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The “Third” United Nations


OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 6/1/2021, SPi
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 6/1/2021, SPi

The “Third” United


Nations
How a Knowledge Ecology Helps
the UN Think

TATIANA CARAYANNIS
and
THOMAS G. WEISS

1
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 6/1/2021, SPi

3
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© Tatiana Carayannis and Thomas G. Weiss 2021
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
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a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
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DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198855859.001.0001
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About the Authors

Tatiana Carayannis is director of the Social Science Research Council’s Conflict


Prevention and Peace Forum (CPPF), Understanding Violent Conflict (UVC) pro-
gram, and China-Africa Knowledge Project. She has a visiting appointment at the
London School of Economics and Political Science’s Africa Centre and Department of
International Development, where she also serves as a research director for the Centre
for Public Authority and International Development (CPAID). Until recently, she
convened the DRC Affinity Group, a small brain trust of leading Congo scholars and
analysts. She has been building bridges between researchers and policy practitioners
for two decades. A scholar of international organization and Central Africa, particu-
larly the DRC, her research focuses on conflict prevention, the networked dynamics of
violence, UN peacekeeping and preventive diplomacy, evidenced-based policymaking,
and the agenda-setting role of UN human rights and development ideas. She has
conducted extensive field work in Central Africa, and has written and lectured widely
on these issues. Her books include UN Voices: The Struggle for Development and Social
Justice (co-authored with Thomas G. Weiss et al., 2005) and Making Sense of the
Central African Republic (co-edited with Louisa Lombard, 2015). Current book pro-
jects include Pioneers of Peacekeeping: ONUC 1960–1964 and Anatomy of Rebellion: JP
Bemba and the Mouvement de Libération du Congo. Carayannis holds a PhD and MA
in political science from The City University of New York Graduate Center and New
York University. She grew up in Central and West Africa and pre-pandemic could
usually be found on an airplane.
Thomas G. Weiss is fighting valiantly against senior moments and creaking joints as
Presidential Professor of Political Science at the Graduate Center of the City University
of New York and Director Emeritus of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International
Studies. He is also Distinguished Fellow, Global Governance, at the Chicago Council
on Global Affairs, and Eminent International Scholar at Kyung Hee University, Korea.
He was a 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellow and a past president of the International
Studies Association (2009–10) as well as the recipient of its “2016 Distinguished IO
Scholar Award.” Other recent posts included Research Professor at SOAS, University
of London (2012–15); Chair of the Academic Council on the UN System (2006–9);
editor of Global Governance (2000–5); and Research Director of the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (2000–1). He has written exten-
sively about multilateral approaches to international peace and security, humanitarian
action, and sustainable development. His latest single-authored books are Would the
World Be Better without the UN? (2018); What’s Wrong with the United Nations and
How to Fix It (2016); Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas in Action (2016); Governing
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x   

the World? Addressing “Problems without Passports” (2014); Global Governance: Why?
What? Whither? (2013); Humanitarian Business (2013); and Thinking about Global
Governance: People and Ideas Matter (2011). He is also most recently the editor of
Routledge Handbook on the UN and Development (2021, with Stephen Browne), the
second edition of The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations (2018, with Sam Daws),
and the second edition of International Organization and Global Governance (2018,
with Rorden Wilkinson).
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List of Figures, Tables, and Box

Figures
1.1 Interactions among the Three United Nations 20
1.2 Historical overview of the number of IGOs and INGOs, 1909–2017 31
1.3 Parent TNCs and foreign affiliates, World Investment Report 1992–2009 32

Tables
2.1 Number and ratio of INGOs and IGOs founded by decade, 1900–2019 42
4.1 Number of think tanks by region, 2018 104

Box
4.1 The functions of knowledge brokers 107
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List of Abbreviations

A4P Action for Peacekeeping


AGE Advisory Group of Experts on Peacebuilding
AI Amnesty International
AI artificial intelligence
AMISOM African Union Mission in Somalia
APMBC Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
AU African Union
BRI Belt and Road Initiative [China]
BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa [Group of]
CAR Central African Republic
CARICOM Caribbean Community
CCA Common Country Assessment
CDP Committee on Development Policy (previously Planning)
CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against
Women
CGPCS Contact Group for Piracy off the Coast of Somalia
CHR Commission on Human Rights
CIC Center for International Cooperation
CICC Coalition for the International Criminal Court
CIS Commonwealth of Independent States
CMC Cluster Munition Coalition
CONGO Conference of Non-governmental Organizations in Consultative
Relationship with the United Nations
COP Conference of Parties
CPPF Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum
CRASH Centre de Réflexion sur l’Action et les Savoirs Humanitaires
CSD Commission on Sustainable Development
CSR corporate social responsibility
DAC Development Assistance Committee [of the OECD]
DaO Delivering as One
DCAF Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance
DESA Department of Economic and Social Affairs
DHA Department of Humanitarian Affairs
DHF Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation
DPA Department of Political Affairs
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DPET Department of Policy, Education, and Training


DPI Department of Public Information
DPKO Department of Peacekeeping Operations
DPO Department of Peace Operations
DPPA Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs
DRC Democratic Republic of the Congo
ECA Economic Commission for Africa
ECLA[C] Economic Commission for Latin America [and the Caribbean, after
1984]
ECOSOC Economic and Social Council
ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States
ECPS Executive Committee on Peace and Security
EEZ Exclusive Economic Zone
EISAS Electronic Information and Strategic Analysis unit in the Secretariat
EOSG Executive Office of the Secretary-General
ERC Emergency Relief Coordinator
ESCAP Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
EU European Union
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization
FDI foreign direct investment
FIFA Fédération Internationale de Football Association
G-7/G-8 Group of Seven/Group of Eight
G-20 Group of 20
G-77 Group of 77
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GAVI Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization
GCC Gulf Cooperation Council
GCRP Geneva Centre for Security Policy
GDP gross domestic product
GDPR General Data Protection Regulation
GEF Global Environment Facility
GHGs greenhouse gases
GIS geographic information system
GNI gross national income
GNP gross national product
GONGO government-organized NGO
GWOT Global War on Terror
HD (Centre for) Humanitarian Dialogue
HDI Human Development Index
HI Handicap International
HIPPO High-level Independent Panel on UN Peace Operations
HIV/AIDS human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency
syndrome
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HLP High-level Panel


HLPF High-level Political Forum
HPG Humanitarian Policy Group
HRC Human Rights Council
HRI Humanitarian Responses Index
HRuF Human Rights up Front
HRW Human Rights Watch
IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency
IASC Inter-Agency Standing Committee
IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction and Development [World Bank]
IBSA India, Brazil, South Africa [Group of]
ICANN Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
ICAO International Civil Aviation Organization
ICBL International Campaign to Ban Landmines
ICC International Criminal Court
ICG International Crisis Group (or Crisis Group)
ICISS International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty
ICJ International Court of Justice
ICM International Commission on Multilateralism
ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross
ICTR International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
ICTY International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
IDP internally displaced person
IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development
IFRC International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
IGO intergovernmental organization
IHL international humanitarian law
IHR International Health Regulations
IL international law
ILC International Law Commission
ILO International Labour Organization
IMF International Monetary Fund
IMO International Maritime Organization
INGO international non-governmental organization
IO international organization
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IPE International Political Economy
IPI International Peace Institute (previously International Peace Academy)
IR International Relations
IRC International Rescue Committee
IRO International Refugee Organization
ITU International Telecommunications Union
IUCN International Union for the Conservation of Nature
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LGBTQ lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer


MAG Mines Advisory Group
MI Medico International
MDG Millennium Development Goal
MINUSTAH United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti
MONUSCO Mission de l’Organisation des Nations-Unies pour la Stabilisation en
Republique Démocratique du Congo
MPTFO Multi-Partner Trust Fund Office
MSF Médecins Sans Frontières [Doctors without Borders]
NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples
NAM Non-Aligned Movement
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NGO non-governmental organization
NIEO New International Economic Order
NRA National Rifle Association (US)
OAS Organization of American States
OCHA Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
ODA official development assistance
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OHCHR Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
OPCW Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
OPEC Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
OSCE Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
OWG Open Working Group
Oxfam Oxford Committee for Famine Relief
P-5 permanent five members of the Security Council
PBC Peacebuilding Commission
PBF Peacebuilding Fund
PBSO Peacebuilding Support Office
PCIJ Permanent Court of International Justice
PHR Physicians for Human Rights
PMD Policy and Mediation Division
PoC protection of civilians
R2P responsibility to protect
RC resident coordinator
REF Research in Excellence Framework (UK)
RMR Regional Monthly Review
RwP Responsibility while Protecting
SCO Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
SCR Security Council Report
SDG Sustainable Development Goal
SEA sexual exploitation and abuse
SGBV sexual and gender-based violence
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SIPRI Swedish International Peace Research Institute


SNA System of National Accounts
SRSG special representative of the Secretary-General
SSRC Social Science Research Council
SWIFT Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
TAN transnational advocacy network
TCC troop-contributing country
TNC transnational corporation
UK United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
UDHR Universal Declaration of Human Rights
UN United Nations
UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
UNCHE United Nations Conference on the Human Environment
UNCHS United Nations Centre for Human Settlements [Habitat]
UNCIO United Nations Conference on International Organization
UNCT United Nations Country Team
UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNCTC United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNEF United Nations Emergency Force
UNEP United Nations Environment Programme
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
UNFPA United Nations Population Fund
UNGC United Nations Global Compact
UNHCR [Office of the] United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund
UNIDO United Nations Industrial Development Organization
UNIFEM United Nations Development Fund for Women
UNIHP United Nations Intellectual History Project
UNITAR United Nations Institute for Training and Research
UNMOGIP United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan
UNOG United Nations Office in Geneva
UNRISD United Nations Research Institute for Social Development
UNSC United Nations Statistical Commission
UNSO United Nations Statistical Office
UNU United Nations University
UNU-CPR UNU Centre for Policy Research
UPU Universal Postal Union
US United States of America
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
VVAF Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation
WEF World Economic Forum
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WFM-IGP World Federalist Movement’s Institute for Global Policy


WFP World Food Programme
WHO World Health Organization
WIPO World Intellectual Property Organization
WMD weapons of mass destruction
WMO World Meteorological Organization
WTO World Trade Organization
WWF World Wildlife Fund [World Wide Fund for Nature]
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Introduction

Think tanks, knowledge brokers, and epistemic communities are phenomena


that have entered both the academic and policy lexicons, but their intellectual
role remains marginal to analyses of such intergovernmental organizations
(IGOs) as the United Nations (UN). Recent texts on the UN, of course, discuss
non-state actors,¹ but the bulk of analytical attention has concentrated on
nefarious non-state actors in violent conflicts and the difficulties in the UN’s
response to threats to peace and security. In addition, the essential operational
role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in development and humani-
tarian action has also been a topic for research, including an edited volume by
one of us that is still in print and cited despite having appeared a quarter-
century ago.²
The emphasis here, in contrast, is upon the dynamics and processes of ideas
and norms and, more particularly still, upon the impact of a subset of non-
state actors on how the UN thinks, and how we think about the UN. The
recognition of the essential role of scholars, think tanks, civil society, the for-
profit private sector, and other non-state actors on UN thinking required
adding a “Third UN” to our analytical toolkit in order to move beyond the
binary concept of a United Nations composed of member states whose
directives are carried out by international civil servants. In short; we needed
to capture accurately the politics of knowledge and norm production that
shape those directives and the ideas and narratives that drive them.
In one of the early classic textbooks, Inis Claude dubbed member states the
“First UN,” and he called the executive heads and their staffs in international
secretariats the “Second UN.” His two-fold distinction, between the world
organization as an intergovernmental arena and as an autonomous actor,³
provided the lenses through which analysts of the UN have traditionally
peered. However, our research, and especially the in-depth oral history inter-
views⁴ that we conducted over a decade for the United Nations Intellectual
History Project (UNIHP), pointed to another dimension. Ideas are one of the
UN’s most important legacies; they have made a substantial contribution to
human progress. However, in order to explain their origins and refinement,

The “Third” United Nations: How a Knowledge Ecology Helps the UN Think. Tatiana Carayannis and Thomas G. Weiss,
Oxford University Press (2021). © Tatiana Carayannis and Thomas G. Weiss.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198855859.003.0001
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2  “  ” 

their application and impact, we required a better understanding of the


intellectual firepower from outside the First UN and the Second UN.⁵
We first spelled out the “Third UN” in 2009—together with Richard Jolly—
in the journal Global Governance.⁶ Many colleagues have, over the years, cited
that piece on what amounts to an “additional” UN as insightful. As we write in
2020, a quick Google search has references to it in the first several hits. Many
of the same colleagues also asked why we had not fleshed out the concept, to
make it reflect our improved understanding of the way that ideas and norms
flourish or fall flat. This book responds to those queries. Helping the UN to
think, our sub-title, is especially pressing as we finalize these pages.
A pandemic strikes and the global economy implodes. Politicians, pundits,
and people are looking for answers, but the world organization is largely
missing in action. If past is prelude, the most creative and imaginative
rethinking of the contemporary bases for international cooperation will eman-
ate from the Third United Nations.
The next section briefly parses it to provide the basis for the following
chapters. Readers may have noticed that our original argument appeared in a
journal whose title, Global Governance, reflects the move away from the older
notion of states and their creations in the form of IGOs as the only substantial
pillars of world order. We explain that evolution in the following section
before briefly summarizing the book.

