How Financial Resources Affect the Autonomy of International Public Administrations
| Published date | 01 August 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12451 |
| Date | 01 August 2017 |
| Author | Michael W. Bauer,Jörn Ege |
How Financial Resources Affect the Autonomy
of International Public Administrations
J€
orn Ege and Michael W. Bauer
German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer
Abstract
Voluntary contributions –often earmarked for specific purposes –have become an indispensable source of revenue for inter-
national organizations (IOs) and the UN organizations in particular. While the reasons for this trend are regularly studied, its
effects on the internal functioning of the organization (especially on the ‘international public administration’(IPA) as the orga-
nization’s secretariat) remain unclear. Given this gap, we study the consequences of increasing financial dependence for the
autonomy of IPA staff. Using financial and personnel data of 15 UN agencies over time, our results are in line with the intu-
itive expectation that more financial resources in the form of voluntary contributions increase the number of staff. We also
find evidence, however, that the more an organization depends on voluntary resources (within its broader financial portfolio),
the more it reduces the ratio of permanent staff among its total workforce in the subsequent years. The underlying adaption
of IPAs’recruitment and career structures to growing financial insecurities has important implications for the autonomy of
international bureaucrats and needs to be considered also in terms of its long-term impact on administrative professionalism
and organizational performance.
Policy Implications
•The UN organizations are generally responsive to changes in their fiscal environment. The increasing dependence on vol-
untary funding leads them to adjust their staffing practices by reducing ‘long-term liabilities’in the form of permanent
staff.
•The observed trend has potentially negative consequences for IPAs’ability to fulfill their mandate because the institutional
memory and policy expertise of staff suffers.
•Changing staffing patterns may also impair the performance of IPAs as it becomes more difficult for them to attract quali-
fied personnel and keep their current staff motivated.
•To counterbalance increasing bilateral influence on the provision of public goods, IPAs should continue to reach out to
their overall membership and demonstrate the importance of organizational core activities in order to (re)attract unre-
stricted financial resources.
This article investigates how changing patterns of financial
dependence of United Nations (UN) agencies –specifically,
increasing voluntary contributions designated for a particu-
lar purpose –affect the autonomy of their administrations.
The extent to which international governmental organiza-
tions (IOs) and their secretariats, which we refer to as ‘inter-
national public administrations’(IPAs), can act
independently of the interests of member states is a promi-
nent topic in international relations (IR). In this context,
scholars have focused on the concept of bureaucratic auton-
omy (see e.g. Ege and Bauer, 2013; Reinalda and Verbeek,
2011), which offers insight into the powers and pathologies
of IOs (Barnett and Finnemore, 1999; Ege, forthcoming).
Scholars interested in bureaucratic autonomy regularly use
funding and staffing as part of their conceptualizations and
measurement to ‘characterize the leeway granted to some
public sector organizations’(Maggetti and Verhoest, 2014,
p. 239) and IPAs in particular (Bauer and Ege, 2017; Heldt
and Schmidtke, 2017; Michaelowa and Michaelowa, 2017,
p. 248). A notable argument in debates about IO funding is
that the growth of voluntary contributions may affect
bureaucratic autonomy by reducing ‘the ability of IO staff to
engage in long-term planning and to perform efficiently’
(Graham, 2016, p. 5). While there is broad consensus in the
literature that the financing of IOs affects their staffing prac-
tices, the concrete effects of changing funding patterns
have not been examined.
To address this gap, we study staff growth and adminis-
trative permanence as indicators of bureaucratic autonomy.
Our primary research questions are whether changes in ear-
marked voluntary contributions (in the following simply
referred to as ‘voluntary contributions’) have an effect on
staff numbers and staff permanence, what the size of this
effect is, and which staff categories are most impacted. First,
our results confirm the intuitive expectation that more finan-
cial resources in the form of voluntary contributions lead to
an increase in the number of IPA staff, especially within the
general service category. Second, it becomes evident that
the more an IO depends on voluntary resources (within its
broader financial portfolio), the more it will adjust its staffing
Global Policy (2017) 8:Suppl.5 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12451 ©2017 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 8 . Supplement 5 . August 2017 75
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