimated in shaping an IO’s response to crises. Second, the findings indicate that a more nuanced perspective on the League’s crisis management can help overcome the failure narrative that dominates the current understanding of the League in International Relations research.

Theorizing Decision-Making in International Bureaucracies: UN Peacekeeping Operations and Responses to Norm Violations

Abstract Many international organizations (IOs) provide assistance to governments through country offices or peacekeeping operations. Sometimes, government authorities in countries receiving IO services violate norms that underpin the IO’s engagement. IO officials must then choose between confrontational and conciliatory responses. These responses are located on a spectrum that ranges from a firm and public response to silence and downplaying. How do IO officials decide on their response? Based on over 200 interviews with UN peacekeeping officials, we argue that the factors that shape their decision-making are found across three categories: individual, departmental, and positional. In terms of individual characteristics, previous experience, career security, and the length of service at a particular duty station matter. Regarding departmental factors, politicization of work, professional composition, and the type of interlocutors predispose departments to be supporters or critics of authorities in recipient countries. In terms of positional considerations, the place of a post or department in the IO hierarchy, relations with other IO entities, and the distance from the field play a role. While important in its own right, decision-making by civilian UN peacekeeping officials is informative about similar processes in other complex international bureaucracies that employ individuals from diverse backgrounds.

The ICC beyond the courtroom: Activities, warnings, and impact

Although the ICC is, first and foremost, a court, it is also a quasi-judicial body and a large international bureaucracy. In addition to trying suspected perpetrators, the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor makes statements about instances of mass atrocity, conducts site visits, and puts situations under preliminary examination. Although much of the scholarly research has focused on the ICC’s prosecutorial work, the Court’s work beyond the courtroom is equally important for understanding how and under which conditions the ICC can facilitate accountability and deter atrocity crimes. In this article, we document the breadth and scope of the ICC’s work beyond the courtroom. First, we offer a theoretical framework for understanding these activities. We then introduce a new dataset on the ICC’s activities beyond the courtroom, which we use to answer three questions: (1) What activities does the ICC undertake before and in parallel to prosecutions? (2) How do those activities align with the threats the ICC makes to prosecute perpetrators? (3) When does the ICC follow through with its threats? We conclude by considering the broader impacts of the ICC’s work beyond the courtroom, which will continue to shape the role of the ICC in the coming decades.

Unboxing International Public Administrations: The Politics of Structural Change in the UN System (1998–2019)

Recent debates in international relations increasingly focus on bureaucratic apparatuses of international organizations and highlight their role, influence, and autonomy in global public policy. In this contribution we follow the recent call made by Moloney and Rosenbloom in this journal to make use of “public administrative theory and empirically based knowledge in analyzing the behavior of international and regional organizations” and offer a systematic analysis of the inner structures of these administrative bodies. Changes in these structures can reflect both the (re-)assignment of responsibilities, competencies, and expertise, but also the (re)allocation of resources, staff, and corresponding signalling of priorities. Based on organizational charts, we study structural changes within 46 international bureaucracies in the UN system. Tracing formal changes to all internal units over two decades, this contribution provides the first longitudinal assessment of structural change at the international level. We demonstrate that the inner structures of international bureaucracies in the UN system became more fragmented over time but also experienced considerable volatility with periods of structural growth and retrenchment. The analysis also suggests that IO's political features yield stronger explanatory power for explaining these structural changes than bureaucratic determinants. We conclude that the politics of structural change in international bureaucracies is a missing piece in the current debate on international public administrations that complements existing research perspectives by reiterating the importance of the political context of international bureaucracies as actors in global governance.

La internacionalización de la educación en la Argentina. El rol de UNESCO como agente educativo durante la presidencia de Frondizi a la luz de El Monitor de la Educación Común (1959-1961)

The end of World War II and the emergence of the so-called “Cold War” brought about the establishment of a “new bipolar order” led by the United States and the Soviet Union, both powers promoted antagonistic political-economic systems, disputing global primacy. In this context, education becomes very important in the ideological transmission procedure. In this research we will work on the internationalization process of the educational ideas of the capitalist bloc through UNESCO, since then this international organization has played a relevant role in the task of disseminating projects and implementing educational agendas on a global scale which constituted an innovative international bureaucracy, was the use of the educational publication El Monitor de la Educación Común, official organ of the National Council of Education, this magazine became the mean of diffusion of ideas of the period and a sounding board for international debates on education. Bearing these premises in mind, this work will aim to address the internationalization of education in Argentina, analyzing the role of UNESCO as an educational agent in the light of the magazine El Monitor between 1959-1961, trying to understand the ways this publication participated in the local translation of the speeches of this international organization through the analysis of the ideas in its pages and tracing the discursive elements that contributed to the legitimation of UNESCO as a criterion of authority and powerhouse of innovative ideas.