The Third UN: What Is It and Why Is It Important?

We begin with a definition. The Third UN is the ecology of supportive non-


state actors—intellectuals, scholars, consultants, think tanks, NGOs, the for-
profit private sector, and the media—that interacts with the intergovernmental
machinery of the First UN and the Second UN to formulate and refine ideas
and decision-making at key junctures in policy processes. Some advocate for
particular ideas, others help analyze or operationalize their testing and imple-
mentation; many thus help the UN “think.” This book fills a gap in under-
standing the impact of non-state actors. It is essential to note that our use of
this term connotes those working toward knowledge and normative advances
for the realization of the values underlying the UN Charter—that is, we are
clearly not talking about armed belligerents and criminals. We nonetheless
keep in mind the counsel of James O. C. Jonah, who noted that uniform
categories of “saints” or “sinners” are not airtight—at least for someone who
had attempted to coordinate non-state inputs in Somalia as the UN special
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 3

representative and then in Sierra Leone as a government minister: “Not all of


them are solid. Some of them are outright ‘crooks,’ sorry to say, . . .
[G]overnments are raising questions—and I know we did in Sierra Leone—
about the accountability of NGOs in terms of how they run their show.”⁷
We note two significant developments since our earlier framing of the Third
UN. One, for-profit actors, especially in the digital technology sector, play a far
larger role today than during the UN’s earliest years. While the private sector
has always had an over-sized impact on the global economy, it was margin-
alized until recently in UN circles because of its perceived negative impact—
certainly in ideological terms, in the Socialist bloc and much of the Global
South. Hence, their relatively marginal role for UN politics compared with
other members of the category has changed abruptly in the twenty-first
century. It shapes how the UN works, thinks, and the global challenges that
it faces.
Two, the media—print, electronic, and more recently social—is a more
important factor for the dissemination of ideas and the battle for primacy
than for the creation of new ideas and norms. Historically, the media have
been less frequent participants than other members of the Third UN because
they typically (other than occasionally a creative journalist) “do not help the
UN think,” or formulate and refine ideas. In addition to shaping the way that
all three UNs operate, the emergence of new technologies and digital media is
giving greater prominence to these actors in the Third UN.
Analyses of world politics increasingly acknowledge the extent to which the
stage is crowded with a variety of actors. Nonetheless, the point of departure
for this book reflects the fact that the most-used adjective in our related
disciplinary fields of work can be misleading. International relations (IR),
international law (IL), international organization (IO), and international
political economy (IPE) are the major components of our research and
teaching. Yet, the Latin root “natio” (birth) no longer makes sense because
state-centric perspectives in a globalizing world ignore movements across
borders of peoples, information, capital, ideas, and technologies. Scholars
and practitioners formerly used “nation-state,” which is misleading as nations
and states are different. Legally speaking, where there is a state, there is a
nation. However, there are several peoples—some born within a territory but
others born elsewhere who have moved—within virtually every state; more-
over, many significant peoples (for example, the Kurds and Palestinians) are
without a nation-state.
Sovereignty remains the predominant characteristic of world politics.
Indeed, in many ways with the emergence of new nationalisms and populisms,
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4  “  ” 

state sovereignty is back with a vengeance. At the same time, it is not what it
used to be. Analyses of world politics acknowledge the extent to which the
stage is crowded with a variety of actors, which is why “global governance”
emerged in the late twentieth century as the term of art to conceptualize the
UN, other IGOs, multilateral cooperation, and public-private partnerships.⁸
This realization is fundamental for those who concentrate on only two
United Nations, the one composed of member states and the second one
of secretariats with international civil servants—recruited on the basis of
their nationality—who work for the states that determine agendas and
(sometimes) pay the bills. We have long pointed to another UN, which is
composed of non-state actors closely associated with the organization and its
activities but not formally part of it. Despite the growth in analyses attempt-
ing to understand the relationships between non-state actors and IGOs,
this “other” or “Third” UN is poorly understood, often ignored, and nor-
mally discounted.
The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization whose 193 mem-
bers are states. UN analysts are typically students of IR, IL, IO, and IPE. They
begin with the building block of the Peace of Westphalia that essentially ended
European religious wars in 1648. They also have long accepted that the world
is divided into territorial states. Prior to Westphalia, dynastic empires, city-
states, feudalistic orders, clans and tribes, churches, and a variety of other
public authorities organized people into groupings for identity and problem-
solving. The territorial state emerged as the basic unit of social organization
from about the middle of the fifteenth to the middle of the seventeenth
century, first in Europe and then elsewhere. It commanded primary loyalty
and was responsible for order, and eventually for justice and prosperity within
a state’s territorial boundaries. European rulers found the institution of the
state useful and perpetuated its image; ironically, politically aware persons
outside the West adopted the notion to resist domination by those same
colonial powers. With decolonization, the number of states has grown, as
has the rigidity of the attachment to sacrosanct sovereignty by young and old
states alike.
Despite the persistence of clan, ethnic, and religious identities and a pattern
of inconsistencies that Stephen Krasner famously called “organized hypoc-
risy,”⁹ most of those exercising power have promoted the perception that the
basic political-legal unit of world politics was and should remain the territorial
state. The basis for sovereignty is an administrative apparatus with a supposed
monopoly on the legitimate use of force over a specific geographical area with
a stable population.
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That the only bona fide UN members are territorial states (with the exception
of the Vatican) is the point of departure for an analytical puzzle about what
constitutes the United Nations. Some examples should help the reader under-
stand why we came up with the analytical tool of the Third UN. Numerous
non-territorial players in issue-specific global governance are more influential
than many territorial states: the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) for the laws of war and humanitarian principles; the Fédération
Internationale de Football Association (or FIFA, its familiar abbreviation)
for the world’s most popular sport (football or soccer); and the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (also better known by its
acronym, ICANN) for the internet. Similarly, corporations have come
together to participate in the development of governance systems either at
the urging of international organizations, such as the UN’s Global Compact, or
in shared recognition of the need for new systems of coordination, such
as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
(SWIFT). Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s Ratings Group
render judgments that are authoritative enough to cause market responses.
Individual experts serving on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) or eminent persons on other panels and commissions have altered
narratives and public policy. The global significance of non-traditional actors
like Facebook and the need for new governance systems for digital space was
explicit in UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ 2018 appointment of a
High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation.
It is hard to imagine contemporary world politics without non-state
actors—indeed, their activities and influence on politics and the world econ-
omy often dwarf those of many small countries. That said, geo-political power
is reflected in the UN’s state-based, institutional structures, ranging from the
veto-wielding permanent five members of the Security Council (P-5) to the
leverage of the largest contributors to the budget. As we see, the history of
the Third UN resembles that of the First UN and the Second UN in lacking
diversity—that is, it is more white, male, and elitist than the globe’s popula-
tion, or even the vast bulk of member states.
The Third UN’s roles include research, policy analysis, idea mongering,
advocacy, and public education. Its various components put forward new
information and ideas, push for alternative policies, and mobilize public
opinion around UN deliberations and projects. They also can impede pro-
gress, by deploying the same methods; the polarization that afflicts geo-
political dynamics and left-right, secular-religious societal battles are also
reflected across the Third UN’s ever-changing network of networks that
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helps the UN “think.” Some Third UN actors advocate for particular ideas,
while others help analyze or operationalize their testing and implementation.
Participation varies with issues and geographic focus as well as timing.
At any given time, any of these non-state actors can be a member of the
Third UN. There are no barriers to entry or exit, and no permanent
membership.
Some critics might regard our perspectives as rather orthodox and as
extensions of the status quo.¹⁰ However, many non-state actors such as
informed scholars, practitioners, and activists have had a distinct value-
added within intergovernmental contexts to push out intellectual and policy
envelopes, to venture beyond what passes for conventional wisdom. These
actors of the Third UN are independent of but provide essential inputs
into Claude’s other two United Nations. They do not necessarily foster
progressive values and actions—the National Rifle Association and many
transnational corporations (TNCs), for instance, pursue agendas that
may distort the pursuit of the UN’s human rights or environmental norms.
What is impossible to ignore, however, is that such “outside-insiders” or
“inside-outsiders” are integral, today and tomorrow, to the world body.
What once may have seemed marginal is now central for world politics and
multilateralism.
In addition, the relationships often are more complicated than they appear.
Michael Doyle, who was a professor at Princeton and Columbia Universities
before joining the UN Secretariat in New York and rejoined the academy after
leaving, agreed: “If you want genuinely fresh ideas, you’ve got to go outside the
system altogether. You have to go to commissions, panels, academics and
NGOs, and a few governments—mostly academics and NGOs.” Just Faaland,
who spent most of his career at the Norwegian development institute in
Bergen but often interacted with the UN system, also emphasized the rele-
vance of injecting outside intellectual grist: “The UN would be a much poorer
organization if it hadn’t been for . . . consultancies and other ways of mobiliz-
ing the outside world.”¹¹
Social scientists are taught to ask, “So what?” The following pages demon-
strate four ways that ideas and norms make a difference:

• They change the way that issues are perceived.


• They redefine state and non-state interests and goals, setting agendas for
action.
• They mobilize coalitions to press for action.
• They become embedded in institutions.
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We say more about such impacts in subsequent chapters, but the dynamics of
change invariably involve the creation, refinement, and implementation of
ideas—for good and for evil. Any explanations of continuity and change also
entail technology, politics, and economics; but at a minimum, ideas matter in
opening space for experimentation and modification.
Hence, the complexity of the planet and the analytical requirement to
accurately reflect the UN go hand-in-hand. A heterogeneous and numerous
array of actors participates in processes that produce knowledge and norms. In
addition, a prescriptive agenda looms. Besides reinforcing the overarching
argument that the UN is more than the sum of its member-state and secre-
tariat parts, we are committed to taking advantage of as diverse (in terms of
geographic origins and substantive backgrounds) a range of sources as possible
for alternative knowledge and norms, for non-traditional or non-mainstream
thinking.
To simplify, ideas and operations are the two main activities by the First UN
and the Second UN; the Third UN has a discernable impact on their thinking
and activities. Although operations account for the bulk of actual expenditures
and are important for testing ideas and policies, we focus on how non-state
actors help the UN think. Those that receive our attention are NGOs, eminent
individuals, think tanks, university researchers, and the for-profit sector. They
are essential and underappreciated sources of knowledge and norms produced
by the UN—in the past and at present, as they will be in the future.
We remind readers that there is also a Third International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and an equivalent network in other IGOs. Theoretical and analytical
tool kits must reflect this reality; we hope that our attempts to better under-
stand the Third UN will inspire others to do the same for other multilateral
organizations.

