Network and Cluster Analysis of the Funding Relationship among the U.N. Agencies and State Donors

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the network structure of the world polity with the funding data of the United Nations agencies and their donor states in 2020. Network analysis was employed to further understand the current structure of the network from the world systems approach. Research hypotheses concerning the theory were developed from a network and hierarchical perspective on political science. Considering the bipartite network structure of data, cohesion measures including density, average distance, diameter, and fragmentation were calculated. In addition, the K-means clustering was conducted to examine the world structure. The results of network analysis suggest that the global structure is partly aligned with the world systems theory. The findings demonstrate that both states and agency actors are interconnected to each other, and its structure is being polarized and the power is centralized to core countries. This study sheds light on the funding relationship among states and U.N. agencies as a function of international governance.