Financing and Budgets

International organizations require funds to operate, a basic and anodyne fact that has manifold and fundamental consequences. The means by which organizations are financed and the methods by which budgets are decided shape the character of the organization, its relations with and between its member states, and its policy outcomes. Consequently, formal and informal decisions and practices concerning the design of financing mechanisms and the allocation of budgets necessarily entail constitutive choices about an organization\u27s operation and its forms of governance. This chapter describes the means by which organizations acquire resources and the methods they use to decide on expenditures. In so doing, it also considers the implications for organizations of those chosen means and methods