Global Governance Reflects the Reality of the Third UN

It should be obvious that we need to conceptualize the UN, other IGOs, and
multilateral cooperation more comprehensively than had been the case until
late in the twentieth century. That happened in the 1990s within the academy
and policy circles.
The term “global governance” was born from a marriage—neither shotgun
nor arranged but precipitated by a blend of real-world events accompanied by
developments in scholarly and policy circles—between academic theory and
practical policy-formulation. At the outset of the twentieth century’s final
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decade, it became entwined with another meta-phenomenon of the last dec-


ades of the century, globalization.¹² In 1992, James Rosenau and Ernst
Czempiel published their theoretical Governance without Government, at
approximately the same time that the Swedish government launched the
policy-oriented Commission on Global Governance with Sonny Ramphal
and Ingmar Carlsson as co-chairs. Both events set in motion interest in the
newly coined notion of “global governance.”¹³ The 1995 publication of the
commission’s report, Our Global Neighbourhood, coincided with the first issue
of the Academic Council on the United Nations System’s journal Global
Governance. This quarterly sought to return to the global problem-solving
and institutional origins of the leading journal in the field, International
Organization, which seemed to have lost its way. As Timothy Sinclair wrote,
“From the late 1960s, the idea of international organization fell into disuse . . .
[and] International Organization, the journal which carried this name
founded in the 1940s, increasingly drew back from matters of international
policy and instead became a vehicle for the development of rigorous academic
theorizing.”¹⁴
These developments paved the way for a raft of works about growing global
complexity, the management of globalization, and the challenges confronting
international institutions.¹⁵ The vocabulary became “global governance,”
which replaced an immediate predecessor as a normative endeavor, “world
order studies.” Having grown from World Peace through World Law—the
classic from Grenville Clark and Louis Sohn—world order not only seemed
overly top-down and static but also failed to capture adequately the variety of
actors, networks, and relationships that characterized international relations.¹⁶
When the perspectives from world-order scholars began to look a little old-
fashioned, the stage was set for a new analytical and normative cottage
industry.
After his archival labors to write a two-volume history of world federalism,
Joseph Barrata observed that in the 1990s “the new expression, ‘global gov-
ernance,’ emerged as an acceptable term in debate on international organiza-
tion for the desired and practical goal of progressive efforts, in place of ‘world
government.’”¹⁷ Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall put it more dramatic-
ally: “The idea of global governance has attained near-celebrity status.”¹⁸
Michael Zürn calculated in 2018 that the growth rate of new titles for global
governance surpasses all others in international relations; its absolute annual
numbers now are greater than the more familiar “war and peace” and “inter-
national cooperation.”¹⁹
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Public-private partnerships are not new to the UN. In fact, most UN entities
maintain some kind of public-private partnership program. As non-state-led
governance has grown exponentially in some sectors, e.g. the environment, so
has the academic literature about these public authorities. In discussing
environmental governance, Liliana B. Andonova defines these partnerships
as “agreements for collaborative governance between public actors (national
governmental agencies, sub-national governments, or IOs) and nonstate act-
ors (foundations, firms, advocacy organizations, or others), which establish
common norms, rules, objectives, and decision-making and implementation
procedures for a set of policy problems.”²⁰ Anne Marie Goetz writes that
“[f]Feminist engagement with international institutions is . . . a paradigmatic
example of how a relatively power-deprived social group (women and femin-
ists)” by building partnerships with states willing to champion gender equality,
can “challenge the power of sovereign states.”²¹
The emergence of the term—and changes in the way that the purpose of
insights from it were expressed—imbued global governance with the aspir-
ations that had motivated earlier generations of IR, IL, IO, and IPE scholars.
Global governance came to refer to collective efforts to identify, understand,
and address worldwide problems and processes that went beyond the capaci-
ties of individual states. It included both formal and informal values, rules,
norms, practices, and organizations that provided additional order beyond
purely formal regulations and structures. It reflected a longing for the inter-
national system to provide government-like services—in this case, global
public goods—in the absence of anything like a world government.
Global governance thus encompasses a wide variety of cooperative problem-
solving arrangements that are visible but informal (e.g., practices or guidelines)
or are temporary formations (e.g., coalitions of the willing). Such arrangements
could also be more formal, taking the shape of hard rules (laws and treaties) or
institutions with administrative structures and established practices to manage
collective affairs by a variety of actors—including state authorities, IGOs,
NGOs, private sector entities, and other civil society actors.²²
One of us has spent considerable intellectual efforts²³ in trying to move
beyond answering the question that Lawrence Finkelstein provocatively posed
shortly after the term emerged 25 years ago—“What is global governance?”
His answer at that moment was “virtually anything.”²⁴ The other one of us has
been tinkering with social network-based approaches to understand how an
institution built on state sovereignty can adapt to the trans-boundary issues
and actors of our globalized world.²⁵ Both of us represent two successive
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generations of the Third UN. This book seeks to put more flesh on one part of
the global governance skeleton, the United Nations. It is part history, and part
a call to action. Readers should recall that our original argument appeared in a
journal whose title, “Global Governance,” reflects the move away from the old-
fashioned notion of states and their creation in the form of IGOs as the only
meaningful pillars of world order.

About This Book

Among other things, the thaw in the Cold War changed the balance between
markets and states. As a result, a number of voices—for instance, human rights
advocates, gender activists, development specialists, and groups of indigenous
peoples—were amplified in the ideational and operational spaces that earlier
had been virtually the exclusive territory of states or intergovernmental sec-
retariats. This book explores this phenomenon.
Chapter 1 begins our exploration of “The Third UN” by probing the nuts-
and-bolts of “Non-State Actors and the World Organization’s Thinking.” It
defends our 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 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 a
language that is understandable, reliable, and accessible for policy makers.”²⁶ It
is impossible to appreciate the nature of the policy process without under-
standing the “whole” UN—First, Second, and Third.
Chapter 2, “NGOs: Sovereignty-Free Partners for UN Policy Development,”
examines the main tasks of NGOs and how they are related to the achieve-
ment 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 constitu-
tion, 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).
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It is worthwhile opening a parenthesis about case selection. While we


certainly refer to examples of failure, the detailed illustrations in Chapter 2
and elsewhere are case studies that have two characteristics. First, they are far
enough in the past to provide some historical distance as well as an abundance
of secondary literature about them, including some first-hand accounts by
important players. They thus provide well-documented examples from which
we can generalize. Second, they are “successes” and illustrate the four ways
that ideas matter. In particular, they have altered the ways that conversations
take place among the 193 members of the First UN, and the nature of
decisions by them at home as well as in intergovernmental forums. They
have also altered the ways that secretariats act in headquarters and in the
field—that is, the numbers of people working on a topic and the resources
devoted to action.
In “Commissions and Panels: How Eminent Individuals Shape UN
Thinking,” Chapter 3 analyzes the over-sized role of one visible component
of the Third UN. Prominent individuals—many of whom made their govern-
ment 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 examples concern peace operations
(the Brahimi report of 2001 and HIPPO [High-level Independent Panel on
UN Peace Operations] of 2015); the protection of human beings in war zones
(the ICISS, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty)
report of 2001); and for sustainable development (the Brundtland report of
1987 and the ongoing work by the IPCC). As a counterpoint, 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.
Chapter 4, “The UN’s Knowledge Economy: Think Tanks, Academics, and
Knowledge Brokers,” spells out the various ways that the world organization’s
intergovernmental machinery requires outside inputs for making various UN
policy sausages. A cottage industry of outside experts—think tankers, consult-
ants, and university faculty members—greases the gears of this messy process
with substantive inputs.²⁷ The ways that ideas matter, and how they influ-
ence state decision-making, are essential elements in this discussion, as
are the Third UN’s knowledge brokers. Among the actors considered are the
International Peace Institute (IPI), the International Crisis Group (ICG), the
DC-based Stimson Center, the Security Council Report, UN University, and
the smaller Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum (CPPF) at the US-based
Social Science Research Council. In the other UN headquarters site, the Centre
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for Humanitarian Dialogue, the Small Arms Survey, and others have helped
shape thinking within UN Geneva. Especially over the last two decades, 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.
Chapter 5 follows by detailing the growing inputs for UN deliberations from
“Alternative Voices”; the sub-title indicates the result, namely “Challengers of
the Normative Postwar Order.” There are two distinct sets of “voices” that
appear in this chapter: from within emerging powers that formerly were
absent or largely hidden; and from for-profit businesses. The first part exam-
ines the political and economic changes brought about by rising and emerging
powers. We need not exaggerate either the shadow cast by the declining West
or what Amitav Acharya calls the “hype of the rest”²⁸ to see that the role of
emerging powers in global governance is altering the landscape for how to
approach international peace and security, human rights, humanitarian
action, and sustainable development—the pillars of UN activity.
The second part of Chapter 5 reflects the arrival on the UN stage of actors
that formerly had cameo roles despite their weight in the global economy. As
mentioned, business in general and TNCs in particular were once anathema in
UN circles because of their perceived role in the Global South as exploiters of
resources and drivers of poverty. What began as an effort to bring them into
the system through the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) has bur-
geoned in the twenty-first century that has witnessed, belatedly, the mobiliza-
tion of the private business sector for numerous tasks and of the essential role
of foreign direct investment (FDI) and overseas remittances. We emphasize
technology and data firms, many of which are related to media and social
media. These long-ignored partners bring resources, expertise, new technolo-
gies, and energy to international problem-solving and to the Third UN; they
have also challenged the multilateral system and led to calls for a new
architecture of global governance.
By looking ahead to “The UN’s Normative Future,” Chapter 6 asks honestly
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” organ-
ization. For instance, a crucial challenge is to determine how the UN should
act in the era of information disorder and public health pandemics, and thus
how a variety of knowledge producers and brokers from the Third UN can
help the UN think. There are areas where its role is accepted and well
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developed; others where there are agreements but also gaps; still others where
there is virtually no agreement or role. The task of analyzing what the UN can
and cannot do, as well as how to make it fitter-for-purpose, should have been
undertaken more vigorously earlier. However, it is even more crucial in the
Age of Trump, Brexit, Putin, Maduro, Xi, Netanyahu, Erdogan, Obrador,
Bolsanaro, and Duterte. If the United Nations is not to be a relic, the rhetoric
of “[insert country] First” needs to be replaced by a more viable and robust
world body. We write at the height of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, when
the breakdown of international cooperation and the pressing need for a robust
multilateral system cannot be more obvious.
It is impossible to ignore the ongoing polarization of politics in the First UN
fueled by new nationalisms and populisms worldwide. It also is a sad reality
that the Second UN is subject to a tightening grip by and pressure from the
most powerful member states. New ideas, norms, and actors are challenging
and re-shaping the United Nations. We should not overlook or minimize
them, and the Third UN is an essential contributor to these conversations.
How effective the whole UN will be in responding and managing emerging
global challenges will depend, in no small measure, on the Third UN.
If multilateralism of all stripes is under siege, the United Nations—warts
and all—remains essential.²⁹ The COVID-19 crisis revealed the limits of the
postwar system for which there are few signs of resuscitation; but at a
minimum, we must rebuild the crumbling foundations. Moreover, because
global problems require global solutions, a more ambitious redesign and
rebuilding effort is required if we are to save succeeding generations from
the scourge of war, pandemics, and climate change. “We are calling for a great
reawakening of nations,” is how Donald Trump concluded his first remarks to
the UN General Assembly in September 2017. He ignored the fact that some
three-quarters of a century earlier, the United States agreed to create the world
organization in order to curb the demonstrated horrors of nationalism run
amok; yet, he has repeatedly undermined it. Instead, he and the rest of us
should be calling for a great reawakening of the United Nations.
This book about the intellectual contribution of the non-state actors of the
Third UN is a modest contribution to that objective.
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1
The “Third” UN
Non-State Actors and the World
Organization’s Thinking

This chapter begins with a discussion of the complexity and interdependence


of international relations that have grown perceptively in the last half-century.
It continues by spelling out several important elements of the world organ-
ization that go beyond its 193 member states and some 100,000 international
civil servants. The next section explains the emphases in this book, the
relevance of ideas, and the dynamics of the Third UN. The final sections
assemble the numbers for both international non-governmental organizations
(INGOs) and transnational corporations (TNCs)—the non-state actors whose
numbers are possible to estimate—and explain how they matter.

