Mandate or Donors? Explaining the UNHCR’s Country-Level Expenditures from 1967 to 2016

Svanhildur Thorvaldsdottir; Ronny Patz; Klaus H. Goetz

doi:10.1177/0032321720974330

Mandate or Donors? Explaining the UNHCR’s Country-Level Expenditures from 1967 to 2016

Svanhildur Thorvaldsdottir, Ronny Patz, Klaus H. Goetz

Faculty of Political Science

University of Iceland

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

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.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	443-464
Number of pages	22
Journal	Political Studies
Volume	70
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720974330
Publication status	Published - May 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information: We thank Beatriz Garabosky, Salma Nosseir, and Susanne Steigerwald for their research assistance, and Hylke Dijkstra, Rabia Malik, attendees at International Studies Association Annual Convention (ISA) 2018, the 12th Annual Conference on the Political Economy of International Organization (PEIO) 2019, and the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting (APSA) 2019, and three anonymous reviewers for invaluable feedback on earlier versions of the paper. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The paper presents insights and empirical data gathered for the project, ?Resource Mobilization in International Public Administration: Strategies for the Financing of International Public Policy? (Principal Investigator (PI): Klaus H. Goetz), funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the Research Unit, ?International Public Administration? (FOR 1745, http://ipa-research.com). Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2021.

Other keywords

United Nations
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
international organizations
multilateral aid
refugees

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Cite this

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title = "Mandate or Donors? Explaining the UNHCR{\textquoteright}s Country-Level Expenditures from 1967 to 2016",

abstract = "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{\textquoteright} attention away from their core mandate and toward serving donors{\textquoteright} 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.",

keywords = "United Nations, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, international organizations, multilateral aid, refugees",

author = "Svanhildur Thorvaldsdottir and Ronny Patz and Goetz, \{Klaus H.\}",

note = "Funding Information: We thank Beatriz Garabosky, Salma Nosseir, and Susanne Steigerwald for their research assistance, and Hylke Dijkstra, Rabia Malik, attendees at International Studies Association Annual Convention (ISA) 2018, the 12th Annual Conference on the Political Economy of International Organization (PEIO) 2019, and the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting (APSA) 2019, and three anonymous reviewers for invaluable feedback on earlier versions of the paper. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The paper presents insights and empirical data gathered for the project, ?Resource Mobilization in International Public Administration: Strategies for the Financing of International Public Policy? (Principal Investigator (PI): Klaus H. Goetz), funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the Research Unit, ?International Public Administration? (FOR 1745, http://ipa-research.com). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} The Author(s) 2021.",

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AB - 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.

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JO - Political Studies

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Mandate or Donors? Explaining the UNHCR’s Country-Level Expenditures from 1967 to 2016

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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