@article{PatzThorvaldsdottir, author = {Patz, Ronny and Thorvaldsdottir, Svanhildur}, title = {Explaining sentiment shifts in UN system annual reporting: a longitudinal comparison of UNHCR, UNRWA and IOM}, series = {International Review of Administrative Sciences}, volume = {87}, journal = {International Review of Administrative Sciences}, number = {4}, doi = {10.1177/00208523211029804}, pages = {794 -- 812}, abstract = {Annual reports are a central element of international bureaucracies' accountability communication to member states and other stakeholders. Most UN system bureaucracies produce reports of significant length and detail. International agencies use these reports to draw attention to particular challenges or successes. Hitting the right tone with their diverse stakeholders is crucial to maintain continued support. UN agencies do so by employing differentiated sentiment-loaded language alongside factual reporting. We argue that agencies' operational focus, administrative structures and resource mobilization needs have a significant impact on how they use sentiment to communicate with different stakeholder groups. Drawing on a dictionary-based sentiment analysis of three text corpora of annual reports produced by three UN system agencies—UNRWA (reports published from 1951 to 2019), UNHCR (1953-2019) and IOM (2000-2019)—we show a general trend toward increased positive sentiment use across all three agencies, coinciding with a period of stronger donor orientation. At the same time, we find a more volatile and agency-specific use of negative sentiment in response to field-level challenges that are communicated to stakeholders in line with agencies' evolving mandates. Through a text-as-data perspective, this contribution enhances our comparative understanding of the diverse and context-dependent language of international bureaucracies.}, language = {en} } @article{PatzThorvaldsdottirGoetz, author = {Patz, Ronny and Thorvaldsdottir, Svanhildur and Goetz, Klaus H.}, title = {Mandate or Donors? Explaining the UNHCR's Country-Level Expenditures from 1967 to 2016}, series = {Political Studies}, journal = {Political Studies}, doi = {10.1177/0032321720974330}, 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.}, language = {en} } @article{ThorvaldsdottirPatzEckhard, author = {Thorvaldsdottir, Svanhildur and Patz, Ronny and Eckhard, Steffen}, title = {International bureaucracy and the United Nations system: introduction}, series = {International Review of Administrative Sciences}, volume = {87}, journal = {International Review of Administrative Sciences}, number = {4}, publisher = {SAGE}, doi = {10.1177/00208523211038730}, pages = {695 -- 700}, abstract = {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.}, language = {en} }