Complexity, Continuity, Change, and Confusion

In the second half of the twentieth century, an unprecedented growth occurred


in the number of non-state actors along with dramatic changes in the scope of
international connectivity; a corresponding boom took place in discussions
among scholars and policy analysts about the pluses and minuses of global-
ization, as well as how to manage complex world politics. Wherever one stands
in the debate about the pluses and minuses of globalization,¹ everyone can
agree that the intensity, speed, and volume of global interactions reflect
increasing interdependence. As Manuel Castells aptly captures, we live in a
world in which “Networks constitute the new social morphology of our
societies.”² In short, and especially since the thaw in East–West relations
accompanied by the growing and recognized importance of markets vis-à-
vis states, we have witnessed networks of human rights advocates, gender
activists, development specialists, scholars, and researchers from think tanks
become more vocal, operational, and consequential. They have influenced
policy and norms in arenas that earlier were considered the prerogative of
states and their creations, intergovernmental secretariats.

The “Third” United Nations: How a Knowledge Ecology Helps the UN Think. Tatiana Carayannis and Thomas G. Weiss,
Oxford University Press (2021). © Tatiana Carayannis and Thomas G. Weiss.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198855859.003.0002
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Understanding the nature of knowledge production and dissemination


along with normative advances requires understanding the nature of contem-
porary networks working side-by-side behind closed office doors, in confer-
ence rooms, at cafés, and along the policy-formulation corridors of UN
organizations worldwide. Complex contemporary problems and possible solu-
tions demanding inputs or at least consent from a range of state and non-state
actors often results in analytical confusion and conflicting views about prior-
ities or the sequencing of priority actions. The remarks by two historians
providing a “bird’s eye view” of transformations resulting from the invention
of printing, the advances in navigation, and the proliferation of sources of
authority in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are apt here: “Human lives
increasingly were molded by events and processes originating far away, acting
in combination with evolving local realities, making for historical forces that
few contemporaries understood.”³
It is worth repeating the definition that began this volume because its scope
helps to capture the difficulty in trying to make sense of a vast and motley
assortment of actors. The Third UN is the ecology of supportive non-state
actors—intellectuals, scholars, consultants, think tanks, NGOs, the for-profit
private sector, and the media—that interacts with the intergovernmental
machinery of the First and Second UN to formulate and refine UN ideas
and decision-making at key junctures in policy processes. The notion of a
three-faceted UN—the “whole” UN—is a contribution to the challenge of
more adequately theorizing contemporary global governance, a task made
more difficult because social media and other types of connectivity make the
current landscape for the three UNs largely uncharted, if not unknown,
territory. It builds on a growing body of work that calls for taking into account
“multiple multilateralisms” and other unpronounceable terms.⁴ As noted,
other IGOs are comparable because there is a “Third” European Union (EU)
and a “Third” African Union (AU), just as there is a Third UN.
We conceptualized the Third UN as an integral part of the world body only
a decade ago, but the phenomenon of non-state actors is not new. It has been
gaining momentum over the last two centuries, beginning with the anti-
slavery movement late in the eighteenth century.⁵ As Stephen Schlesinger
reminds us, there were so many (mostly domestic) advocacy groups, lobbyists,
consultants, and academics demanding a presence at the nine-week San
Francisco conference that birthed the UN in 1945, that both the Americans
and the Soviets felt compelled to spy on them.⁶ The estimated 1,500 NGOs in
San Francisco included the New York City Council on African Affairs and the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP),
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whose director for special research, W.E.B. Du Bois, was among the leading
voices opposed to colonialism. Washington was particularly concerned
that these groups were meeting with the African delegates at the conference
to lobby for decolonization. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (better
known by its abbreviation, FBI), together with the US Army Signal Security
Agency (now the National Security Agency), monitored the interactions
among the three United Nations. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union docked an
entertainment ship in San Francisco Bay filled with vodka and caviar for its
delegates, but also with communications and listening devices for its own
espionage campaign.
In addition to these unofficial “outsiders,” the US delegation had 42 official
“outsider-insiders”—consultants officially recognized by the conference.⁷
Sponsored by Washington, they included the likes of James Shotwell, a
Columbia University historian, Virginia Gildersleeve, the long-time dean of
Barnard College and co-founder of the International Federation of University
Women, Clark Eichelberger, a peace activist and national director of the
League of Nations Association (the precursor to the UN Association), and
Jacob Blaustein, president of the American Jewish Committee. The consult-
ants met regularly with the US delegation, gave presentations, and offered
ideas and amendments as the draft Charter was being finalized.
In addition to successfully advocating for firmly embedding the idea of
human rights into the Charter, Schlesinger and Dorothy Robins,⁸ who
documented the role of NGOs at the San Francisco Conference, point to
at least two other instances when these outsider-insiders helped shaped the
final Charter, thereby enshrining international norms in it. The first was
their successful advocacy for the inclusion of international cooperation
around education, an idea already backed by hundreds of US university
presidents and educators in dozens of countries, but that the US delegation
initially resisted—lest it open the door to Soviet propaganda in US schools
and universities. The final UN Charter Article 13 in Chapter IV calls for the
world body to “promote international co-operation in the economic, social,
cultural, educational, and health fields.” The second example was the con-
sultants’ successful push to include a new Article 71, which enshrined in the
Charter the right for civil society to be present and consulted in UN matters.
While this hoped-for UN–NGO collaboration has often been a rocky road,
the idea of civil society’s inclusion in UN policy discussions—as relevant
today as it was in 1945—would likely not have been introduced had it not
been for the efforts of those early Third UN actors who had secured a seat at
the table.
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Emphases and Dynamics of the Third UN

Why parse this dynamic, given that networks of all types are not new?⁹
Although many governments have resisted the influence by non-state actors
in IGOs, parts of the UN system have long engaged them and drawn on
academic and policy expertise located outside the official confines of the
system. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has incorporated rep-
resentatives of trade unions and the business sector into its tripartite structure
since 1919. NGOs have been significant for advances in 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 and the Genocide Convention three years later. The United Nations
Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has long had close interactions with civil society
and national commissions for a wide range of children’s issues as well as for
fund-raising and advocacy. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the United Nations Development Fund
for Women (UNIFEM), and more recently UN Women that incorporated it,
have interacted with national committees consisting of academics and NGOs.
Indeed, it is a well-known secret: virtually all parts of the UN have drawn on
academic or professional expertise located outside the system through con-
sultants or ad hoc expert groups.
A number of authors have noted the phenomenon of non-state actors,
especially NGOs, as they intersect with the United Nations; but none has
incorporated them as an integral component of the world body itself.¹⁰
Previous analyses provide an incomplete understanding of the roles played
by members of the Third UN. First, they are viewed as “outsiders” rather than
as an essential element of an intergovernmental body. Second, their role as
purveyors of ideas and new thinking as crucial inputs to the world body has
largely been ignored. The number of non-official groups has grown dramat-
ically; meanwhile, globalization accompanied by communications and techno-
logical advances have increased the volume, reach, and impact of non-state
voices. Geographical distance and limited resources for international travel no
longer necessarily mean a lack of presence.
Adopting the notion of the Third UN is a sharper way to depict interactions
than the usual threefold vocabulary of state, market, and civil society.¹¹ The
terminology of the “Third” UN resonates well for students of IO who cut their
analytical teeth on Claude’s framework, including many of the readers of such
traditional journals as International Organization or newer ones such as
Global Governance. Finally, it better captures the networked, diverse, and
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ever-changing nature of the non-state actors and intellectual partnerships that


constitute the Third UN.
Most social scientists—including development economists, students of
comparative politics, sociologists, and anthropologists—have long recognized
the central empirical and theoretical reality of non-state actors. However, this
insight largely has eluded IR, IL, IO, and even some IPE specialists who remain
preoccupied with state sovereignty and with the UN’s being an intergovern-
mental organization, whose priorities and actions reflect the views expressed
by the national representatives of member states. While leadership can provide
the explanation for success or failure, the staff members of the Second UN are
customarily viewed as subservient to their paymasters. For a long time,
analysts have minimized or even ignored interactions by non-state actors
and their influence on UN decision-making. Yet, they are integral and not
peripheral.
Beginning in the 1970s, however, with such liberal institutionalists as Robert
Keohane and Joseph Nye¹² and continuing with such constructivists as
Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall,¹³ the growing presence and activities
of actors other than states have gradually enticed theorists—with the notable
exception of hard-core Realists—to pry open the lid on the black box of state-
centric theories, to question the UN system’s relevance as more than a facade
to divert attention away from power politics.¹⁴ Realists remain unrecon-
structed and regard the UN and other multilateral institutions as distractions
from the real red meat of zero-sum competition; if IGOs are largely irrelevant,
the Third UN must be totally so.
However, liberal institutionalists but especially constructivists view cooper-
ation as not only possible but also essential for addressing issues as varied as
rights, pandemics, terrorism, and climate change. Such issues figure promin-
ently on the international agenda, and so knowledge about them as well as
norms to guide policymaking and action certainly reflect efforts by non-state
actors. Our previous research, and this book, reflect our location squarely in
these theoretical camps. In spite of the rise of what The Economist called “the
new nationalisms,” for decades even the United States “has done what realist
theory claimed was impossible, playing international politics as a team sport,
not an individual one.”¹⁵ That is, applying a social constructivist perspective is
not only about hoping to locate a “soft” ideational impact, but also about how
UN ideas affect actions and results in the real world—in other words, how and
when they have impact, and how and when they do not.
Why have analysts neglected—and even resisted—something so obvious?
Part of the answer lies in such a large and amorphous group of actors that
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engage with the United Nations at a variety of levels, at a variety of times, on a


variety of issues, and with a variety of intensities. The Third UN is anything
except homogeneous. Patterns are hard to grasp, generalizations hazardous,
and many interactions 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 entire sectors?
Once inside a caucus, are all actors forever part of the Third UN, or do they
move in and out depending on the issue, their influence, or the calendar?
This book constitutes another step in conceptualizing global governance in
terms of free-flowing networks rather than rigid formal structures¹⁶ or sectors
in which they work.¹⁷ A better understanding of intergovernmental institu-
tions and their interactions with non-state actors is essential to understanding
and improving global governance. Despite the recalcitrance of many states
from the First UN and international civil servants from the Second UN, it is
imperative to realize the magnitude of the phenomenon and understand the
dynamics and impact of the Third UN on knowledge and norms. Ultimately
UN success or failure depends on the ability and willingness to give intellectual
content and operational meaning to the Charter’s original vision of peace,
agreement through negotiations, human rights, and human welfare.
It is useful to recall the two main categories of UN contributions to
improved world order: ideas and operations. The Third UN works in these
two areas, but we concentrate on the former, the politics of knowledge and
norms—even if in budgetary terms operations are usually more important for
both UN organizations and many NGOs. Operations can, of course, lead to
new ideas and policies or serve as testing grounds for their feasibility.
However, the various members of the Third UN are too numerous, diverse,
and dispersed to generalize about their operations in this volume. Another
reason justifying the emphasis is the multiplier effect of ideas, norms, prin-
ciples, and standards. The proverbial rubber hits the road when UN recom-
mendations become more widespread as policy, practice, and law at the local,
national, regional, and international levels.
Thus, our focus is on how non-state actors help the UN think, and more
specifically still on the contributions of those that have had a significant
impact on changes in major international norms and UN policies: NGOs,
think tanks and universities, eminent individuals, and businesses.¹⁸ In add-
ition, we should specify our emphases on non-state actors in the UN’s New
York and Geneva headquarters, where both of us have worked and observed.
This choice is not merely a convenience but because they are often the primary
conduits for ideas into the wider UN system. That said, we also examine the
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First UN
(Member States)

A B

D Third UN
(Academics, Experts,
Second UN C Think Tanks, NGOs,
(Secretariats) Business, Media)

A: International and national civil servants’ interactions (e.g., agency boards).