A Multilateral Donation that Boomerangs Home: Analysing the Donor State Advantage in UN Procurement

Bilateral aid procurement is politicised and strongly favours suppliers from donor countries. Does multilateral development assistance eliminate the procurement bias favouring donor countries because international bureaucrats make procurement decisions? Existing evidence from the World Bank, which delegates procurement responsibilities to aid recipient countries, cannot answer our theoretical question. Using official data from 20 UN organisations during the 2013–2018 period and applying regression and mediation analysis, we find that the procurement of international organisations still favours donor countries when international bureaucrats make procurement decisions. We identify donor state representation within the UN staff as a key stepping stone linking donation to procurement bias. In contrast, member states whose nationals are heads of a UN bureaucracy do not enjoy procurement advantage, suggesting that UN procurement bias operates through an informal bottom-up channel. Our paper contributes to the debates on the independence of international organisations in the context of multilateral development assistance and procurement.

International Bureaucrats and Organizational Performance. Country-Specific Knowledge and Sectoral Knowledge in World Bank Projects

Abstract International organizations (IOs) try to incorporate policy-specific best practices and country-specific knowledge to increase well-informed decision-making. However, the relative contribution of the two kinds of knowledge to organizational performance is insufficiently understood. The article addresses this gap by focusing on the role of staff in World Bank performance. It posits that country-specific knowledge, sectoral knowledge, and their combination positively contribute to World Bank projects. The argument is tested drawing on a novel database on the tenure, nationality, and educational background of World Bank Task Team Leaders. Three findings stand out. First, country-specific knowledge seems to matter on average, while sectoral knowledge does not. Second, there is some evidence that staff that combine both kinds of knowledge are empowered to make more positive contributions to performance. Third, the diversity and relevance of experience, not length of tenure, are associated with more success. The findings contribute to discussions on international bureaucracies by highlighting how differences between the knowledge of individual staff shape their decision-making and performance. IOs could better tap into the existing resources in their bureaucracies to enhance their performance by rotating staff less frequently between duty stations.

A matter of information – The influence of international bureaucracies in global climate governance networks

International bureaucracies, also called International Public Administrations (IPAs), have been identified as potentially influential actors within the global climate change regime complex. To assess how these organizations exert influence, scholars have predominantly relied on case studies, interviews and descriptive (network) statistics. This article aims to contribute to this literature with a systematic analysis that is not limited to an organization, issue or region, but applies exponential random graph models (ERGMs) to data from an original large-N survey (n = 342) of participants of global climate negotiations. Our findings indicate that IPAs have a considerable potential to influence global climate policy outputs. This potential influence is associated with the information they provide to regime stakeholders.

Les enseignements de l’administration publique pour la gouvernance mondiale. Conclusions du numéro spécial sur « La bureaucratie internationale et le système des Nations unies »

The role of international bureaucracies in providing governance in the 21st C is expanding. Not only is the United Nations (UN) bureaucracy large and growing (see introduction to this volume by Thorvaldsdottir et al. 2021), but international organizations of diverse kinds beyond the UN are actively crafting policies, practices, and rules that govern international life in almost every sphere of activity (Weiss and Wilkenson, 2014). Understanding the power, procedures, and effects of these international public administrations (IPAs) will be essential and, as the papers here demonstrate, a public administration (PA) perspective can shine light on crucial issues that both policymakers and scholars in other scholarly fields (political science, economics, sociology) might miss. In what follows I do two things. First, I highlight findings from these papers that may surprise and intrigue scholars in other fields, particularly my own (international relations (IR)), and I highlight what PA scholars are bringing to the broader interdisciplinary conversation. Second, I draw out implications of these findings for broader issues under discussion among global governance scholars elsewhere that PA might fruitfully consider

Cultivated ties and strategic communication: do international environmental secretariats tailor information to increase their bureaucratic reputation?

