Workshop "Resourcing International Organizations: actors, processes and budgets“

Am 23. und 24. Juni 2016 veranstalten Prof. Dr. Klaus H. Goetz und Dr. Ronny Patz einen Workshop zur Finanzierung internationaler Organisationen am Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politikwissenschaft der LMU München. Es wurden 20 Teilnehmer aus der Forschung und von internationalen Organisationen eingeladen.

Abstract:

Resourcing international organizations (IOs), multilateral action, multilevel cooperation, and global policy-making has been challenging ever since international organizations have become actors in their own right. The League of Nations was famously in serious financial troubles in the early 20th century, and the United Nations systems, with its complex organizational and financial structures, has more than once faced difficult budgetary situations. In the early 21st century, finding material support, on one side, and agreeing on spending priorities, on the other, to address global challenges is no less a demanding effort. From peacekeeping to tackling climate change, from managing transcontinental refugee flows to overcoming regional disparities in regional organizations, the international system and the political and bureaucratic actors tasked to deal with these challenges at different levels are put under great pressure. These pressures have multiple causes and effects: geopolitical disagreement between global powers; financial constraints from major donors, both states and private entities; the rising importance of voluntary funds and multi-bi aid; new types of international actors and the multiplication of specialized funds; or the trade-offs between speed and accountability, between transparency and diplomacy, between collective multilateralism and coalitions of the willing.

The workshop looks at these challenges as well as their causes and effects from a multi-disciplinary perspective and brings together academics, practitioners, and professionals who bridge between both worlds. We start the workshop on Day 1 with theoretical and conceptual contributions grounded in International Relations and in Multilevel Governance theory and with insights from, and experiences, of national officials in resource-related decision-making inside international organizations. The first day will be closed by a session looking at the administration of IO resources and budgets, including first-hand accounts from IO officials dealing with these aspects. Day 2 will look at the evolution of IO financing with a focus on new trends, from the rise of mixed funding mechanisms to the challenges that IOs and private donors face in supporting global action and in administering the new types of funding streams. In the final double-session of the workshop, we ask what these trends mean for supporting, first, efforts in reaction to emerging crises, and second, for financing global measures with longer time horizons.