B: State and non-state interactions (e.g., government donor agencies and national experts).
C: Secretariat and non-state interactions (e.g., forums at global conferences and subcontractors).
D: The networked space within which individuals and private organizations interact with the Member
States and Secretariats to influence or advance thinking, policies, priorities, or actions.

Figure 1.1 Interactions among the Three United Nations

newest actors, such as Chinese and Brazilian think tanks and analysts, who
produce research that reflects alternative world views to those of what has
been, until recently, a largely western- and northern-dominated Third
UN. Our discussion of NGOs emphasizes international non-governmental
organizations, which play major roles in knowledge and norms although local
NGOs often are key counterparts in dissemination and field operations. The
point is that INGOs (including think tanks, advocacy organizations, and
operational bodies) along with scholars, eminent individuals, and the for-
profit private sector are essential yet underappreciated sources of knowledge
inputs for the development and promulgation of norms by the UN—today,
yesterday, and certainly tomorrow.
Figure 1.1 illustrates the interactions among the three United Nations. It
depicts them as separate circles whose overlapping areas convey interactive
space. We are particularly interested in where the three come together (D),
which is where the most intellectual sparks fly. Within this networked space,
individuals and private organizations interact with UN member states and
secretariats to influence or advance thinking, policies, priorities, and actions.
Juan Somavia has a well-informed vantage point—he worked in all three UNs,
including as the ILO director-general—and emphasized that for most issues
the Third UN has led, but that the First UN and the Second UN have played “a
very fundamental role as a legitimizer of ideas that are nascent, of things that
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are out there. . . . The moment the UN begins discussing an issue, and it
becomes part of programs and institutional debate, then it legitimizes some-
thing that otherwise could be perceived of as marginal in society.”¹⁹
This book pays especial attention to other key parts of this networked
space—in particular, where the Third UN and the Second UN interact (C),
because this space has been under-explored. It helps explain shifts in UN
policies, priorities, and practices—in short, the UN’s production of knowledge
and norms. “I’ve always reached out to talk to others,” Secretary-General Kofi
Annan recalled. “There is a tendency for people in this house to say, ‘We are
special. We are different. The rest of the world does not understand us.’ And
you can really get into a cocoon.” In a refreshing openness to outside inputs, he
continued: “There are times when I bring in groups to advise me on issues—
use experienced leaders to give me advice.”²⁰
We also analyze how the Third UN informs the First UN (B), both directly
as well as indirectly (via the Second UN). The reasons why come from Nafis
Sadik, executive director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) in 1987–2000:
“I think population work has always come from outside of the UN. . . . Outside
organizations put a lot more pressure on the UN, but also on governments.
I think the work of the Pop[ulation] Council, the work of many of the scholars
at Princeton University, at Stanford University influenced very much the
eventual outcome of setting up a UNFPA and having a population program.
Those influences came from outside, because in fact many members of the UN
itself in fact resisted it.”²¹
Figure 1.1 also depicts these interactions in combination with those between
the First UN and the Second UN (A). The relations between government
representatives and international civil servants have constituted the bulk of
previous UN scholarship. Those between governments and non-state actors as
well as between secretariats and non-state actors have expanded but been
inadequate. This book aims to right the balance.

Why Ideas Matter

What do we mean by ideas? We define them broadly as beliefs held by


individuals, groups, or governments that influence their attitudes and actions,
in this case toward the benefits of multilateral cooperation in building a more
peaceful and just world, one that reflects more the rule of law than the law of
the jungle. The ideas mostly arise as the result of social interactions among
individuals or groups of individuals within any of the three United Nations.
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Often the ideas assume a more definite shape over time, sometimes as the
result of research, often through debate or challenge, and sometimes through
efforts to turn ideas into policy. As is to be expected, power and politics infuse
every stage.
In the quest for knowledge and norms, economist Barbara Ward reminded
us that: “Ideas are the prime movers of history. Revolutions usually begin with
ideas.”²² Victor Hugo had earlier expressed a similar sentiment: “On résiste à
l’invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l’invasion des idées.”²³ Ideas lead to
action in numerous ways but almost never in a linear fashion—running from
the creation of a new idea to dissemination, from decisions by policymakers to
implementation, and on to impact and results. The non-linear process is
varied, but we reiterate the four distinct ways that ideas have an impact:

• They alter the ways that issues are perceived and the language used to
describe them.
• They redefine state and non-state interests and goals, setting agendas for
action.
• They change the ways that key groups perceive their interests and
mobilize new coalitions—thus altering the balance of forces pressing
for action or resisting it.
• They become embedded in institutions, which devote human and finan-
cial resources to carry an idea forward and thereby become a focus for
accountability and monitoring.

These four impacts provide a framework for the evidence that we marshal;
when they come together, they affect implementation at all levels, including at
the micro-level within individual countries and communities where norms
and policies affect implementation. In moving from the international to the
national level, the itinerary and speed of ideas varies depending on issues. “The
UN became the place where women could bring issues ignored at the national
level into the international spotlight to be addressed by national govern-
ments,” is the dynamic that UNIFEM’s former executive director and
ESCAP’s former executive secretary Noeleen Heyzer stressed. She pointed
out why that mattered: “When the ideas took a powerful form, they got
recognized and accepted, because it spoke about women’s lives. . . . With
these international norms, women pressured for the revisions of national
norms and policies based on international standards. We worked so hard to
ensure that decision making in the courts and in the criminal justice system
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also changed because of new legal standards and norms. So ideas became
action which changed people’s lives.”²⁴
With respect to UN ideas, elements of all four ways UN ideas have mattered
figure throughout the fifteen UN Intellectual History Project’s volumes pub-
lished by Indiana University Press between 2001 and 2010. They emphasized
economic and social development, but this book also includes examples from
international peace and security as well as human rights and humanitarian
action. Here, we repeat a concrete example that can quickly illustrate the
proposition: the formulation of statistical norms and guidelines. In
Quantifying the World, Michael Ward traced the development in the early
1950s of the System of National Accounts (SNA). It provided the guidelines
which even today enables and encourages countries around the world to
calculate their gross national product (GNP) and other core economic statis-
tics on a standardized basis. For better or worse, the SNA provides an
economic snapshot of a country’s economic performance. The system has
helped define agendas for economic policy and action in country after country,
which in turn unleashed pressures for the better use of economic resources
and, often in reaction, calls from various quarters for more attention to social
and non-economic indicators. The SNA has been embedded in the work of the
UN Statistical Commission (UNSC) and the UN Statistical Office (UNSO).
Thus, in all four of these areas, and in quite specific ways, the UN’s early work
on the SNA has had a concrete and continuous impact over the last seven
decades. It is helpful to let Ward speak for himself: “the creation of a univer-
sally acknowledged statistical system and of a general framework guiding the
collection and compilation of data according to recognized standards, both
internationally and nationally, has been one of the great and mostly unsung
successes of the UN Organization.”²⁵
We distinguish three types of ideas or beliefs—positive, normative, and
causal. Positive ideas or beliefs are those resting on hard evidence, open to
challenge, and verifiable, at least in principle. That the Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Assistance
Committee (OECD-DAC) countries spent 0.32 percent of their gross national
income (GNI) on official development assistance (ODA) in 2016 is an
example.²⁶ Normative ideas are beliefs about what the world should look
like. That these countries ought to implement the long-standing UN target
of spending 0.7 percent of their GNI on ODA, or that there should be a more
equitable allocation of world resources or fewer greenhouse gases (GHGs) are
additional examples. Causal ideas, on the other hand, are applied notions—
often about what strategy will have a particular result, or what tactics will
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achieve a particular outcome; they are frequently hard to measure and often
with a normative element. At the UN, causal ideas regularly take an oper-
ational form—for instance, the calculation that over 0.5 percent of GNI would
be needed as ODA to support the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
was an idea that has continued for the follow-on Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs). Causal ideas can be specific, but they are less than full-blown
theories.²⁷ For example, if we were to begin with the sweeping ethical prop-
osition that the world should be more just, then the idea of a more equitable
allocation of resources can be both a normative idea as well as a causal way to
improve international justice.
Research about the role of ideas falls into three categories. The first is
usually called “institutionalism.” For instance, Judith Goldstein’s and Robert
Keohane’s analyses of foreign policy²⁸ and Kathryn Sikkink’s of development
in Latin America²⁹ are concerned with how organizations shape the policy
preferences of their members. Ideas can be particularly important to policy-
making processes during periods of upheaval. In thinking about the end of
World War II, the Cold War, or post-9/11 and post-COVID-19 challenges, for
example, ideas provide conceptual road maps to understand changing prefer-
ences and definitions of the vital interests of state and non-state actors alike.
Such an approach helps us to situate the dynamics at work among ideas,
multilateral institutions, and national policies. It also enables us to begin
generalizing about how the three UNs influence elite and popular images, as
well as how opinion-makers affect the world organization.
The second research category relates to the approaches and interactions of
various groups, including Peter Haas’s epistemic communities,³⁰ Peter Hall’s
analyses of the impact of Keynesian economists,³¹ and Ernst B. Haas’s work on
knowledge and power³² as well as work by Sikkink and others on transnational
networks of activists.³³ These approaches examine the role of intellectuals in
creating ideas, of technical experts in diffusing them and making them more
concrete and scientifically grounded, and of all sorts of people in influencing
the positions adopted by a wide range of actors. The relevance of policy
decisions and action by government is an especially pertinent indicator of
impact—for which the influence of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) is a powerful ongoing illustration.
Networks of experts influence a broad spectrum of world politics through
their ability to interact with policymakers regardless of location and national
boundaries; this reality has become more obvious with an accelerating number
of technological advances—data collected in South Africa, Singapore, or
Sweden are instantaneously available to researchers with an internet
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connection. Those working on HIV/AIDS, climate change, or peacebuilding


