Different approaches to UN ideas: the United Nations Intellectual History Project series.

WITH THE UNITED NATIONS entering its seventh decade of existence, much has been published about its role as the foremost global peacekeeper and facilitator of diplomatic negotiations between countries. And yet an essential contribution of the Organization, an aspect that has molded the socio-political climate of the modern world, has received much less attention, i.e. its contribution to intellectual thought in the twentieth century.

In 1999, the United Nations Intellectual History Project (UNIHP) series was formed with the aim of educating the public and fomenting greater scholarly discourse regarding the place of the United Nations in global academia. To further this objective, two components were formed: an oral history interview series with key UN-affiliated people and a publication series. The first volume of the series--Ahead of the Curve: UN Ideas and Global Governance, by Louis Emmerij, Richard Jolly and Thomas G. Weiss (all books are published in a series by Indiana University Press)-was published in 2001 and eight additional volumes have since been issued. As of today, seven more books are slated to be released through the Project, each covering a wide variety of fields that the United Nations actively works in.

A review of the entire series offers a holistic appraisal of the complex and multifaceted ideology of the United Nations, and through it we find the achievements as well as the shortcomings of the Organization. As the structure and intent of the UNHIP has been covered elsewhere in this issue (seepage 20), I will limit this investigation to identifying the patterns of intellectual behaviour explicit in the text. The role of UN ideas in shaping the modern world is further revealed through my interview with UNIHP cofounder and co-director Thomas G. Weiss, presidential professor of political science at The CUNY Graduate Center. To illustrate the diversity of scholarship represented in the series, I will contrast the different approaches towards appraising the United Nations, as seen in UN Voices: The Struggle for Development and Social Justice, by Thomas G. Weiss, Tatiana Carayannis, Louis Emmerij and Richard Jolly, and UN Contributions to Development Thinking and Practice, by Richard Jolly, Louis Emmerij, Dharam Ghai and Frederic Lapeyre--two UNIHP books published in 2004 and 2005, respectively. I will argue that the different methodologies employed in these investigations underscore the diverse methodologies used by the United Nations.

Midway through the academic book series, UNIHP published a monograph recounting their findings. The Power of UN Ideas: Lessons from the First 60 Years, issued in 2005, balanced a historical overview of UN ideas with a more analytical critique of the intellectual creativity of the United Nations. Serving as more than a rudimentary overview of the series, Richard Jolly, Louis Emmerij and Thomas G. Weiss, co-directors of UNIHP and authors of The Power of UN Ideas, offer a glimpse of the forthcoming books from the series. Chapter one, "Framing the Issue", asks the reader to consider the tangible change in the original "four pillars" of the Organization: peace, development, human rights and independence. In the introduction, the authors write that "initially, these four pillars were pursued more in parallel than in an integrated fashion. Development was taken to be economic development ... over subsequent decades, the UN vision of development shifted, moving from the narrowly economic to a much broader and multidisciplinary perspective by the 1990s". This coalescence of initially separate components into a new interwoven structure of UN responsibilities cannot be overstated, as it is consistently addressed by all UNIHP books. The four pillars, which had been treated as separate monolithic entities with respect to their functions, but over time combined, offer a perspective towards world development that conformed to the changes of modern times.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The first chapter of The Power of UN Ideas raises the key observations of the previously published volumes and provides the salient points that will be discussed in subsequent issues. While the active role of the United Nations in the world, from peacekeeping to development projects, have been strenuously publicized and documented, its distinctive and immeasurably useful intellectual agency has been neglected. The authors write: "The intellectual contributions to ideas, analysis and policymaking in the economic and social arenas have been among the UN's most important achievements. They have had a significant influence on national and international action". An additional and often overlooked fact regarding the UN role in contributing socio-economic ideas to the world is that "many of the early ideas have emerged in response to initiatives of the dominant economic powers, especially those of the United States, even if Washington subsequently appears to have forgotten many of its early contributions".

The second chapter explains how the United Nations has been at the forefront of "quantifying the world", researching and presenting statistically accurate information on a worldwide level. According to the Project's co-directors, "the United Nations has played a major part in establishing a professional ethic of statistical independence and objectivity. It has encouraged public access to such information, nationally and internationally, especially with its regular statistical publications and its high-profile reports". This contribution allowed economists to quantify development levels of different countries, allowing for direct and practical action. This focus on statistics in turn aided the emphasis on "formulating, adopting and promoting global development goals". From John F. Kennedy's "development decade" of the 1960s--when the United Nations exceeded its target of increasing the economic growth of developing countries by 5 per cent a year--to the current Millennium Development Goals, the Organization has utilized quantitative-driven targets to propel Governments into action. The second chapter also recounts the findings of previous UNIHP books on the topics of human rights, sustainability, gender equality, human development and human security.

