UN80 Stagnation: An Opportunity for Bureaucratic Entrepreneurs

April 2026

By Katja Hemmerich

On 31 March 2026, UN reform watcher, Dr. Ronny Patz and the Global Governance Institute published a comprehensive review of the UN80 initiative after one year, deeming it a ‘productive failure’. While it produced UN system-wide reform discussions around systemic challenges beyond the current lack of funding, UN80 failed to converge the reform ideas into a real vision of the UN’s role in a changing global order. Political divisions and an inability to manage them are at the root of this failure, according to formal analyses and informal conversations I've had with UN staff and member states. This in turn appears to have led to a resignation amongst UN leadership and many member states that change is impossible in the current context. But is that really true?

Faced with these new realities, UN leaders seem to have found it acceptable, and perhaps even appropriate, to give up on delivering existing mandates or exploring ways to adapt to the new reality with the reasoning that money and/or political agreement they require is missing. This along with member states' inability to find consensus on key issues, like solutions to the liquidity crisis, sets up a dangerous pattern of stagnation, if no one is willing to find alternative paths to change. I’ve been struck by how many people have told me that the UN can’t do much in terms of peace and security given the gridlock in the Security Council. OHCHR and UNOG hold public briefings to indicate they can’t run meetings or deliver mandated reports because of the funding crisis, with no indication that they are exploring options to combine those reports, or different working methods to allow meetings to continue in different ways. And even in the few areas where member states find agreement, like on the UN80 mandate review resolution, the Secretariat simply indicates it cannot deliver the enhanced support requested by member states without additional staff - with no indication that it explored alternative methods of implementation. Everyone seems to be waiting for the next SG to arrive and create a magical vision for the future around which member states and UN leadership will coalesce - but this will not happen. So our spotlight this month explores an alternative pathway to change.

Waiting for the next SG to be appointed to develop a new vision for the UN condemns the UN to waiting for a kind of global consensus that previously characterized in the liberal international order. so that reform can happen at the systemic level. The wait is likely to be long - even if member states appoint the most capable SG. The wait and see approach therefore prevents the UN from adapting to the new global order that still requires multilateral action, even if some countries try to go it alone. As a new study highlights, the current systemic dysfunction and UN80 stagnation can actually be leveraged by bureaucratic entrepreneurs for an incremental (and realistic) pathway to change. As we explore in this month’s spotlight, this allows the UN to find ways to adapt what it works on and how by operationalizing the minilateralism that is increasingly characterizing the global order. We look at how it works and the enablers needed to start developing a bottom-up change process.

Space for change in the face of political gridlock

Much has been written about how earmarked funding allows donor countries to redirect the work of UN organizations in their interest, ultimately undermining multilateral agreement on UN priorities. But as a new comparative study of WHO and UNODC’s policies and programming on narcotic drug outlines, earmarked funding can also be leveraged by bureaucratic entrepreneurs to adapt and evolve UN entities when multilateral consensus or agreement is lacking.

In their study of WHO and UNODC’s, Drs. Kortendiek and Zimmermann found that both organizations faced a policy impasse between competing views of member states on zero-tolerance versus harm reduction approaches. Both organizations had civil society partners (and some member states) providing evidence and advocating for harm reduction approaches - yet while WHO got stuck into a status quo policy of zero tolerance, UNODC was able to implement programmatic innovations focused on harm reduction, building evidence and practice for how and when it is most effective.

The key difference, according to Drs. Kortendiek and Zimmermann is that UNODC had access to earmarked funding from donors open to harm reduction processes, as well as operational capacity in the field to implement innovative programming and bring the data and evidence on their results into organizational learning. WHO by contrast only had access to assessed funding for its programming related to narcotic drugs, for which agreement amongst member states remained squarely focused on the zero tolerance status quo (particularly in the face of periodic threats of withdrawing US funding if the policy changed).

The comparison highlights not only that UN entities are able to address challenges, even in a world that is evolving rapidly and facing growing divisions between powerful member states and decision-making blocs. It can do so through incremental changes at field level and the building of minilateral coalitions of like-minded states rather than through systemic level change. Examples exist beyond those studied by researchers in the health field - much of the UN’s climate security work was developed through the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA) partnership through UNDP using earmarked voluntary funding long before the Security Council could even agree to put it on their agenda, for instance.

