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

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6345804
AutoresSvanhildur Thorvaldsdottir (0000-0002-6776-4393, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, autor correspondente), Ronny Patz (0000-0002-0761-086X, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), Klaus H Goetz (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
Ano2022
Volume70
Fascículo2
Páginas443-464
Data de publicação2022-05-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoPolitical Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0032-3217 • E-ISSN: 1467-9248
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0032321720974330
OpenAlexW3127277279
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas13
Referências citadas52

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

Agency (philosophy · Consistency (knowledge bases · Context (archaeology · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Mandate · Political science · Refugee · Salient · Sociology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · International Development and Aid · Law · Public Administration · Religion, Society, and Development