Understanding Change in International Organizations Across Time and Spaces: The Rise of UN Country Teams

Abstract

This article analyses the progress of the agenda committed to tackle the fragmentation of the UN system to better understand the process of institutional change in International Organizations. Focusing on changes undergone by the UN's country-level presence, the case study of the voluntary implementation of Delivering as One initiative (DaO) in Mozambique and Vietnam demonstrates how common plans, joint programs and pooled funds have promoted better divisions of labor and settled divergences among UN entities. This has fostered the national ownership of UN country-level activities and developed the nexus of humanitarian-development agendas. Pilot countries and donors resorted to selective incentives for the engagement of UN bureaucracies, who, especially at headquarters, remained resistant to reforms. Reform was subject to incentives and constraints that were introduced and manifested unevenly across spaces and over time. It lost momentum both in Mozambique and Vietnam following the pilot phase, when donors’ engagement faltered, but had more enduring effects in the latter, where the government’s greater capacity to engage in favor of reforms supported the compliance of UN country offices. This indicates the United Nations Country Teams (UNCT) consolidation amid institutional changes based on layering institutional innovations alongside extant structures, overcoming conflicts of loyalties.