The United Nations Intellectual legacy: states or individuals?

QUANTIFYING THE WORLD: UN IDEAS AND STATISTICS

By Michael Ward 

Indiana University Press, 2004

329 pages, ISBN 0-253-21674-5

WOMEN, DEVELOPMENT, AND THE UN: A SIXTY-YEAR QUEST FOR EQUALITY AND JUSTICE

By Devaki Jain 

Indiana University Press, 2005

230 pages, ISBN 0-253-21819-5

THE UN AND GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY: TRADE, FINANCE, AND DEVELOPMENT

By John Toye and Richard Toye

Indiana University Press, 2004

393 pages, ISBN 0-253-21686-9

HUMAN SECURITY AND THE UN: A CRITICAL HISTORY

By S. Neil MacFarlane and Yuen Foong-Khong

Indiana University Press, 2006

368 pages, ISBN 0-253-21839-1

The United Nations has 192 Member States, but it is the individual that counts and must be counted. Through four diverse volumes of the United Nations Intellectual History Project (UNIHP), the focus here is on the described and analysed conditions of individuals over the 60 years of UN existence, seen through the authors' perspectives of statistics, women, political economy and human security.

These works are only part of UNIHP. They also provide sufficient evidence to support an argument that, thanks to the energies of individuals more than institutions and agencies, the United Nations in its first decades at least had the scope to generate original ideas and policies. At the same time, the politicization of issues has always been a feature, although recently its pervasive effect has been to reduce the Organization's intellectual role to that of boosting and promoting, rather than originating ideas. But out of all these volumes come valuable historical accounts of the United Nations development as a global institution.

UNIHP was established in 1999 and has been run, nurtured and guided largely through Richard Jolly, Louis Emmerij, Thomas G. Weiss and the City University of New York (CUNY). Surprisingly, it is the first comprehensive analysis and assessment of ideas and policies fomented at the United Nations. One particular task was to judge whether these ideas were, to borrow the title of the first book, "ahead of the curve" in originality. (1)

UNIHP has published 8 of a planned 14-volume series, divided into the broad headings of economic and social development, and peace and security. Here, we look at three of the former sections and one of the latter. But the division is far from rigid. The dominant feature is not just tracing the train of ideas but also the history of the United Nations via its institutions, economic, social and political bodies, conferences, meetings and above all individuals, whether "defiant bureaucrats", ebullient intellectuals, arrogant advocates or precise "idea-smiths".

Michael Ward's Quantifying the World: UN Ideas and Statistics (2004) chronicles, through the UN Statistical Division, an organization all of its own. In a persuasive mixture of theory and history, he unravels the story of how States gradually entrusted their statistical sovereignty to the United Nations, away from what he calls "state-istics", towards something reflecting a broader view of life and economic and trade policies. They gradually moved towards reflecting the vital components of the neglected "informal" side of society-households, children and women. Other UN organizations, such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO), played a role. Statistics were not an original source but a means of efficient innovation enacted against the background of international political tensions and reflected economic theories.

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Logically, Devaki Jain's Women, Development, and the UN: A Sixty-Year Quest for Equality and Justice (2005) comes next, perhaps the least hopeful of the tales told. The author argues and advocates, as a self-proclaimed activist ideologically firmly from the South, through the history of UN summits, often-fraught conferences, declarations and "multiple identities", especially in the bureaucratic corridors of the United Nations. She concludes that 60 years has been a long time to wait and there is little to show for it. But the book forms a solid link to the themes of human rights, security and development, and personalities that run through the UNIHP series.

The most archivally-based work is that of the Toyes (John and Richard Toye), pere et fils. The UN and Global Political Economy: Trade, Finance, and Development (2004) is a critical and political account of the UN approach to economic development and finance. Rich in personalities, among them Raul Prebisch, Gunnar Myrdal, Sydney Dell, Hans Singer and Michal Kalecki, it shows the extent to which the initial UN approaches were largely North-driven (with the individualistic and United States role changing, as its almost automatic majority in the UN General Assembly disappeared in the 1960s and 1970s), but matched by the disappointments of the South in the role of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). It links with Ward and Jain through the long-running debate about poverty and target-setting, where the role of statistics returns. "Trade" is perhaps no more optimistic than "Women".

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Human Security and the UN: A Critical History (2006), by S. Neil MacFarlane and Yuen Foong-Khong, contains more theory than the other three volumes. The authors are on security self-confessed "bombs and bullets" men, but leading an internal debate in their pages, linger thoughtfully on the growing role, rights and conditions of individuals and non-governmental organizations, within and without the State, from the ancient classical era through to Westphalia and onwards. They acknowledge the important shift from the State's often unchallenged authority as it became clear that such vital issues as human rights, environment and poverty could all undermine human security and contribute to conflict. They conclude that the State--the responsible State--should be paramount in responsibly guiding the fate of individuals. It is, of course, a concession as yet still unresolved. Of the four volumes this one deals extensively on the peace and security side of UNIHP, although all are intertwined.

The United Nations, now at sixty-plus and at the tail-end of Kofi Annan's tenure as Secretary-General, has been undergoing since 1997 its most prolonged bout of examination and attempted reforms. However, the world Organization, through its Member States, firmly leaves the impression that it owes its longevity more to a developed instinct for prolonged adaptability than to an urge or even a collective desire to reform. Against this background, it has never wanted for advice, policy proposals and pressure, as well as ideas. It may be that personalities had more sway in the early days, before the height of the cold war and decolonization, and more recently terrorism. Of the secretaries-general, perhaps only Dag Hammarskjold and Kofi Annan stand out as receptive to ideas. It may be that the initial stamp of the North on the United Nations and its agencies, programmes and funds have since led inevitably to greater politicization, with attempts by Member States to introduce the issues of human rights, environment and poverty into nearly every debate, for example, on conflict or development. This has helped to blur the effectiveness of the system-wide policymaking.

Louis Emmerij has raised questions against which to test the changes of these UNIHP books. (2) The volumes come out well, although answers cannot be conclusive: whether ideas or policies come first; whether projects have a life of their own or are judged against their historical and social context; whether an idea can be traced from its start to where it ends; and whether it was ideas themselves or the people behind them that gave them their influence and impetus. In becoming so global and globalized, and with membership more than tripled since the United Nations inception, Member States, either collectively or in regional groups, probably find it harder than ever to draw original results from proposed ideas. These volumes show that it has not been for the lack of individuals, anymore than States, trying.

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

NOTES

1 Ahead of the Curve? UN Ideas and Global Challenges. Louis Emmerij, Richard Jolly and Thomas G. Weiss (2nd ed., 2003).

2 Louis Emmerij: The History of Ideas: An Introduction to the United Nations Intellectual History Project, Forum for Development Studies, No. 1-2005.

Anthony McDermott has been a Senior Research Officer with the International Security and Global Issues Research Group of Research Analyst in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom since June 2000. He is the author of The New Politics of Financing the UN (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2000). The views expressed here are personal and do not reflect official policy.

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REVIEWED BY ANTHONY MCDERMOTT