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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.

Bureaucratic representation theory holds that civil servants are not “neutral” in a Weberian sense. Bureaucrats are thought to “actively” represent their communities by trying to make them better off. This article proposes an alternative understanding of individual behavior in representation that emphasizes knowledge sharing instead of patronage, but leads to similar outcomes: Their societal background provides officials with advanced social knowledge about the group(s) they represent, including both informational knowledge (facts about culture, history, politics) and relational knowledge (how people interact). Bureaucratic knowledge linkage is the process of sharing information and managing relations internally and with citizens. An extreme case serves to illustrate knowledge linkage empirically: Survey data from an international organization yield high levels of knowledge asymmetries within staff bodies and subsequent observation of knowledge linkage mechanisms. In generalizing findings, the risks (knowledge distortions) and benefits (attaining public value) of knowledge linkage are discussed for both international and domestic administrations. published

The 2015 Better Regulation Reform is recognized as one of the key changes of Juncker’s European Commission, but its political implications remain understudied. Despite its appearance as a seemingly technical evaluation system, we present the reform as a political instrument that enhances the strategic actorness of the Commission, both internally and vis-a-vis the member states. Drawing on primary documents and 16 expert interviews with senior Commission officials, we demonstrate that the Better Regulation Reform enhances the Commission’s ability to act as a unified actor (internal coherence) and contributes to its ability to justify its actions vis-a-vis the member states (external robustness). The article contributes to the literature on international public administration in general and the EU in particular, as it demonstrates how institutional policies may enhance bureaucratic influence. We reveal how an international public administration can conform to member statesʼ demands for more accountability and transparency yet design the overall evaluation system in a way that contributes to its strategic actorness.

A large share of civilian staff working in international peace operations are nationals of the host state. Academic research has not yet investigated the effect of these locally recruited bureaucrats on peacebuilding. Theoretically, it is argued that to accomplish their missions in complex environments, peace operations require crucial knowledge about local perceptions, politics, and customs. Local staff can have a positive performance impact by soliciting such knowledge. But information advantages create new principal-agent problems. Peace operations have a hard time scrutinizing their employees’ allegiances, and they risk sabotage from within. Empirically, it is shown that peace operations conducted by the United Nations (UN), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the European Union (EU) differ significantly in how they navigate the ensuing tension by enabling or restricting the influence of their local staff. A new data set on the staffing of 52 peace operations as well as analysis of internal staff policies yields significant variance in the potential of local staff to influence peacebuilding policy implementation, which is most extensive in the OSCE, followed by the UN and the EU. This finding warrants more attention on the role of local staff as information gatekeepers who could be at the center of potential frictions between international and local norms and knowledge.

While the political nature of evaluation is widely recognized, few attempts exist to conceptualize and compare these politics. This article develops the concept of evaluation stakeholder influence potential, which builds on four political resources for influence (agenda-setting powers, staff and budgetary resources, access to evaluation results, and access to evaluators). These resources are measured for both member states and international public administrations in 24 United Nations organizations. We find that the administration—and not member states—have the largest influence potential in almost two-thirds of the international organizations. Our findings allow classifying them into three groups for which we expect differences in political contestation about evaluation use: two extreme-case groups (either member state or administrative dominance) and a group of contested middle cases. This finding of bureaucratic dominance reinforces literature on bureaucrats as powerful evaluation stakeholders in domestic settings and speaks to nascent research on bureaucratic influence in international organizations.

International organizations play an important role in policy implementation. As member states do not necessarily resolve polit- ical disagreements before delegating tasks, this article focuses on how individual member states seek to in fl uence policy implementation by international organizations. It argues that the institutional context in which delegation takes place affects the opportunities for such unilateral in fl uence. Particularly when the agent has considerable autonomy, implementation is likely to be a contested process. The article presents evidence on the implementation of peacebuilding policy by three inter- national organizations in Kosovo after independence in 2008. Despite the fact that the member states within the UN, OSCE and EU fundamentally disagree on the legal status of Kosovo, the organizations have deployed substantial peacebuilding mis- sions. The UN, OSCE and EU have, however, different institutional designs: implementing agents in the UN and OSCE have, by default, more autonomy than those in the EU. We analogously observe variation in how and to what extent member states exert unilateral in fl uence during implementation of peacebuilding policy on the ground in Kosovo. published

As we know from comparative public policy, bureaucracies contribute to a considerable degree to the contents and the ways of policy-making. One important driver of administrative policy-making are their specific “styles” or “cultures”. “Administrative styles” are understood here as the standard operating procedures and routines that characterize the behavior and activities of administrative bodies in initiating, drafting and implementing policy. In this article, we convey the concept of Administrative Styles to the level of International Organizations (IOs) and apply it to the Organization for Economic Development and Co-Operation (OECD). The article proceeds in three steps: First, the concept of administrative styles is introduced and refined. Drawing on expert interviews with OECD staff, we secondly show that consideration of OECD administrative styles significantly advances the literature’s understanding of the organization. Finally, we give an outlook on new research avenues and the relevance ...

