Information and access to United Nations diplomatic missions

ABSTRACT

United Nations (UN) diplomats play an important role in international policy, yet there is a scarcity of evidence and theory on their preferences and behaviour. We report the results of an online field experiment designed to identify the revealed preferences of diplomats. In particular, we investigate whether and how diplomats will provide access to outside organizations based on offers of information. We contacted diplomats by email and randomized offers of information on either peer missions or world affairs. While offers of information on peers garnered nearly 45% more responses indicating interest than offers of information on world affairs, response rates across both treatments were low, and the difference is only 3.3 percentage points. Our estimated treatment effects of assignment to the peer as compared to world affairs treatment are not statistically significant. Our experiment failed to provide evidence that these types of informational offers facilitate differential access to UN diplomats.

KEYWORDS:

• International organizations
• United Nations
• diplomats
• information
• field experiments

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• C9
• D78
• D83
• F53

Acknowledgment

Lauren Pinson acknowledges the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program for support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Permanent Missions to the United Nations No. 305, April 2015.

Additional information

Funding

Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.