Budgetmaking in the United Nations Development Program: An Analysis of the Expenditures for Technical Assistance

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), charged with promoting development projects in the second UN Development Decade, faced a serious financial crisis during the first half of the 1970s. In this paper I investigate the UNDP's budgetmaking to determine the sources of its financial crisis. Unlike municipal, state or national governments, this analysis finds that the UNDP, which is financed by voluntary contributions from member states, is less likely to use an incremental method of budgetmaking. The financial conditions strongly constrain the budgetmaking of the UNDP. However, the UNDP Secretariat's estimates of available resources for technical assistance have been optimistic, allowing the agency rapidly to expand its activities in response to the demand of developing countries, but also leading to the UNDP's serious financial crisis.