Chapter three of The Power of UN Ideas discusses the UN struggle for justice and opportunity in the fields of international trade, foreign aid and investment, and global governance. Chapter four, on the other hand, points out the contrasting contributions of the United Nations, rejecting the notion that it has been a monolithic and myopic entity. Chapters five and six take a different approach than the previous chapters. They offer advice and criticism on how the United Nations could have made more long lasting contributions, where it has failed, and in what direction it is heading. It is in relation to this topic that I spoke with Mr. Weiss.

With a basic conceptual framework of the UNIHP goals in mind, we can turn to what the project concluded regarding the Organization's intellectual creativity. It is safe to conclude that the goal from the series is not only to chronicle the history of the United Nations, but also to highlight its oftentimes neglected influences on the world at large. Thus, in my interview with Mr. Weiss, one of the leading analysts of UN studies who currently chairs the Academic Council on the UN System, I asked him if the goal of UNIHP was to "right a wrong"? As this series is the first of its kind, I raised the fact that there has been very little understanding on the UN role in creating changes in modern economics and social science. Is the series planning on educating academia?

Mr. Weiss stated that the notion of educating academics "was the idea that Richard Jolly and I first had in 1996. He thought it was imperative to do more serious history on the economic and social side of the UN, and I agreed. But, I said, what we don't need is the history of institutions, what I think we need is the history of ideas and principles. After all is said and done, it is the big ideas, big principles and norms that can really make a difference." Judging from the subject matter of the books, this appears to ring very true. With titles ranging from Human Security and the UN: A Critical History, by S. Neil MacFarlane and Yuen Foong-Khong, to Women, Development and the UN: A Sixty-Year Quest for Equality and Justice, by Devaki Jain, we see quickly that the series is choosing to investigate broader subjects rather than specific material topics. Thus, at no time would a UNIHP book be solely devoted to a topic like "UN peacekeeping in the Darfur Region"; such area- and time-specific topics are no doubt part of the rationale of the UNIHP findings, but the focus is on a more holistic view of the United Nations. Mr. Weiss confirmed this mentality, saying that "on the operational side, what the UN conducts, while not trivial, is not going to change the world. But if you have an idea that is adopted by individuals, NGOs, Governments and other members of the UN system, that can make a difference. That story was not really told, so we set out to take these big ideas and have people go back to 1945, look at the archives, talk to people and say what has moved the story ahead. This series is an untold story--it may be the most important story of the Organization."

A prevailing criticism heard from both within and outside the UN system is that the Organization, as of late, has had the flow of intellectual innovation stemmed by the burgeoning size of its bureaucracy. With more operational responsibilities than ever, today's United Nations cannot devote as much of its resources on more than material projects and has slowed in its intellectual growth. I asked Mr. Weiss whether the United Nations has, indeed, lost its momentum as a catalyst for affecting policy decisions. To this, he pointed out that "when you look at the willingness to run risks, the earlier days of the UN were indeed filled with many more risk-takers and rule-breakers; there wasn't such a big bureaucracy to hang over them. It is due to the fact that government officials, politicians, bureaucrats do not tend to think of norms and principles as a legitimate product. That this is not the kind of dynamic making a difference, they believe. While I am certainly not one to say that we shouldn't provide assistance to refugees or do better statistical analyses, it seems that the role of ideas--good, bad and indifferent--is a product that needs to be thought through." In order to counteract this trend of lessening intellectual creativity, Mr. Weiss believes that restructuring and streamlining the Organization may play an important part. "Part of the streamlining would be to include much greater flexibilities for Under-Secretaries-General and their equivalents in conducting research and hiring the people who can do it."