The past few years have witnessed a growing interest among scholars and policy-makers in the interplay of international bureaucracies with civil society organizations, other non-profit entities, and the private sector. This article extends the state of research by investigating whether and how secretariats try to strengthen their reputation within their respective policy regimes through information provision and alliance building. Based on reputation theory, the article argues that ties cultivated with stakeholders as well as appearance and presentation of information are decisive in this regard. Methodologically, the study implements a mixed-methods design that combines a quantitative survey with social network analysis and qualitative content analysis of interviews with stakeholders within the climate and biodiversity regime. We show that the secretariats of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) maintain relationships with a wide range of state and non-state actors to enhance their reputation. Moreover, different types of actors receive different types of information from the two secretariats studied. Our findings reveal that both secretariats use their limited resources for investing strategically into networks with different types of actors (in the broader transnational policy network), either via the tailored provision of information or through strategic networking with multipliers. They also indicate that reputation does not simply depend on characteristics of bureaucracies, but also on framework conditions and different communication strategies.

International bureaucracy and the United Nations system: introduction

Built on the administrative system of the League of Nations, since the Second World War, the United Nations has grown into a sizeable, complex and multilevel system of several dozen international bureaucracies. Outside of a brief period in the 1980s, and despite growing scholarship on international public administrations over the past two decades, there have been few publications in the International Review of Administrative Sciences on the evolution of the United Nations system and its many public administrations. The special issue ‘International Bureaucracy and the United Nations System’ aims to encourage renewed scholarly focus on this global level of public administration. This introduction makes the case for why studying the United Nations’ bureaucracies matters from a public administration perspective, takes stock of key literature and discusses how the seven articles contribute to key substantive and methodological advancements in studying the administrations of the United Nations system.

Lessons from public administration for global governance: Conclusions of the special issue on “International Bureaucracy and the United Nations System.”

Lessons from public administration for global governance: Conclusions of the special issue on “International Bureaucracy and the United Nations System.”

Explaining sentiment shifts in UN system annual reporting: a longitudinal comparison of UNHCR, UNRWA and IOM

Annual reports are a central element of international bureaucracies' accountability communication to member states and other stakeholders. Most UN system bureaucracies produce reports of significant length and detail. International agencies use these reports to draw attention to particular challenges or successes. Hitting the right tone with their diverse stakeholders is crucial to maintain continued support. UN agencies do so by employing differentiated sentiment-loaded language alongside factual reporting. We argue that agencies' operational focus, administrative structures and resource mobilization needs have a significant impact on how they use sentiment to communicate with different stakeholder groups. Drawing on a dictionary-based sentiment analysis of three text corpora of annual reports produced by three UN system agencies—UNRWA (reports published from 1951 to 2019), UNHCR (1953–2019) and IOM (2000–2019)—we show a general trend toward increased positive sentiment use across all three agencies, coinciding with a period of stronger donor orientation. At the same time, we find a more volatile and agency-specific use of negative sentiment in response to field-level challenges that are communicated to stakeholders in line with agencies' evolving mandates. Through a text-as-data perspective, this contribution enhances our comparative understanding of the diverse and context-dependent language of international bureaucracies. Points for practitioners Reading UN agency reporting, practitioners need to be aware of the constraints and incentives that international bureaucrats face—notably operational focus, administrative structures and resource needs—that drive tone differences across reports and over time.

Developing Petra: UNESCO, the World Bank, and America in the desert

ABSTRACT This article charts the nascent development agendas for archaeological heritage and tourism at Petra in Jordan. We begin with the early internationalism of UNESCO and its participation programme for Petra followed by the restructuring of American foreign policy interests to embed heritage tourism within USAID projects. A technocratic tourism-as-assistance model galvanised USAID and the World Bank’s interest in Petra, as it did the CIA, the American Schools of Oriental Research, the US National Park Service, and Jordan’s Department of Antiquities. Thus, we reveal how saving Petra was underwritten by an increasing American vigilance in the Middle East. Unlike the educational and humanitarian components of the United Nations programme, the USAID and World Bank initiatives at Petra were almost exclusively directed toward tourism development, generating hard-currency revenue, monetising the Nabataean ruins, and sowing the seeds of predatory capitalism. Our longitudinal study reveals that what has been sustained at Petra is not the preservation of heritage, nor support for local communities, but rather an overburden of international bureaucracy and consultancy culture.