From Power to Legitimacy: Explaining the Staff Composition of the United Nations, 1996-2015

States seek to place their nationals in positions of influence within international organizations (IOs). At the same time, however, IOs need competent staff to function effectively, and need to be seen as impartial and representative in order to appear legitimate. To what extent are IO secretariats dominated by powerful countries, and to what extent have they broken free of power constraints to focus on recruiting talented staff from all around the world? We approach this question on the basis of data regarding states’ representation in the professional staffs of 36 separate UN bodies for the years 1996-2015. We present three main findings. First, power continues to play an important role in influencing the staffing patterns of IOs, but its relevance has been steadily declining over time. Paradoxically, as IOs have become increasingly important in shaping political outcomes, powerful states have been gradually losing control of them. Second, there is significant variation across IOs on this point. This trend is strongest amongst operational IOs with high public exposure, and does not affect low-publicity programme IOs at all. Third, power has been replaced by IOs’ representative legitimacy as the strongest predictor of staffing patterns, and IOs’ staffs have become increasingly representative of the global population. Functional requirements consistently influence staffing as well. We attribute this shift from power to representation to the increased role of representative legitimacy pressures on IOs over time.