Resourcing International Organizations: Resource Diversification, Organizational Differentiation, and Administrative Governance

This article introduces, summarizes and contextualizes the key questions and findings of a special issue of Global Policy on the resourcing of international organizations ( IO s). The article sets out trends in the financial resources available to IO s; discusses their organizational consequences; and highlights analytical implications for the study of IO s. We discuss resource diversification associated with growing complexity of the origins and types of funding available to IO s; the importance of non‐state actors in IO funding; and contestation over the classification of resources. Resource diversification encourages organizational differentiation, manifested in major shifts in resource‐related actor constellations and their impact on the autonomy of IO s; adjustments to budgeting procedures; and functional differentiation within IO s and the emergence of new types of IO s that are partly driven by resourcing. These observations invite an analytical perspective in the study of IO s that pays systematic attention to the administrative governance dimension of IO s; the entrepreneurial character of many IO s; and organizational fields as a focus of analysis. Read together, the 11 contributions to the special issue underline that paying attention to their resourcing can advance our understanding of IO s.