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Article Excerpt
Analysts usually identify two United Nations, one composed of member states and a second composed of the secretariats. A third UN should also be recognized, composed of actors that are closely associated with the world organization but not formally part of it. This "outside-insider" UN includes nongovernmental organizations, academics, consultants, experts, independent commissions, and other groups of individuals. These informal networks often help to effect shifts in ideas, policies, priorities, and practices that are initially seen as undesirable or problematic by governments and international secretariats. KEYWORDS: United Nations, nongovernmental organizations, intellectual history, networks, international secretariats.
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Research and oral histories from the United Nations Intellectual History Project (UNIHP) demonstrate that ideas, one of the UN's most important legacies, have made a substantial contribution to international society. (1) This work also suggests that the concept of a "third UN" should be added to our analytical toolkit in order to move beyond Inis Claude's classic twofold distinction between the world organization as an intergovernmental arena and as a secretariat. (2)
This "additional" UN consists of certain nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), external experts, scholars, consultants, and committed citizens who work closely with the UN's intergovernmental machinery and secretariats. The third UN's roles include advocacy, research, policy analysis, and idea mongering. Its elements often combine forces to put forward new information and ideas, push for new policies, and mobilize public opinion around UN deliberations and operations. Critics might disagree and regard our perspective as quite orthodox. (3) However, in our view, informed scholars, practitioners, and activists have a value-added and comparative advantage within intergovernmental contexts to push intellectual and policy envelopes. These circles--a third UN--are independent of and provide essential inputs into the other two UNs. Such "outside-insiders" are an integral part of today's United Nations. What once seemed marginal for international relations now is central to multilateralism.
We begin by situating the notion of a third UN among broader scholarly efforts to reconceptualize multilateralism before briefly examining Claude's two traditional components. We then consider the contributions of the third UN concept by exploring key definitional questions and parsing its membership and interactive dynamics in the world organization. Finally, we spell out why the idea of a third UN is significant for the theory and practice of international organization and propose an agenda for future research.
New Multilateralisms and Public Policy Networks
The notion of a three-faceted UN is a contribution to the challenge of theorizing contemporary global governance. It builds on a growing body of work that calls for a conception of "multiple multilateralisms." (4)
Why bring forward this idea now? After all, networks of diplomats and professionals are hardly new. Although major governments have resisted the influence of nonstate actors and, particularly, civil society organizations, parts of the UN system have long engaged them and drawn on academic expertise located outside the system. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has incorporated representatives of trade unions and the business sector into its tripartite structure since 1919. NGOs have been significant for advances in ideas, norms, and policies at the UN beginning with advocacy for the inclusion of human rights in the UN Charter in 1945 and for the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights three years later. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has long has close interactions with civil society groups for a wide range of children's issues and for fund-raising and advocacy. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) have interacted with national committees consisting of academics and NGOs. Indeed, most parts of the UN have drawn on academic or professional expertise located outside the system.
A growing number of authors have attempted to conceptualize the phenomenon of nonstate actors, especially NGOs, as they intersect with the United Nations. (5) The number of nonofficial groups involved has grown dramatically, while the density of globalization has meant that communications and technological developments have increased the reach of their voices as well as their decibel levels.
Adopting the notion of the third UN is a sharper way to depict interactions in and around the world organization than employing the usual three-fold vocabulary of state, market, and civil society. This terminology resonates for students of international organization who were raised on Claude's framework, including much of the Global Governance readership. Moreover, beyond the United Nations there could also be a third European Union (EU), a third Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and so on. However, the data and argument presented here relate more specifically to the UN.
Why have analysts relatively neglected--or often resisted addressing--something that seems so obvious? Part of the answer lies in difficult definitional questions about an amorphous, fluid, and ill-defined group of actors who engage with the United Nations at various levels, at various times, and on various issues. Patterns are hard to grasp, and many of the interactions are ad hoc. Which groups should be included? Should one examine all NGOs and all academics? Where does one draw the line? Would it make more sense to focus on policy orientations rather than on sectors of actors? Once in, are actors forever part of the third UN, or do they move in and out depending on the issue, their influence, or the calendar? This article is another step in conceptualizing global governance in terms of free-flowing networks rather than rigid formal structures. (6)
Most social scientists--development economists, students of comparative politics, sociologists, and anthropologists--have long recognized the empirical and theoretical importance of nonstate actors. However, this insight largely eluded international relations (IR) specialists who, with their preoccupation with issues of sovereignty and with the UN's being composed of member states, tended to minimize or even ignore interactions with nonstate actors and their influence on decisionmaking. Beginning in the 1970s with Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, (7) the growing presence and activities of actors other than states have gradually forced many mainstream IR theorists to pry open the lid on the black box of state-centric theories of international organization. Realists remain unreconstructed in this regard. But with issues as varied as gender and climate change moving into the limelight on the international agenda, largely as a result of efforts by nonstate actors, and despite the recalcitrance of many states and international civil servants, it is imperative to better understand the impact of the third UN.
The First and the Second UN
Unsurprisingly, the first UN and the second UN have long provided the principal grist for analytical mills about the world organization. After all, member states--51 in June 1945 and 192 today--establish the priorities and pay the bills, more or less, thus determining what the world body does. International civil servants would not exist without member states, nor could a permanent institution of member states operate without a secretariat.
Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore distinguish five roles for the first UN: "as an agent of great powers doing their bidding; as a mechanism for interstate cooperation; as a governor of international society of states; as a constructor of the social world; and as a legitimation forum." (8) States pursue national interests in this arena, which varies from "high politics" in the Security Council to "low politics" in the boards and governing councils of UN funds and specialized agencies. States caucus in regional groups for the General Assembly and in smaller groups for numerous issues. Notions of the first UN find a home in virtually all IR theory: for a realist emphasizing self-interested states within an anarchical system; for a liberal institutionalist looking for a stage where states pursue mutual interests and reduce transaction costs; for a proponent of the English School seeking to foster shared norms and values in an international society; for a constructivist looking for a creative agent for ideational change and identity shaping; and for...
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