Budgeting in the UN System: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract

Chapter 4 constitutes the core comparative data chapter presenting two novel datasets. The first compares budgeting procedures in twenty-two UN organizations, with a focus on the actors involved and the timelines prescribed by formal rules and drawing also on previous analyses on UN budgeting from the 1980s and 2000s. The second dataset reveals, with few exceptions, a high level of routinization of budgeting procedures in the UN system. This finding is based on the analysis of the timing of budget proposals and budget adoptions in twenty of the twenty-two UN organizations included in the first dataset. Both the stability of budgeting procedures and the routinization of budgeting, even in times of a global financial crisis, run against theoretical expectations. Four organizations (UN, ILO, UNESCO, WHO) with highly routinized budgeting procedures are selected (studied individually in Chapters 5–8) to better understand the causal mechanism identified in the theoretical chapter.