The UN’s Knowledge Economy

This chapter spells out the various ways that the world organization’s intergovernmental machinery requires outside inputs as part of making UN policy sausages. A cottage industry of outside experts—think tankers, consultants, and university faculty members—greases the gears of the UN’s messy process with substantive inputs. The ways that ideas matter, and how they influence state decision-making, are essential. Among the cases are the International Peace Institute (IPI), the International Crisis Group (ICG), the DC-based Stimson Center, the Security Council Report, UN University, the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum (CPPF) at the US-based Social Science Research Council, the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, and the Small Arms Survey. These intellectual entry points—primarily based in the global North but increasingly with wider participation from individuals and institutions worldwide—have helped shape the UN’s framing of international peace and security, human rights and humanitarian action, and sustainable development

Introduction

If past is prelude, the most creative and imaginative rethinking of the contemporary bases for international cooperation will emanate from the Third United Nations. The first section briefly parses it to provide the working vocabulary for subsequent chapters. The original argument appeared in a journal whose title, Global Governance, reflects the move away from the older notion of states and their creation in the form of IGOs as the only substantial pillars of world order. That evolution is explained in the second section before briefly summarizing the book.

Commissions and Panels

The chapter analyzes the over-sized role of one visible component of the Third UN. Prominent individuals—many of whom made their government and international civil servant careers as members of the First and the Second UNs—have come to constitute essential and frequent contributors to the advance of knowledge and norms. The case studies concern peace operations (the Brahimi report of 2001 and HIPPO of 2015); the protection of human beings in war zones (the ICISS report of 2001); and for sustainable development (the Brundtland report of 1987 and the ongoing work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC). Less successful or even counterproductive group efforts also figure in the discussion, but the main examples seek to demonstrate how and when such blue-ribbon groups make a difference.

NGOs

The chapter examines the main tasks of NGOs and how they are related to the achievement of their missions and to those of the United Nations. The history of NGO links to the Third UN—including an official role in the UN’s constitution, Charter Article 71—as well as the various distinctions between them and other non-state actors provides an essential building block for the book. Detailed cases concern efforts to alleviate the plague of landmines (the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, ICBL), to improve international judicial pursuit (the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, CICC), and to set the agenda for sustainable development (the conversations leading to the formulation and adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs).

The “Third” UN

The chapter explains the selection of and concentration on the main knowledge brokers in the Third UN. It explores the growth in numbers of the two major types of non-state actors that are the easiest to count, international NGOs and TNCs, as well as their dynamics within the UN system. The widespread push, including within IGOs, for evidence-based policymaking has created a further demand for think tanks and research that translate applied and basic research into accessible and user-friendly materials. It is impossible to appreciate the nature of the policy process without understanding the “whole” UN—First, Second, and Third.

Fitter for Purpose?

This chapter asks whether the world organization can become fitter for purpose. An essential motivation for getting right the understanding of the Third UN is the need to identify the comparative advantages and disadvantages of the “whole” organization. It is especially challenging to identify how the UN should act in the era of information disorder and public health pandemics, and thus how a variety of knowledge brokers from the Third UN can help the UN think. The task to analyze what the UN can and cannot do, as well as how to make it fitter-for-purpose, should have been undertaken more vigorously and earlier. However, it is even more crucial in the age of new nationalisms and populisms. In light of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic and global economic meltdown, the breakdown of international cooperation and the pressing need for a robust multilateral system could not be more obvious, even if it is not clear to new nationalists.

Alternative Voices

The chapter details the growing inputs for UN deliberations from two distinct sets of “voices”: from within emerging powers that formerly were absent or largely hidden; and from for-profit businesses. The first part examines the political and economic changes brought about by rising and emerging powers that are altering the landscape for how to approach the pillars of UN activity. The second part reflects the arrival on the UN’s stage of TNCs, which formerly had only cameo roles despite their weight in the global economy because of their perceived role, within the popular rhetoric from the Global South, as exploiters and explanations for poverty. Both emerging powers and business are long-ignored partners that bring resources, expertise, new technologies, and energy to international problem-solving and to the Third UN; they also have challenged the multilateral system and led to calls for a new architecture of global governance.