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AbstractGovernments spend hundreds of millions on evaluations to assess the performance of public organizations. In this article, we scrutinize whether variation in the institutional design of evaluation systems leads to biases in evaluation findings. Biases may emerge because influence over evaluation processes could enable the bureaucracy to present its work in a more positive way. We study evaluation reports published by nine international organizations (IOs) of the United Nations system. We use deep learning to measure the share of positive assessments at the sentence level per evaluation report as a proxy for the positivity of evaluation results. Analyzing 1082 evaluation reports, we find that reports commissioned by operative units, as compared to central evaluation units, systematically contain more positive assessments. Theoretically, this link between institutional design choices and evaluation outcomes may explain why policymakers perceive similar tools for evidence‐based policymaking as functional in some organizations, and politicized in others.

Construite sur le système administratif de la Société des Nations, l'Organisation des Nations unies (ONU) est devenue, depuis la Seconde Guerre mondiale, un système important, complexe et à plusieurs niveaux, composé de plusieurs dizaines de bureaucraties internationales. En dehors d'une brève période dans les années 1980, et malgré la multiplication des études sur les administrations publiques internationales au cours des deux dernières décennies, il y a eu peu de publications dans la Revue internationale des sciences administratives (RISA) sur l'évolution du système des Nations unies et de ses nombreuses administrations publiques. Le numéro spécial intitulé « La bureaucratie internationale et le système des Nations unies » vise à encourager un regain d'intérêt de la part des chercheurs pour ce niveau mondial d'administration publique. Dans la présente introduction, nous expliquons en quoi l'étude des bureaucraties de l'ONU est importante du point de vue de l'administration publique, nous faisons le point sur la littérature pertinente et examinons la manière dont les sept articles contribuent à des avancées substantielles et méthodologiques clés dans l'étude des administrations du système de l'ONU.

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.

Intro -- Endorsements -- Acknowledgment -- Abbreviations -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Chapter 1: A Public Administration Perspective on International Organizations -- Introduction -- Perspectives and Gaps -- Contours of a PA Approach to IPAs -- Central Conceptual Perspectives on IPAs -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 2: A Matter of Will and Action: The Bureaucratic Autonomy of International Public Administrations -- Introduction -- Bureaucratic Autonomy: The PA Perspective -- Bureaucratic Organization at the International Level: How Is It Different? -- Approaching Autonomy from a Relational and Sociological Perspective -- Conceptualizing and Measuring International Bureaucratic Autonomy -- Empirical Results and Possible Implications -- Conclusion and Way Forward -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 3: Administrative Styles of International Organizations: Can We Find Them, Do They Matter? -- Introduction -- Administrative Styles: State of the Art and Research Gaps -- A Refined Concept of Administrative Styles -- (1) Policy Initiation Styles -- (2) Policy Drafting Styles -- (3) Policy Implementation Styles -- Toward Explanation: Determinants of Administrative Styles -- (1) The Policy Ambitions of the Bureaucracy -- (2) The Institutional Orientation of a Bureaucracy -- Four Ideal Types of Administrative Styles -- Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 4: Orchestrating (Bio-)Diversity: The Secretariat of the Convention of Biological Diversity as an Attention-­Seeking Bureaucracy -- Introduction -- Heuristic Framework: International Secretariats as Attention-Seeking Bureaucracies -- Treaty Secretariats as Attention-Seeking Bureaucracies -- Seeking Attention from the Inside: Treaty Secretariats' Cooperation with Chairpersons of Multilateral Negotiations.

This book applies established analytical concepts such as influence, authority, administrative styles, autonomy, budgeting and multilevel administration to the study of international bureaucracies and their political environment. It reflects on the commonalities and differences between national and international administrations and carefully constructs the impact of international administrative tools on policy making. The book shows how the study of international bureaucracies can fertilize interdisciplinary discourse, in particular between International Relations, Comparative Government and Public Administration. The book makes a forceful argument for Public Administration to take on the challenge of internationalization. Michael W. Bauer is Jean Monnet Professor and holds the chair of Comparative Public Administration and Policy Analysis at the German University of Administrative Sciences in Speyer. Christoph Knill holds the chair of Empirical Theories of Politics at the University of Munich (LMU), Germany, and is the speaker of the research unit 'International Public Administration'. Steffen Eckhard is Senior Researcher at the University of Munich (LMU), Germany, and a non-resident research fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin (GPPi), Germany.

Der Beitrag präsentiert zentrale Ergebnisse der DFG Forschergruppe "International Public Administration" (IPA). Zentrale These ist, dass es sich bei internationalen Verwaltungen um einen eigenen Verwaltungstypus handelt. Dies gilt weniger im Hinblick auf Besonderheiten formeller Strukturen, sondern vielmehr in Bezug auf organisationsspezifische Verhaltensmuster, in denen sich internationale von nationalen Verwaltungen unterscheiden. Die in diesem Schwerpunktheft versammelten Beiträge fokussieren diese Unterschiedlichkeit und beschäftigen sich insbesondere mit der Frage, was die beobachtbaren Verhaltensmuster internationaler Bürokratien für den politikgestaltenden Einfluss von Verwaltungen jenseits des Nationalstaates bedeuten. Anschließend wird diskutiert, welche Implikationen sich aus der Beschäftigung mit internationalen Verwaltungen für die disziplinäre Verwaltungswissenschaft ergeben. Dabei vertreten wir die These, dass sich nationale Verwaltungen den hier untersuchten internationalen Bürokratiemustern umso stärker annähern, je mehr diese in einem Kontext transnationaler Einflüsse operieren. Daran knüpfen wir abschließend ein Plädoyer für die systematische Integration internationaler Bürokratieanalysen in eine Wissenschaft der Verwaltung als Teilbereich der Erforschung der Transformation von Staatlichkeit.

Das Forschungsprojekt HybOrg beschäftigt sich damit, wie deutsche Verwaltungsinstitutionen auf und unterhalb der Landkreisebene Krisenmanagement betreiben und dabei zum Aufbau von brückenbildendem Sozialkapital beitragen können. In diesem Report wird das Vorgehen zu einer Online-Befragung auf Landkreisebene erläutert. Die Befragung bezieht sich auf die sogenannte Flüchtlingskrise 2015/16 und den Beginn der Covid-19 Pandemie und wurde in 27 deutschen Kreisen erhoben.

Intergovernmental deliberations in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) are typically considered the realm of sovereign nation states. We challenge this position by studying the role of the UN Secretariat in UNSC debates, focusing on the debates on Afghanistan (1995–2017). We combine natural language processing with a network theoretical perspective to observe speaker position, topic introduction, and topic evolution and we complement this analysis with an illustrative case study. The quantitative analysis shows that UN officials take an overall impartial position but that they do, at times, introduce and promote their own topics putting them in the position to shape the debate. The qualitative case study selects one 'bureaucratic topic' to confirm bureaucratic agency. Combined, our methods allow to study the role of speakers in a debate and show that the UN bureaucracy acted as an autonomous speechmaker even in a venue were bureaucratic agency seems unlikely – the UNSC.