The UNIHP series, in its totality, offer a careful balance of historical insights and suggestions for the future of the United Nations. In having three project directors--Jolly, Emmerij and Weiss--who do not always see eye to eye, the series has managed to offer a diverse array of perspectives, simultaneously being celebratory and skeptical of the Organization. Additionally, while the three academics have maintained a role in editing the different volumes, over 20 others from all over the world have taken part in the writing and editing process of the UNIHP series. Thus, while all the authors share a similar zeal for the United Nations, their disparate socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, coupled with the fact that each book approaches UN ideas from diverging methodologies and disciplines, ensures that the series remains of interest to everyone. Mr. Weiss noted that "there are different readers for different volumes. For instance, UN Contributions to Development Thinking and Practice has a larger potential readership among UN development officials, as well as students in universities. The statistical book [Quantifying the World: UN Ideas and Statistics, by Michael Ward], has a smaller group of people who might be interested in it. The one on oral history [UN Voices: The Struggle for Development and Social Justice] probably has today's largest readership."

Turning to two UNIHP books in particular, we see the need for flexible and diverse academic methodologies when investigating the United Nations structure. UN Contributions and UN Voices offer overlapping yet dissimilar perspectives on the UN role in development thinking. Both books shed light on future challenges of the Organization, especially in its constant attempt to find a harmonious balance between operational responsibilities and scholarly creativity. Both discuss the roots of integrated and globalized intellectual thought, reflecting on what specific ingredients of the post-Second World War climate allowed for the United Nations to come into fruition. Yet, while these two books have overlap in subject matter and authorship, methodologies vary intensely.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In UN Contributions, three overarching sections--"Values and History", "Ideas and Action" and "Outcomes and the Future"--somewhat chronologically segment the subject of UN scholarly identity. We find in the first section that the UN intellectual narrative begins well before the actual founding of the Organization. In its chapter on "The History of Development Thinking from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes", the book argues that "if we are to understand the evolution of ideas, we need to refer back to the important antecedents". While it is unfavourable to take "modern concepts and concerns and [impose] them on writes of a different era", without the contributions of classical and neoclassical Western philosophers, the ideological formation of the United Nations would lack in rationality and utility.

The second section of UN Contributions recounts each decade of the Organization's existence, cataloguing the birth of ideas from each UN organ. The book also underscores the importance of specialized councils and conferences, such as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which in its inaugural meeting in 1964 "provided a unique opportunity to make a comprehensive review of the problems of trade affecting the developing countries". UNCTAD has continued to meet at four year intervals, publishing reports on how best to decrease the North-South divide and how to facilitate trade, which will benefit both developing and developed nations.

UN Voices creates a portrait of the United Nations from entirely different perspectives. Instead of a region by region and era by era study of UN ideas on development, it focuses on the individuals themselves. Unlike UN Contributions, which we can say operates within the disciplines of history and political science, UN Voices is more of a journalistic text, where inferences are even at times anthropological. It presents 73 interviews from economists, political scientists, diplomats and politicians, who devoted a huge amount of their professional life engaged in UN activities. The creation of UNCTAD, for example, is presented to the reader by the way of personal anecdotes and insights from the very people who created the organization. We learn of the personal advice of Raul Prebisch, the first UNCTAD Secretary-General and a prime intellectual mover and shaker, to Enrique Iglesias: "Don't read so much. Think. Reflect." There is a definite correlation between his philosophy towards development, and his organization's manifestos--to not be afraid to stand up against contemporary Western economic thought, in the light of the growing division between rich and poor nations.

The two books exemplify what is needed in the United Nations: a heterogeneous perspective on UN intellectual thought. What cannot be fully revealed in a historical study may be exposed through interviews with UN policymakers. And when the story of UN ideas is weakened by the intimacy between the interviewee and the Organization, a more distanced study, such

as UN Contributions, may further elucidate the matter. Both texts need each other in order to provide a multilayered and illuminating picture of the United Nations. The Organization's work spans the spectrum of academic practices, from statistics to investigating journalism, to social scientific commentary. Thus, UNIHP is in a way mirroring the work of the United Nations itself, as it seeks to provide the entire picture through diverse means. As the Organization faces the challenges of an increasingly postmodern globalized age, with disparity between the East and the West continuing in many shapes and forms, the United Nations will need to embrace all academic disciplines in order to serve as a powerful positive force throughout the world. Asked if the United Nations was well-equipped to be at the forefront of intellectual creativity, Thomas Weiss paused, finally stating: "It's not well equipped at this instance. It should and could be."

(For more information on the United Nations Intellectual History Project, please visit www.unhistory.org.)

This study was supported, in part, by Reed College's Presidential Discretionary Funds, Dean's Discretionary Funds and the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Grant.