Bureaucratic Entrepreneurship's Enablers and Risks

More than demonstrating that such bottom up change is possible, the study also identifies key enablers for evolving the UN’s work in the face of political gridlock. The most important enabler is the existence of bureaucratic entrepreneurs, who are more than just innovators, but who also have a strong understanding of how their organization functions as well as the relevant substantive area. These bureaucratic entrepreneurs have access to operational capacities to implement innovative approaches - meaning this strategy only works in operational entities, rather than purely normative ones. This operational capacity also needs to be matched with the capacity and willingness to capture the learning from these innovations in tools such as after action reviews, evaluations and codifying them in internal guidance on best practices and lessons learnt.

“Bureaucratic entrepreneurs in different thematic units have a deep understanding of the organizational environment they are embedded in and know how to make it work toward change…They use their direct access to the field and broker coalitions with sympathetic donors to work with target groups on the ground and develop practical guidance that changes the policy status quo. Without the combination of earmarked funding and a broad portfolio of operational activities, this type of policy change would not be possible.” -  Kortendiek & Zimmerman, "Walking the Walk, Not Talking the Talk: Project Features and Policy Change in International Organizations”, 2026

By implication, such a strategy for change also requires leadership that is willing to take on the related risks - which are not insignificant. In addition to the general willingness to try new things and take on the risk of changing the status quo, leadership needs to absorb and proactively manage the risks associated with relying on earmarked funding from a small group of donors, as well as the risk of direct resistance by other member states. These risks are inherently mitigated by moving the change process to the field, which is farther away from the entrenched member state politics of headquarters. Collaboration between UN entities with different political dynamics, such as the UNDP and DPPA collaboration on climate security can also mitigate some of the political risks. Similarly, efforts to build coalitions of like-minded member states should focus on more than just who has the most money. Building diverse coalitions of member states across regional groupings and negotiating blocs mitigates the political risks within UN decision-making while also helping to build broader political coalitions when there is an appropriate opening to scale successes and effect more systemic change. Moreover, diverse coalitions of donor states also mitigate the financial risks created when domestic political conditions in certain regions affect the willingness to fund the UN and/or international assistance.

These are strategic risks to be managed, and not just funding risks to be delegated to the partnerships unit or checked off in a risk matrix. It requires an understanding of political dynamics, operational and organizational processes and stakeholder management, which is likely why the change process outlined by Drs. Kortendiek and Zimmermann centres around mid- to senior-level bureaucratic entrepreneurs.

“Entrepreneurial bureaucrats in these units can informally adapt their organization’s policy stance to pressures for change in the organizational environment by implementing new projects in the field and developing the correlative organizational guides and policy scripts—if they manage to convince sympathetic donors and avoid attracting the attention of powerful status quo states.” -   Kortendiek & Zimmerman, "Walking the Walk, Not Talking the Talk: Project Features and Policy Change in International Organizations”, 2026

How Bureaucratic Entrepreneurs re-envisage the UN's role in the face of UN80 stagnation

While the study articulating this incremental process for change is new, history reinforces that much of the UN’s role evolved through incremental change and bureaucratic entrepreneurialism. Peacekeeping was not envisaged in the Charter, but developed in the face of Cold War divisions through collaboration between UN leadership and smaller coalitions of like-minded member states that ultimately built support for consensus. The UN’s role in monitoring and investigating serious human rights abuses evolved incrementally with voluntary funding often supporting the development of new methods of work and investigative techniques. This not only helped improve the UN’s capacity and credibility in this area, but also convinced enough member states to form the unique IIIM mechanism for Syria to support justice processes for serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in spite of UN staff not being able to access Syria and political gridlock in the Security Council.

The reality is that there will be no global UN meeting at which all member states agree on their vision of the UN for the future, and create a coherent systemic reform process to enable that role. But if the UN and like-minded member states can create space for bureaucratic entrepreneurialism, the UN will be able to adapt to new realities and demonstrate how it can add value in the emerging global order.