can generate new evidence and interpretations; they can thereby influence
policy by clarifying an issue upon which decision-makers on the other side of
the globe may interpret as being in their interests. Researchers can also help to
frame the debate on a particular issue by narrowing the acceptable range of
bargaining topics during international negotiations. They can introduce
standards for action. These networks can help provide justifications for alter-
natives, and often build national or international coalitions to support chosen
policies and to advocate for change. This interpretation borrows from Thomas
Kuhn’s classic on the nature of scientific revolutions although he undoubtedly
would be surprised by the speed at which contemporary paradigm shifts occur
and are communicated.³⁴
The third category that informs our work consists of insights from social
constructivists such as Alexander Wendt³⁵ and John G. Ruggie.³⁶ They seek to
determine the potential for individuals, governments, and international insti-
tutions to be active agents for change rather than robots whose primary
behavior maintains the status quo. The critical approaches of those more
influenced by the Italian school of Marxism, such as Robert Cox and his
followers,³⁷ are also pertinent. They view the work of all organizations and
their ideologies, including the United Nations, as heavily determined by
material conditions and historical path dependencies.
The UN system has spawned or nurtured numerous ideas that have called
into question conventional wisdom as well as reinforced it. Indeed, the very
definition of what passes for “conventional” at a particular moment in certain
parts of the world, but not elsewhere, is part of our inquiry.
Ideas, concepts, standards, principles, and norms are the UN’s most import-
ant asset, a legacy that has been a driving force in many areas of human
progress. They have set past, present, and future agendas for international
peace and security; human rights and humanitarian action; and sustainable
development. This book is part of a larger effort to correct the previous paucity
of attention to the role of the UN and other IGOs in generating or nurturing
ideas. The view of the University of Oxford’s Ngaire Woods from late in the
last century still has resonance: “In short, ideas, whether economic or not, have
been left out of analyses of international relations.”³⁸ There is a widespread,
but inaccurate, impression of western normative predominance; as such,
analysts have overlooked the intellectual agency of the Global South, which
has become a topic for research.³⁹ Although relatively new in analyses of
international relations and organizations, the study of knowledge and ideas
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is common bill-of-fare for historians, philosophers, students of literature, and


economists.
Our parsing of the three UNs responds to the need to address another
analytical reality: many observers do not explain the sources of ideas, just their
effects. They rarely explain how ideas emerge or evolve, with the exception of
pointing to technological innovations as a driver of change. By ignoring where
ideas come from and their itineraries, cause and effect are hazy. Do ideas shape
policy? Does policy push existing ideas forward, and perhaps even generate
new ideas that may emerge in response to that policy or action? Do ideas serve,
after the fact, as a convenient justification for a policy or a decision? In short,
we encounter variations of the chicken-and-egg question.
Our approach to knowledge and norms is to analyze them in light of
historical and social contexts; they cannot be understood without reference
to a specific time and place. In assigning responsibility for ideas, Somavia
remarked: “You always have this combination of issues and people who are the
bearers of the torch, and who dare to go forward and go beyond the accepted.”
In pointing to a new norm or policy, he continued: “If it had been left to the
UN system alone, it would have been a complicated thing to move forward. . . .
The instrument was generated by the UN, but the actual capacity to promote it
and develop it had to come from civil society.”⁴⁰ Thus, the birth and survival of
ideas in the UN—or their death and suppression—invariably reflect events
and are contingent upon politics and the world economy; they also depend on
the power and leverage of the actors and coalitions that spawn and advocate
for them.
It is a fool’s errand—or at least a largely frustrating and fruitless expenditure
of time and energy—to try and identify at what point in its life or in which of
its many possible incarnations one should begin to study an idea. As Woods
aptly summarizes, “Very few ideas are very new.”⁴¹ Observers are still arguing
whether Alexander Graham Bell deserves credit for inventing the telephone
because so many others were toying with the same idea at about the same time,
or whether evolution should be credited to Charles Darwin or his rival Alfred
Russel Wallace. The difficulty of identifying a single individual or institution
responsible for the creation of knowledge and norms is one illustration of this
problem, which is manifest in the overlapping processes and actors in the
“whole UN” and other multilateral organizations. An idea often evolves and
ownership becomes more widely shared through group processes, a particu-
larly pertinent reality within the United Nations in which the pooling of a
multiplicity of geographic and other groupings is the only way of doing
business—in fact, widespread ownership is the central goal of deliberations.⁴²
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Hence, we do not attempt to follow A. O. Lovejoy, who sought to trace an idea


“through all the provinces of history in which it appears.”⁴³ Instead, we pick up
an idea when it first intersects with UN debates because we seek to understand
the value-added by the Third UN to the production of knowledge and norms.
Finally, what is the influence of ideas themselves versus their carriers? What
is the impact of specific members of the Third UN?⁴⁴ It can be argued that the
more influential the members of an expert group or university or think tank,
or the greater their access to policymaking elites, the greater the odds that their
ideas will be adopted—that is, irrespective of their inherent value. Ideas
presuppose agents, who possess varying degrees of access and credibility,
along with power and its resulting leverage. Power and the long-standing
barriers to participation by poorer and less well positioned actors—in particu-
lar from the Global South—are realities in all three United Nations.
Throughout these pages, we use examples from the three broad thematic
baskets of activities and outputs from the world organization. The Third UN
has provided essential inputs for peace and security; human rights and
humanitarian action; and sustainable development. The interactions among
the three UNs are crucial for global policy processes, but they are complicated
to trace because of the increasing ease of movement by individuals who
contribute to UN deliberations and actions from several positions during
their careers and typically from several geographical locations.
In fact, it is not uncommon for leading policy figures to have significant
experience in all three United Nations. For instance, Adebayo Adedeji was a
junior academic working on UN issues before becoming a government min-
ister, before taking over as the head of the Economic Commission for Africa
(ECA), and before setting up his own UN-related NGO in Nigeria after his
retirement from the secretariat in Addis Ababa. Julia Taft ran the emergency
program of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), after
having been the CEO of InterAction—a consortium of almost 200 US devel-
opment and humanitarian NGOs—while being a member of a UN committee
coordinating emergency operations, and after having headed the US State
Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. Boutros
Boutros-Ghali earned a reputation as a professor of international law and a
government minister in Egypt before spending five years at the helm on First
Avenue; he subsequently headed two NGOs in Europe after his failed bid for
re-election as the UN’s top civil servant. The impact is evident albeit difficult
to measure. John Ruggie left Columbia University to join the Second UN on
the 38th floor; but he returned to the Third UN at Harvard University after his
UN service. However, he remained a special representative on business and
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human rights and noted the reasons why the movement among the three UNs
is important for the development of norms and policies: “The most direct
carrier, obviously, is people. . . . You bring with you ideas, and there is a
contagion effect among the people you’re working with.”⁴⁵
In terms of the politics of knowledge and norms, member states make
policies, sign treaties, deploy soldiers to halt murder or keep the peace,
establish priorities and budgets, and pay the bills (or are supposed to). Ideas
can emanate from visionary individuals within the first UN. Examples include
Canadian foreign minister Lester B. Pearson’s call for the first peacekeeping
effort in 1956 and the Swedish government’s decision to organize the first
global conference on the human environment in 1972.
Influential ideas sometimes gravitate from the Second UN as well. An
intriguing example is the notion of declining terms of trade, a thesis formu-
lated by Hans Singer in 1950 at UN headquarters in the Department of
Economic Affairs and further developed and applied by Raúl Prebisch at the
UN Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA).⁴⁶ At the time, the two
intellectual stalwarts were highly influential members of the Second UN, who
had assembled the initial data and argument outside of secretariats. They then
publicized the problems created by the tendency of the terms of trade to move
against primary commodities, thus creating persistent balance-of-payments
problems for poor countries and slowing their economic growth. This argu-
ment, radical at the time, framed contentious debates on economic develop-
ment for the 1960s and 1970s; it led to the establishment in 1964 of the United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which resulted
in the visible counter-hegemonic agenda of that period. Indeed, the Second
UN remains one of the largest producers of reliable social science data in the
world, some of which is original and some of which is combined with
government sources to produce a composite interpretation, which also can
be original.
We highlight efforts by the Third UN to influence the politics of knowledge
and norms. “The UN is, of course, a practical body, and it is right that it would
be mainly concerned with the urgent and the immediate,” commented Nobel
laureate Amartya Sen, a prominent member of the Third UN who has long
worked on the margins of secretariats. “Yet, it is also necessary not to be
boorish in ignoring the ancestry of many of the ideas that the UN stands for
and tries to promote. I think the UN has, taking the rough with the smooth,
made good use of ideas, generally. . . . This can make a difference in giving
intellectual depth to practical strategies.”⁴⁷
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Members of the Third UN often launch or doggedly pursue notions about


which important players in the First UN or the Second UN are less than
enthusiastic. From the Brookings Institution in the late 1980s and early
1990s, Francis M. Deng and Roberta Cohen deftly designed “sovereignty
as responsibility” to help foster international assistance and protection for
internally displaced persons (IDPs).⁴⁸ In turn, the International Commission
on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) made the topic more visible
and palatable in 2001 with their report, The Responsibility to Protect.⁴⁹ For
decades, too few members of the First or the Second UNs embraced the
notion of international responsibility to enforce basic human rights stand-
ards because of the Charter’s sacrosanct Article 2(7). When Secretary-
General Kofi Annan dared to speak out in 1998–9,⁵⁰ many member states
were livid, and many staff members were baffled. Nonetheless, this emerging
norm figured in the consensus of the 2005 World Summit, where diplomats
agreed to include it—one of the few issues that moved ahead on the 60th
anniversary.⁵¹
It is also possible that combinations of elements from the First, the Second,
and the Third United Nations can constitute a like-minded partnership to
move ahead on issues, with or without other powerful member states, includ-
ing major powers. Two prominent cases were the coming together of like-
minded governments, UN officials, analysts, and NGOs in the Ottawa Process,
which in 1997 produced the convention banning antipersonnel landmines.⁵²
A similarly diverse coalition led to the adoption of the 1998 Rome Treaty,
which established the International Criminal Court (ICC).⁵³ More recently,
the agreement on the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda cannot be interpreted
without examining inputs from all three United Nations.⁵⁴
In another variation, members of the Second UN may sometimes turn to
the Third UN to formulate ideas that are controversial but propitious to
place on the formal agenda and to pursue after consideration. They may be
more palatable, or at least not rejected outright, when they emanate from
non-state actors outside the organization rather than from inside. An
example is “human development,” which then UNDP administrator
William Draper imported by calling upon two former Cambridge room-
mates, Mahbub ul-Haq and Amartya Sen. The concept has been continually
refined since the first publication of the quasi-independent Human
Development Report in 1990.⁵⁵ Some UNDP staff, including Draper, were
keen on the notion although they felt constrained by their status as inter-
national civil servants. The technical details thus fell to minds largely outside
the confines of the UNDP’s staff and Governing Council, although the
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30  “” 

analytical team for the Human Development Report had office space in
UNDP headquarters. Governments that were irritated with the publicity
given to their embarrassing positions in the rankings attacked the human
development teams. Indeed, many disgruntled governments disputed the
appropriateness of paying the bill for such UN research, a complaint they
applied to commissions and panels as well.⁵⁶
At the same time, we should not minimize the clashes between parts of the
Third UN and government and UN officials. Important distinctions in views
among non-state actors bear on UN processes and their outcomes. For
instance, the contrast is sharp between the perspectives of most NGOs and
the far more significant influence of corporations over the content of norms in
the public health arena—breastfeeding versus infant formula is one example—
or in negotiations for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) and SDGs. The role of some non-state actors in impeding effective
implementation of UN standards in such national jurisdictions as women’s
rights also are indicative of the types of power and ideological differences
within segments of the Third UN. The double-edged sword of the increased
non-core financing by governments and by private business and philanthropic
sources adds to the complexity of understanding the impact of the three
United Nations.⁵⁷

Counting INGOs and TNCs, and Why the Numbers Matter

It is a truism that the contemporary world is more interconnected than it used


to be, which has increased the ease of establishing international entities of all
sorts and in multiplying and intensifying interactions among them. Over the
past century, a marked increase has taken place in the number and the scope of
international actors on the world stage. This burgeoning has been concen-
trated in non-state actors, and more specifically for this discussion of the Third
UN in INGOs and TNCs, for which measurements and time-series data are
readily available—numbers for the dramatic growth in and locations of think
tanks are found in Chapter 4, but they cover a shorter time span. Here we
marshal evidence about the growth of INGOs and TNCs since the beginning
of the last century. New non-state actors or the expansion of older ones, by the
nature of their working to address issues or facilitate action internationally,
represent additional bricks and mortar for the foundations of global
governance.
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80000

