ABSTRACT
The volume asks whether international organizations (IOs) have the ability to perform independently in international politics. This chapter looks at the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and how it became a separate UN entity. Most of this process occurred in the early 1990s. Contrary to most international relations (IR) theory, which expects states and, in a more limited way, the UN SecretaryGeneral, to play a central role in establishing such an organization, this chapter shows that actually staff members and the bureaucratic logic of decision-making processes in UN bodies drove forward the haphazard process of making UNOPS an independent UN organization. While previous chapters-most notably those in the first section, on the UN Secretariat-have emphasized the importance of leadership by a single person or small group of people in creating and pushing for new ideas, this chapter sees bureaucratic logic as having an effect over outcomes. UNOPS staff, concerned about their careers and the resources and influence available to their organization, were driven by bureaucratic logic in pushing for desired outcomes. Interestingly, they resisted both state pressure and pressure from other parts of the UN Secretariat. The staff members-who are often neglected in the literature on
IOs-acted on their own by engaging in internal lobbying, actually circumnavigated both member states and the UN Secretariat in order to protect their jobs, organization, and UN ideals of peace and
development. They could because member states cared about service delivery by UNOPS in the area of development cooperation. In other words, in this case (and contrary to the predictions made in Chapter 1) the salience of the issue to member states actually increased, rather than decreased, IO independence. Clever lobbying by UN staff actually used the salience of the issue to their advantage. They were able to do that because another factor-the complexity of development deliverydid work in their favor, once they had convinced member states of their expertise in this area. They were also able to manipulate differences among multiple principals and, more importantly, different overseeing bodies. This chapter shows that staff members’ strong operational expertise in the complex issue of development cooperation and knowledge of decision-making processes in the UN system became the (unexpected) basis for a decision to remake OPS into UNOPS. Such a decision to officially name and establish a UN entity is not part of the framework by Cox and Jacobson, as elaborated in the Introduction of this volume. This chapter will first discuss which type of organization UNOPS
actually is. Then it lays out the organizational and issue factors, as well as the type of decisions, it will examine. Then it will tell the history of the organization, which is closely linked to the search for more effective modes of international development cooperation. Next, it will tell the story of the process in which UNOPS became a separate entity. The conclusion analyses the organizational and issue factors, the type of decisions made, and it will discuss both the contributions and shortcomings of principal-agent (PA) and constructivist theory. It will argue that they still focus too much on states as central actors and do not have a sophisticated understanding of the diversity of the actors involved, their bureaucratic interests (as well as personal motivations), and the internal organizational processes. These theories should focus both more on path-dependent and garbage-can decision-and policy-making processes and their implementation.
