ABSTRACT
The institutional development of the UN Secretariat presents the first case study of the relations between states and secretariats. This chapter shows that, impressive as the growth of the UN Secretariat may be, non-delegation and generic rules established by the member states help us to better understand institutional development. Until the mid-1990s, the member states mostly avoided delegation, anticipating agency costs. The lack of capacity at the New York headquarters contributed to the miserable failure of UN peacekeeping in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, and Somalia in 1994-95. The chapter provides evidence of an informal generic rule by showing that the increase in staff resources in the UN Secretariat can be explained by the number of deployed peacekeepers. It traces the process of key instances in the institutional development of the UN Secretariat. The chapter uses the number of civil servants in the 'professional and higher categories' in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and Department of Field Support (DFS).