Focusing on German and EU support with assisting local police reform in the context of international peacebuilding in Afghanistan since 2001, this article scrutinizes whether the two organizations exhibit a strategic fit between their policy mandate and the design of management tasks. Comparison of two vastly different institutions —Germany, a nation state, and the EU, an international organization—sheds analytical light on the way different bodies manage a similar policy problem. By way of empirical research, the paper finds that incremental planning, decentralization and autonomous leadership enhance performance as they enable peacebuilders to respond flexibly to the dynamic challenges they face in the field. This was the case with Germany, however not with the EU. No strategic fit prevailed on evaluation. Strategy review either failed (Germany) or had unintended consequences (EU). Keywords: Police reform, strategic management, bureaucracy, international organization, Afghanistan ----- Kein „strategischer Fit” bei der Implementation von Peacebuilding Policy? Zusammenfassung Die deutsche und EU Unterstutzung bei der Polizeireform in Afghanistan Forschung zum strategischen Management postuliert, dass Organisationen, bei denen eine Anpassung von Managementfunktionen an Politikaufgaben stattfindet, erfolgreicher sind als andere. Im Fokus dieser Analyse steht die Frage, ob es einen solchen „strategischen Fit“ bei der deutschen und EU Unterstutzung von Polizeireform in Afghanistan seit 2001 gegeben hat. Der Beitrag analysiert wie zwei institutionell hochgradig unterschiedliche Akteure – Deutschland, ein Nationalstaat, und die EU, eine supranationale Organisation – mit einem ahnlichen Politikproblem umgehen. Als Ergebnis wird festgestellt, dass inkrementelle Planung, Dezentralisierung und autonome Fuhrung die Performanz erhohen, da Experten dadurch in der Lage sind, flexibel auf dynamische Entwicklungen vor Ort zu reagieren. Dies war bei Deutschland der Fall, nicht aber bei der EU. Keinen „strategischen Fit“ gab es dagegen im Bereich der Politikevaluation. Entweder Strategieanpassungen fanden nicht statt (Deutschland) oder Evaluationen fuhrten zu nicht beabsichtigte Konsequenzen (EU). Schlagworte: Polizeireform, Verwaltung, strategisches Management, internationale Organisationen, Afghanistan ----- Bibliographie: Eckhard, Steffen: No Strategic Fit in Peacebuilding Policy Implementation?, dms, 1-2016, S. 83-99. https://doi.org/10.3224/dms.v9i1.23643

With the growing importance of international institutions for global governance, international bureaucracies gain increasing influence on policy-making. Whereas for national bureaucracies specific administrative styles have been identified, this contribution explores for the first time administrative styles of two international organizations. The European Union (EU) Commission and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) represent most different cases in matters of scope, autonomy and resources. The analysis of their specific patterns of policy initiation, policy formulation and policy implementation reveals striking similarities. Both organizations have developed an entrepreneurial style in policy initiation, a strategic approach to policy formulation and a mediating implementation style. These similarities lead to a paradox of weakness in the case of the OSCE and a paradox of strength in the case of the EU. These paradoxes can be understood by taking a closer look at the s...

Reviewing findings from the recent institutional turn in peacebuilding research, this article identifies two conflicting arguments with respect to institutional designs that affect the performance of peace operations. One perspective favours functional decentralization and mission latitude, while the other perspective argues that a lack of political guidance strips mission leadership of their authority vis-a-vis local power brokers and reduces the likelihood of a ‘robust’ approach. Comparing two EU crisis management missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan, the article asks which of the two perspectives is supported by the institutional design and performance of EU peace operations. Unlike the UN – the focus of most previous research – the EU’s institutional framework is highly centralized. This provided member states with ample opportunities for political guidance, but such guidance was, in fact, negatively associated with performance. This finding suggests that the political guidance thesis must be tr...

International organizations (IOs) and their bureaucracies frequently face calls for reform. To express discontent and exert reform pressure, member states can withhold their budgetary contributions to IOs. In extreme cases, these cuts result in organizational crises during which reform efforts become unavoidable, as happened in UNESCO after 2011. Traditional IR research sees member states as being in the driver’s seat when it comes to achieving – or failing to achieve – reform under such conditions, whereas scholars of international public administration underline bureaucratic action or pathology as driving, or preventing, reform. By tracing UNESCO’s reform dynamics from 2011 to 2013, this paper demonstrates how a budget crisis can trigger major reform efforts by IO bureaucracies and by IO member states, but how the lack of joint and synchronized action by both actors still results in failed or limited reform. This contributes to key debates on international public administration, IO reform, and the role of budgetary crisis. The article suggests a dynamic and actor-centred theory of IO reform that highlights the need for synchronized crisis cognition and for substantively and temporally coordinated efforts of both states and bureaucracies as key elements for reform success – and their absence as explanation for failed reform.