70000

60000

50000

40000

30000

20000

10000

0
1909
1954
1958
1962
1966
1970
1976
1978
1983
1985
1987
1989
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
2011
2013
2015
2017
IGO NGO Total

Figure 1.2 Historical overview of the number of IGOs and INGOs, 1909–2017

The Yearbook of International Organizations provides the time-series data


to track the number of IGOs and INGOs over the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries. Their data dramatically demonstrate the changing landscape of
international organization.⁵⁸ Figure 1.2 provides an overview of the total
number of IGOs and INGOs from 1909 to 2017. While there were 213
organizations in 1909, they had increased more than four times by 1951 and
then to 6,476 in 1976, although the number dropped to 3,821 in the following
year. Despite the temporary drop (led by INGOs, repeated, for instance, from
1988 to 1989), the pattern is clear: the number of IGOs and INGOs continues
to increase significantly, reaching 71,397 in 2018. A dramatic surge in the
total number of INGOs resulted in this growth as well as the change in the
growth rate.
The Union of International Associations provides longitudinal data for
IGOs and INGOs, but data do not cover those entities organized across
national boundaries whose activities are profit-oriented. Transnational cor-
porations are another key non-state actor and substantial participant in the
Third UN, along with global business and consumer associations.⁵⁹ In light of
their voices and resources, their absence—or at least marginalization within
debates of UN organizations—until the twenty-first century was short-sighted.
Our own attempt to assemble the pieces of the contemporary global govern-
ance puzzle, and more particularly the UN’s production of knowledge and
norms, moves TNCs from the periphery closer to the center of UN
deliberations.
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themselves, they soon got over their fright, and came forward, eager
questions on their lips.
They spoke a sort of dialect English, and Carl had little difficulty in
making himself understood. He informed them that he, too, was an
earth-dweller, who had returned with his wife and baby from a trip to
a distant world. Amazement was plain on every face, but they
assured him of their belief in what he said, adding that they had
never before seen such a thing as the strange ship in which he had
come, although their books taught them that there was a time when
earth-men flew about in some such machines.
Scarcely believing his ears, Carl asked them the name of the country
in which he had landed, and was told it was called “Artonia.”
“Artonia? I have never heard of that. Where is it in location to the rest
of the world?”
He learned, then, that this was the region of the one-time North Pole,
as it was called ages ago.
“Ages ago? What year is it now?” he asked, amazed.
“It is the year 3831,” came the reply.
“3831?” questioned his mind. Unbelievable! Nearly two thousand
years of earth-time had elapsed during their journey, and to them it
had seemed but the matter of a year. Turning to Sana, Carl said, “Is
it possible that Einstein was right?”
If such changes had been wrought at the pole, what had happened
to the rest of the world? What had become of the great cities of the
world and their people? Sadly they realized that they alone of the old
order of things existed. This world, their home, would be as strange
to them as Mars!
They might as well utilize their means of travel and visit the other
parts of the globe. The “Meteor,” although badly strained by the
severe use to which it had been subjected in their flight, would still
suffice them on earth. They, in turn, had become nomads of the
earth—wanderers without a place they could call home. Men without
a world!
Their supply of the artificial food had about been exhausted, and
Carl questioned the strange folk as to where he could purchase food.
At his remark, “But I have little money,” they asked curiously,
“Money? What is that?”
Carl tried to explain, but they did not understand. He knew then that
they, in their primitiveness had not yet reached the stage where a
standard form of exchange was required. So he reverted to their
method of barter.
He had not much choice in the way of what to offer. In fact the only
things he had were his books. Perhaps they would serve his
purpose. And serve his purpose they did. Cooked meats, fruits and
vegetables galore were given him in exchange for a single book—a
book of wild game hunt in Africa. He noted with a smile, that it was
the pictures that interested these people. They passed the book from
hand to hand, looking at the highly colored illustrations, like so many
amused school children.
Promising these new made friends that they would return to them, to
tell them of what they had seen in their tour of the world, they said
goodbye, and headed for Europe.
The Europe they had known was gone—gone were the great centers
of population, gone were the peoples they had known, swallowed up,
all, in the relentless march of Time!
Gone too, were the great nations of Europe, as Carl and Sana knew
them. All that remained of the once great British Empire was the little
isle of England—the rest of her domains had shaken off the yoke
and were independent countries.
In France a greater change had taken place. The one-time French
race had completely extinguished itself generations before. The land
was now overrun with a polyglot race of Russians and Germans,
who were more phlegmatic than ever.
Germany and the other countries of Europe, too, were changed to
such an extent that there was no comparison between the order now
in existence and the order that had passed.
In all Europe laws of equality of man had been established, so that
now all men were equally rich, or rather equally poor. Equally poor,
because, there was no longer any incentive or inducement to strive
to gain. The people had become drones to an extreme degree.
There was no reward for labor, so none labored. No man tried to
outdo his neighbor, for in the end, his neighbor had as much as he.
Hence progress had ceased long ago. There was no industry worthy
of the name. Civilization, as Carl and Sana knew it, was, too, a thing
of the past.
To all appearances, the people existed only because they did not
die. Nothing mattered to them but food, and as eating was a
necessary evil, they procured their food, individually, with as little
exertion as was possible. Too lazy, in most instances, to even cook
the fish and game they caught, they ate it raw, and having filled their
bellies, would lie down beside their mates to sleep until they were
hungry again.
Landing in North Africa, both Carl and Sana were astounded at the
changes that had taken place. The once barren wastes of the desert
country had been converted, as if by the wave of a magic wand, into
a great agricultural country. The terrific heat of the days and the
freezing cold of the nights had gone and in their place was a mild
climate, similar to that of the central United States. With this great
change had come prosperity; prosperity of such magnitude as to
even surpass that of Carl’s own country at the time he and Sana had
taken flight from the earth.
The flooding of the lower desert areas, while inundating tremendous
territory, had caused the surrounding lands to become fertile, rich in
nitrates and plant values. The people of the new, for such it was,
land, were the descendants of the one-time semi-savage races. Now
they numbered some two hundred millions and in truth had become
a mighty race, rich in power and wealth.
On every hand, Carl and Sana saw bodies of soldiers in training. On
inquiring as to this, they were informed that ages ago France had
taught them the military arts. Today these people believed the entire
world was in fear of them. In fact they were bragging of the great
military strength and boasted of the fact that for centuries no nation
had even so much as dared try to exploit them.
Sana pointed out to Carl that these people were not as dark of skin
as they were when the land was still a desert. On hearing her
remark, a native man, of apparent great learning, and who was
acting as a sort of self-appointed guide to the couple, explained,
saying:
“Ages ago, that is, some two thousand years ago, France used our
people to fight her wars against other nations of white peoples.
France realized that if she had more of us available to fight her
battles, she could soon gain control of the entire world. To this end
she established this great African country of ours, believing at the
time that the people of this great land would always remain subject
to her rule and would always be at her call to aid her against the
world.
“In this she was partly right. If she could always control the colonies
of black peoples, she could defy any nation on the earth.”
The speaker paused, then continued, with a smile of satisfaction,
“But France overlooked the fact that France herself, as a white race
was dying gradually. She overlooked too, to what great extent the
black races had mingled with the white French, with its self-evident
result.
“Today, the African and the Asiatic races rule the world, thanks to the
one-time French and the English.
“We two colored races, that is the black and yellow races, are the
only ones on earth that amount to anything. We are the mighty ones
of the earth today and none dare interfere or disturb us.
“When France realized that the tables were being turned against her,
and that she was sure to be the loser, she tried to avert the
impending disaster to France, by attempting to make this great
country a barren waste of sand once more. But it was too late. Too
late for France to undo the great wrong she had done the white
races of the earth. We were already strong enough to resist any
such action on her part. Rising up in our might, much to their
surprise, we overthrew our masters and became a nation
independent and free from the yoke that had rested on our necks for
so many years.
“From that time on the white French disappeared still faster from the
face of the earth. Our histories tell us that in the course of the two
following generations there were no more white French in France.
“These colored people you now see here are to a great extent the
descendants of the French. In other words they are the result of the
mingling of the white and the black, with the black, as you see,
predominating.”
“But how was it that the black races prospered so?” Carl interrupted.
Things were not quite clear to him, as yet.
The answer came quickly—“You know from your histories that the
white races, from the beginning of time, have been warring upon
each other. You know too, that the colored races have never fought
each other as have the whites. That is the answer.
“England aided the growth of the yellow race by letting Japan
overrun Russia. France conscripted the black race to fight the white.
What other outcome was there to expect? Sooner or later the two
races must dominate. When the black and yellow races are allowed
to kill off the white, there could be no other result.
“And, because that result was inevitable, so it has come to pass.
Today where are the whites? Scattered over the earth! But they are
nobody. Their ambition lies dormant; they are even too lazy to
procure their food. They are a dying race.
“But we colored people are different. We are the civilized peoples of
the earth. Our civilization has taken the place of that of the white
peoples some two thousand years ago.”
The truth became clear to Carl and Sana as they listened to the
speaker’s words. The hypocrisy of nations, like that of individuals,
ends with disaster.
Asking whether all these great changes had been wrought in a
natural way, Carl was told “Not quite so. At the time when the
Sahara, as it was then known, was changed from a desert into a
flowering garden, there was, according to history, a great
astronomical upheaval, destroying great cities, and killing millions of
people. Ever since, the ‘great comet,’ which will soon be visible in
the sky, has appeared daily. Then our colored people with the
mixture of the French blood get excited. They cannot lose their fear.”
Sana smiled, saying, “After two thousand years they are still excited
and afraid.”
In the days that followed Carl and Sana, in their wanderings about
this strange country, were soon convinced of the truth of the things
they had been told. Much as they would have liked to remain here
and study the civilization and people about them, they desired to
hasten to America. Of Sana’s homestead on the Gurara Oasis there
was nothing to be seen. Ages ago all that was dear to Sana had
been buried deep beneath the waves of the great inland sea.
So getting once more into the “Meteor” they set out for Carl’s
beloved country.
America, too, had changed, Carl found to his great regret, when the
“Meteor” alighted at the site of what was once the world’s greatest
city. Gone were the towering buildings of New York, gone were its
millions of people. In its place was naught but a great sandy plain, or
better, a plateau, extending for miles in all directions, and unpeopled
save for a few straggling groups of rude hut-like shelters.
In landing the “Meteor” had come to a stop at a point that Carl
figured was approximately lower Broadway. Nearby some excavating
work was being done by a group of white-bearded men, who at the
sight of the airplane dropped their implements and came hurrying
towards it. Upon questioning these men Carl learned that they were
scientists who had come from the cities that lay in the distant West,
to learn something about the civilization that had existed on the
Atlantic coast in the days of the past.
To the best of their knowledge, they explained, some thousand or so
years ago the entire coast had been devastated by great tidal waves,
followed by terrible earthquakes causing untold destruction. Volcanic
eruptions, too, had added to the havoc, burying the lands, for
thousands of square miles, under millions of tons of lava and rock.
Leading him to the pit where Carl had first seen them, the excavators
asked him to peer down the deep shaft they had dug. At the bottom,
some two hundred feet below him, Carl saw the tower of the great
Woolworth Building of old New York.
Asking them what they sought, the answer came, “Knowledge. We of
today have little need for the material things of Life. Ours is a search
for the Truth, and we must hurry.”
The spokesman of the party pointed heavenward. Carl, following the
directing finger with his eyes, saw in blazing brilliance, the great
comet whose first appearance had caused Sana and he to flee the
earth. While in Europe he had noticed it, but had paid little attention
to it, being too absorbed in the things around him. The peoples of
Europe, too, had taken it as an accepted thing of life.
The stranger continued, “That has been there in the heavens as long
as man can remember, but we who know, realize that it is coming
closer and closer to the earth. Just when that final rush will come,
the rush that shall bring destruction to this world, we do not know,
but we fear that the day is not far off. For myself I care not. The day
can come anytime and I will be ready. For the sake of the truths we
are seeking, however, I hope that that day will never come.”
A strange world indeed, mused Carl, when the knowledge of truth
dominates and man’s personal ambitions are secondary!
Wandering around Carl and Sana saw how complete the destruction
had been. The wonderful Palisades of the Hudson had disappeared,
the river itself having been turned from its bed many miles away. The
East River, too, was gone, having been filled with lava and rock as
had a great part of Long Island Sound.
While on one of their wonder-filled trips of exploration, they came
upon an extinct volcanic crater, very similar in size and appearance
to some they had seen on the moon. The air, that day, seemed more
oppressive than usual and the heat terrific.
Seeking coolness in the shadow of a great boulder on the rampart of
this crater, Sana sat down, her baby in her arms, while Carl stood
nearby studying the wonderful formations of rock and lava at every
hand.
Suddenly the air was filled with a great roaring sound, a sound so
terrific that it was deafening. A light, brighter than that of a hundred
suns, illumined the earth. With a rush the realization was upon them.
The comet was fast approaching the earth—the end of the world was
at hand.
Then the collision—the earth shook under the impact—the air was
filled with dust and smoke. Fearful for the safety of his beloved ones,
Carl sprang to them, to clutch them tightly in his arms. Then
darkness!

