Bureaucratic politics and the allocation of climate finance

The financing of climate measures in developing countries – climate finance – is an increasingly important issue in global climate governance. While a growing body of literature has highlighted the importance of bureaucratic actors within governments as a factor influencing political decisions, quantitative studies on climate finance have so far only focused on extra-governmental factors. We argue that this is a serious shortcoming given that the allocation of climate finance involves ministries with different priorities. This paper addresses the gap by studying how the involvement of ministries in policy processes influences the implementation of bilateral climate finance. We find that ministry involvement matters for both the selection and allocation of climate finance. First, we discover that involvement of the ministry of development means that lower income countries are more likely to be selected as recipients of climate finance but surprisingly that does not mean recipients acquire more climate finance. Second, we discover that when the ministry of environment is involved, donor countries are more likely to provide aid to UNFCCC allies, and when it is the ministry holding the “lead” on climate finance, non-allies tend to receive less aid than allies.