The article combines research on postconflict management with public administration research by presenting a single case study on the United Nations interim administration in Kosovo. To investigate the reasons for the UN mission’s failure to implement its policies on minority relations, the study turns toward local municipal bureaucracies and offers a two-part causal argument that derives from principal–agent theory and bureaucratic representation theory. First, due to a lack of political and administrative oversight by Kosovar institutions and the UN peacebuilding mission, local municipal authorities experienced a high degree of autonomy. Second, those units within municipal administrations that were responsible for minority policy implementation did not include minority bureaucrats who could have acted as their communities’ advocates. In the absence of such active representation and a lack of top-down supervision, the municipal civil service departed from its mandate to implement affirmative policies serving the Serb and Roma community in Kosovo. The article finds that this ethnic bureaucratic drift constitutes a central explanation for the lack of minority policy implementation in Kosovo between 2001 and 2008.

This concluding chapter takes stock of what we have learned about International Public Administrations (IPAs) in order to identify general patterns as well as to improve our understanding of potential implications for further public administration (PA) research. It brings to the fore particular challenges that emerge when the discipline of PA ventures beyond its classical focus on national or subnational bureaucracies. Our main argument is that IPAs constitute a genuinely new type of bureaucracy. The structures and processes of IPAs are familiar in many important respects, but the conjoint occurrence of distinct contextual factors and their effect on the behavior and strategies of international administrations make them unique. This becomes visible in a set of distinctive behavioral patterns. Our study of IPAs thus both challenges and confirms the PA perspective on the current transformation of the state and its institutions.

This is a book on international public administration (IPA). The introductory chapter sets the stage by defining international bureaucracy as an object of scientific inquiry. It is explained why it matters, what questions preceding studies on the phenomenon have been raised, and why there is a research gap both from the perspective of Public Administration (PA) and International Relations research. The chapter further introduces the contours of a PA perspective on international organizations as pursued by this book and briefly summarizes the central conceptual perspectives on IPAs as outlined by the volume’s contributions.

It is widely acknowledged that International Public Administrations (IPA) are of growing relevance for global public policy-making. Yet, the sources of organizational variation in global public policy-making have scarcely been explored. To overcome this gap, this chapter systematically develops an indicator-based, three phase-concept of ‘Administrative Styles’ as a dependent variable. By drawing on insights from the organizational theory and administrative science, we then define four ideal types—policy entrepreneur, institutional and policy entrepreneur, institutional entrepreneur, and servant—and identify determinants that can account for their variation. Drawing on expert interviews with IPA staff, we empirically illustrate our concept by presenting empirical evidence on the Bank for International Settlement, International Monetary Fund, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Following up on the work carried out by the OSCE and UN, EU member states deployed the EU rule of law mission in Kosovo (EULEX). It was in terms of staffing and resources the EU’s flagship endeavor in security and defense policy. On the ground since 2008, it investigated high-profile cases of war crimes, corruption, and organized crime and assisted Kosovo’s police and justice institution in their ongoing reform efforts. Although previous peacebuilding and Kosovo’s peaceful context render the country most likely in terms of meaningful police reform, this chapter finds the opposite. After elaborating on the various factors undermining EULEX’s performance in terms of planning, implementation, and review, the chapter concludes that the EU’s institutional structures and rules did not facilitate police reform in Kosovo. Instead, they prevented those working in the field from using the mission’s significant resources in a way that matched Kosovo’s actual needs. This demonstrates that even in situations in which all external conditions are ideal, unwieldy institutional designs can still prevent missions from having any meaningful impact on police reform outcomes.

Although we find considerable literature on international organizations and their bureaucratic interior, there has been little effort to systematically synthesize empirical research across the different academic disciplines examining how international bureaucracies affect policy-making at an international level. This contribution reviews existing research on the policy influence of international bureaucracies published during the past 50 years. Applying a keyword-based search strategy allows us to identify a core body of 83 books and articles. We find a general consensus in the literature that international bureaucrats do influence policy-making, though this influence varies with the political salience and scope of the decision at question. Yet there is still much disagreement about other context factors, including mechanisms and behavioural assumptions. The contribution advances the state of the art by extracting major disputes – mostly linked to diverging disciplinary perspectives – and existing gaps in the literature, and by suggesting areas for future research.

Shifting back to a broader perspective, this chapter compares the answer the book’s four case studies provide for the question: How does variation in institutional designs affect peacebuilding outcomes? The answer falls into two parts. First, comparison of the four missions’ performance shows that EU peace operations—characterized by centralization and a high degree of headquarters supervision—perform worse than the two other missions with relatively decentralized and more autonomous operations. Given Afghanistan’s status as a least-likely case for successful peacebuilding, explaining the failure of operations in this context is a less compelling ‘puzzle’ per se. In Kosovo, however, the negative impact of institutional design becomes more clear. As the case of EULEX Kosovo demonstrates, even when all external conditions are ostensibly ideal, poor organizational design and performance can still prevent meaningful progress in police reform. The second set of findings pertains to the performance of differently designed bureaucracies. The case studies’ inductive analysis yielded four hypotheses, relating to specific methods of mission planning, implementation frameworks, leadership styles, and evaluation systems. Comparison of Germany and the two international organizations further suggests that bureaucracies with ‘complex’ principals require different institutional designs than their domestic counterparts.