The UN Core: Micromanaging Principals and Segmented Budgets

Abstract

In this first case study focused on (core) UN budgeting, the authors trace the evolution and setup of the extremely complex budget arrangements in the UN; the multiplication of budget procedures including regular budgeting, peacekeeping budgeting, special political missions’ budgeting, and budgeting in the many Funds and Programmes; and the resulting complex budgeting administration needed to navigate a highly complex principal–agent constellation. The analysis finds an extremely high degree of micro-management by member states as principals in the core UN budget process and an increasing segmentation of UN budgets and funds in recent decades that seem to be the direct result of complex principal constellations, but also, as in the case of peacekeeping budgeting, related to the UN bureaucracy’s interest in achieving a high degree of budgeting routinization.