A Multilateral Donation that Boomerangs Home: Analysing the Donor State Advantage in UN Procurement
研究发现联合国采购仍偏向捐赠国，捐赠国在联合国工作人员中的代表是连接捐赠与采购偏好的关键，而担任机构负责人的国家并无优势，表明采购偏好的非正式自下而上渠道。
Bilateral aid procurement is politicised and strongly favours suppliers from donor countries. Does multilateral development assistance eliminate the procurement bias favouring donor countries because international bureaucrats make procurement decisions? Existing evidence from the World Bank, which delegates procurement responsibilities to aid recipient countries, cannot answer our theoretical question. Using official data from 20 UN organisations during the 2013–2018 period and applying regression and mediation analysis, we find that the procurement of international organisations still favours donor countries when international bureaucrats make procurement decisions. We identify donor state representation within the UN staff as a key stepping stone linking donation to procurement bias. In contrast, member states whose nationals are heads of a UN bureaucracy do not enjoy procurement advantage, suggesting that UN procurement bias operates through an informal bottom-up channel. Our paper contributes to the debates on the independence of international organisations in the context of multilateral development assistance and procurement.