The budgeting and resourcing of the OSCE in comparative perspective
In: OSCE insights, Heft [3], S. 1-17
In: OSCE insights, Heft [3], S. 1-17
World Affairs Online
In: The review of international organizations
ISSN: 1559-744X
In: Journal of European public policy, Band 30, Heft 2, S. 214-233
ISSN: 1466-4429
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.
World Affairs Online
In: Vereinte Nationen: Zeitschrift für die Vereinten Nationen und ihre Sonderorganisationen : German review on the United Nations, Band 70, Heft 6, S. 260
ISSN: 2366-6773
In: International review of administrative sciences: an international journal of comparative public administration, Band 87, Heft 4, S. 794-812
ISSN: 1461-7226
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.
In: Revue internationale des sciences administratives: revue d'administration publique comparée, Band 87, Heft 4, S. 705-723
ISSN: 0303-965X
Les rapports annuels sont un élément central dans la communication de la responsabilité des bureaucraties internationales aux États membres et aux autres parties prenantes. La plupart des bureaucraties du système des Nations unies produisent des rapports très longs et détaillés. Les agences internationales se servent de ces rapports pour attirer l'attention sur différents défis ou réalisations. Il est essentiel de trouver le ton juste à adopter pour communiquer avec leurs diverses parties prenantes en vue de conserver leur appui. Pour ce faire, les agences de l'ONU emploient un langage différencié, composé d'un mélange de sentiments et d'informations factuelles. Nous soutenons que l'orientation opérationnelle, les structures administratives et les besoins de mobilisation des ressources des agences ont un impact significatif sur la manière dont elles utilisent les sentiments pour communiquer avec les différents groupes de parties prenantes. Nous nous appuyons sur une analyse des sentiments basée sur le dictionnaire de trois corpus de textes de rapports annuels produits par trois agences du système des Nations unies – l'UNRWA (rapports publiés de 1951 à 2019), le HCR (1953-2019) et l'OIM (2000-2019) – pour mettre en évidence une tendance générale à l'augmentation du recours aux sentiments positifs dans les trois agences, qui coïncide avec une période de renforcement du souci pour les donateurs. En parallèle, nous observons une utilisation plus volatile et propre aux agences du sentiment négatif en réponse aux défis sur le terrain qui sont communiqués aux parties prenantes conformément à l'évolution des mandats des agences. Grâce à une perspective fondée sur le texte en tant que données, la présente contribution améliore notre compréhension comparative du langage diversifié et dépendant du contexte des bureaucraties internationales. Remarques à l'intention des praticiens En lisant les rapports des agences de l'ONU, les praticiens doivent être conscients des contraintes et des incitations auxquelles les bureaucrates internationaux sont confrontés – notamment l'orientation opérationnelle, les structures administratives et les besoins en ressources – qui entraînent des différences de ton entre les rapports et dans le temps.
In: Revue internationale des sciences administratives: revue d'administration publique comparée, Band 87, Heft 4, S. 601-606
ISSN: 0303-965X
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.
In: International review of administrative sciences: an international journal of comparative public administration, Band 87, Heft 4, S. 695-700
ISSN: 1461-7226
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.
In: Political studies: the journal of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom, Band 70, Heft 2, S. 443-464
ISSN: 1467-9248
In recent decades, many international organizations have become almost entirely funded by voluntary contributions. Much existing literature suggests that major donors use their funding to refocus international organizations' attention away from their core mandate and toward serving donors' geostrategic interests. We investigate this claim in the context of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), examining whether donor influence negatively impacts mandate delivery and leads the organization to direct expenditures more toward recipient countries that are politically, economically, or geographically salient to major donors. Analyzing a new dataset of UNHCR finances (1967–2016), we find that UNHCR served its global mandate with considerable consistency. Applying flexible measures of collective donor influence, so-called "influence-weighted interest scores," our findings suggest that donor influence matters for the expenditure allocation of the agency, but that mandate-undermining effects of such influence are limited and most pronounced during salient refugee situations within Europe.
In: Journal of public administration research and theory, Band 32, Heft 1, S. 111-129
ISSN: 1477-9803
AbstractThis contribution theorizes on the emergence of affective styles in the accountability reporting of public agencies. Under conditions of multiple accountability towards heterogeneous stakeholders, public agencies are expected to make increased use of sentiment in their reporting. Agencies' differentiated modulation of positive and negative sentiment results in four ideal-typical affective styles: technocratic, political, alarming, and self-praising. The plausibility of this framework is demonstrated for the case of a major international public agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which serves several million Palestine refugees. We conduct a dictionary-based sentiment analysis of UNRWA annual reports published between 1951 and 2020, a corpus of 1.47 million words. Additional evidence from interviews with UNRWA officials and diplomats is also considered. Over time, the agency's use of sentiment has increased in response to diversifying stakeholders and its affective style of reporting has changed repeatedly. Contrary to established theoretical expectations, multiple accountability not only increases positive reporting and self-praise. Rather, with increasing levels of negativity, the alarming and political styles of communication have played a much stronger role. These findings demonstrate that agencies' chief goal in accountability reporting is not simply to elicit positive assessments from their respective accountability forums through self-praising language. Agencies may also aim to achieve "negativity congruence" with accountability forums by increasing negative sentiment, thus compelling stakeholders to acknowledge the operational challenges agencies face.
In: Journal of European public policy, Band 30, Heft 2, S. 214-233
ISSN: 1466-4429
In: Vereinte Nationen: Zeitschrift für die Vereinten Nationen und ihre Sonderorganisationen : German review on the United Nations, Band 68, Heft 5, S. 219
ISSN: 2366-6773
In: Vereinte Nationen: Zeitschrift für die Vereinten Nationen und ihre Sonderorganisationen : German review on the United Nations, Band 67, Heft 6, S. 262-266
ISSN: 2366-6773
In: Transformations in Governance Ser.
In: Oxford scholarship online
In: Political Science
In: Transformations in governance