Someone laughing? Carl opened his eyes. Of course they were


laughing at him, lying at the feet of his camel, from whose back he
had fallen in his sleep, with his arms tightly hugging the camel’s legs.
CHAPTER XI
UNDER THE KNIFE
CARL, endeavoring to get to his feet, was aware of a severe pain in
his side. His left foot, too, pained him and was unable to support any
weight. Struggling at last to an upright position, he staggered forward
a few steps, only to lurch head first into the burning desert sand.
Immediately the other tourists were off their camels and at his side.
A hasty examination proved that his left ankle was badly broken and
that, from all appearances, he had suffered internal injuries in his fall
from the camel.
Everything possible was done to relieve his pain and make him as
comfortable as possible. With great care he was literally hoisted
aboard one of the camels, and strapped on its back, where he was
held secure from a further fall by one of the guides who rode behind
him.
The place of Carl’s accident was near the Wadi Draa River, flowing
past the southern end of the Atlas Mountains, so they were still some
two hundred and fifty miles, about four days’ ride from Mogador, the
terminus of the caravan.
Accordingly the caravan headed for the nearest town, Glisscim, but
here they found only a native doctor, to whose care none was willing
to entrust the sick man. Securing an automobile, the only one to be
had and a ramshackle bouncing affair at that, Carl was driven to
Mogador. Here, too, disappointment was in store for him. Suffering
although he was from the pain in his side and ankle, Carl would not
consent to gamble his chances on the more or less speculative
knowledge of the only doctor in that locality.
Another hundred miles of pain-tortured automobile ride and he
reached Marrakesh, the beautiful southern capital of Morocco, lying
at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, whose snow covered peaks
provided a wondrous contrast to the great groves of palms that
formed a background for the city. It was at Marrakesh that the
celebrated feudal chieftain of the southern country, El Hadj Thami
Glaouri, made his home, being attracted to the city by its great
groves of cypress and olive trees and its wonderful gardens of
tropical beauty.
At the hospital, Carl, much to his delighted surprise, was placed
under the care of the prominent French physician Dr. Thuillier. After
a thorough examination, which confirmed the belief of the tourists,
Carl was placed in bed. The hospital was rather crowded with
soldiers wounded in the war, but room was found for him in one of
the wards.
That was on a Thursday night. The following morning X-ray pictures
were taken to ascertain the true nature of the fracture in his leg, and
Friday not being an operating day, but a “meatless one,” as was
laughingly explained to him, Carl had to wait for “butcher day,” which
was Saturday, for the operation.
Among the nurses at the hospital there were a few white women,
one of whom, Carl soon learned, was an American, Grace
Huntington. She came from New York, where she had been
employed as a stenographer and secretary prior to the outbreak of
the war. When the war came she went to France as a nurse, like so
many of her American sisters. During her service with the armies she
had met Dr. Thuillier, who had accompanied a regiment of semi-
savage Moroccan soldiers to France. He, seeing that she made a
wonderful nurse, made her an attractive offer, which, in her
enthusiasm, she readily accepted, going to Marrakesh at the
termination of her work in France.
Grace was young and very attractive, as Carl soon noticed. Carl was
attractive, too, it seemed, as from the outset complaints were made
that she paid more attention to him than was necessary.
Carl was much interested in the sights about him, and particularly in
the behavior of several men, who, still under the influence of the
ether, were brought back to the ward from the operating room. One
of these was a young Englishman who, coming out of the ether
became very restless and talkative. So restless was he that two
nurses had to hold him down, but all the while he kept talking of and
to his sweetheart. This made Carl wonder whether he, when coming
back from the plane of unconsciousness, would talk of Sana, his
beloved, for whom his heart was crying bitterly. He hoped not, after
hearing the jeers that greeted the words of the soldier. Furthermore,
he could not reconcile himself to the thought of having Grace hear
anything of Sana. But he reasoned to himself, that if what he had
heard from others was true, he would talk. Much of this talking on the
part of a patient he had been told was induced by suggestion on the
part of the nurses at hand.
Friday night, much to his embarrassment, he was shaved and
prepared for the operation the following morning. Grace, he noticed,
was also visibly embarrassed, although he thought this strange, as it
must have been a usual occurrence in the line of duty. He could not
account for it, but he was too tired and hungry to bother much about
her feelings toward him. Hungry he was, and much to his chagrin
had to be satisfied with half a roll and a glass of water.
Early the next morning Grace again came to his side to make him
ready for the ordeal. Another coat of iodine, “war paint” she called it,
was applied to his side, a white woolen shirt and a pair of long
woolen stockings put on him and he was placed upon a wheel
stretcher. Blankets were put over him with his arms beneath them,
and his body tightened down with two strong belts. A victim, trussed
for the slaughter, Carl mused bitterly.
In the operating room Carl was turned over to three women nurses;
the history of his case being given them. Without further ado he was
transferred to the operating table.
A young French doctor was attending to the ether apparatus while a
nurse came up to Carl with a book in her hand and requested his
signature. Asking what this meant, he was told that it was but a
matter of routine. Anticipating that he was expected to sign his life
away before the operation, in case he died from it, the nurse
confirmed his belief. Reluctantly Carl signed the book, knowing that
he had no alternative.
The doctor was having some trouble with the ether bottles and the
attachment of the gas mask. While fixing things, he laughingly told a
story of two boys, who were bragging about their fathers—the one
had said that his father had electricity in his hair to which the other
retorted that his father had gas on his stomach.
Disgusted beyond words at this lack of consideration on the doctor’s
part for his patient, Carl heard him say, “Come, you had better take
some gas now.”
The mask was adjusted over his face and the ether turned on. A
sweet sickening odor entered Carl’s nostrils followed by a light-
headed feeling. The stuff was doing its work fast. Making up his mind
that he would not say a word of Sana, when coming out of the ether,
he began to count. The possibility of his never coming out of it did
not occur to him. He had reached the count of nine when sparks of
all colors and shades, radiated from his brain, with a tremendous
noise, to all corners of the room and beyond. They were like sparks
from a huge induction coil of a wireless station. The count was
thirteen when Carl suddenly exclaimed, “Oh no—I am not in an
electric chair!”
Through his mind ran the argument he had so often propounded to
the men of his profession. He was firmly convinced a person
electrocuted in an electric chair, was not dead and that he could be
revived with a high frequency apparatus. Many an electrical
equipment operator has been successfully revived after receiving
equally as heavy or even more powerful electrical shocks from high
tension apparatus in electrical central stations. These operators lay
on the ground as though really dead; their hearts do not beat and
any doctor would pronounce them dead; yet many of them are
brought to life again.
After official electrocutions an autopsy is performed upon the body,
and the heart removed. This, of course, kills the person, but the
electrical shocks do not necessarily kill.
No state, he had contended, making use of the barbaric
electrocution, would dare to apply high frequency apparatus to a
criminal after he had been removed from the electric chair. It would
expose the fact that many an individual had not been legally and
according to law, executed in the electric chair.
When Carl stopped counting the doctor asked him “Do you hear
me?”
Carl wanted to reply in the affirmative, but his voice failed him. So he
nodded his head in answer to the query.
The young physician promptly exclaimed, “Hell you do!”
Carl meekly thought, “I ought to know better.”
He now heard Dr. Thuillier, the chief surgeon, say, “Well, where is
that young American?”
Then someone placed a hand on his left arm and he became
unconscious instantly. From that time on, until three hours later, he
knew nothing of what was happening to him.
Besides the doctors and nurses participating in the operation, there
were several other doctors or internes present to study the case. To
these, Dr. Thuillier explained the nature of the accidental injury and
the method of operating. The work was quite complicated because of
the delay that had ensued since the time of the accident. At the end
of an hour, however, Carl was wheeled back to the ward and put to
bed, with Nurse Grace to watch over him until he came out of the
ether.
While still under the ether, Carl dreamed that he had at last perfected
an invention on which he had been working for years. This invention
was the one thing that could be acclaimed as one hundred per cent.
perfect. His long cherished dreams had come true! He had devised
an apparatus by means of which he could throw upon a screen
scenes from any part of the globe, that is, the actual scenes of
happenings as they were taking place at some distant point the very
moment we projected them upon the screen in front of his machine.
Incidents taking place thousands of miles away were pictured before
one’s eyes as if they were at the scene itself. If he wanted a street
scene say of San Francisco, Tokio, Paris or London, all he would
have to do would be to place the indicator upon the dial map,
pointing to the city in question, and it was done—the scene was
before his eyes.
Carl had been industriously working on this telephoto device during
the war. His idea was to observe the movement of the armies,
believing that with it he could end the war and prevent all future
wars. No military movement would be secret, no advance
unobserved, with his machine.
The idea was first born in his mind after a talk with a great detective
who was looking for evidence against some suspected criminals.
Carl had come to the detective’s aid with a device whereby he could
see what was going on in a closed room. He placed wires along the
picture molding of the room, during the suspected one’s absence,
and the four ends of the wire he provided with “eyes,” his secret
invention. These wires led from the room to a place at some distance
away, where the apparatus reflected the entire room upon a large
mirror.
This device he had improved upon until at last, instead of wires and
the “eyes” he had been able to accomplish the same result by
means of wireless.
The war over, he continued his experiments on the device, intending
to use it in connection with his lectures on city planning.
In his delirium, he was addressing a large audience and
demonstrating his device. He pointed the indicator to Paris, saying,
“Here we have a city, where Baron Hausmann, under the great
Napoleon, remodeled the entire city, broke through new
thoroughfares, made plazas and squares, at an expense of some
two hundred and thirty million dollars. The scene before you is that of
the Place du Chatelet, with the monument at the end of the bridge,
or rather beyond the bridge, acting as a focal point. Note the good
treatment of the traffic waterway, the well planned boulevards, the
uniform height of the buildings as well as the ornamental shade trees
on both sides of all streets. Surely, here are examples for our
American cities.”
Turning the indicator upon Duesseldorf, one of the foremost cities,
where the art of city planning has been practised for generations,
Carl said, “Here is the river promenade on the Rhine in Duesseldorf.
Where can we find in our own country a similar scene of such civic
improvement? At the lower level you see the electric unloading
machinery and the busy vehicles hauling away the freight of the river
boats. On the upper level in the wide promenade, flanked on one
side with shade trees and on the other with the great balustrade,
giving an open view of the river and the monumental bridge in the
distance. Observe, also, the highly ornamental electroliers.
Duesseldorf is no larger than Jersey City, but who ever goes to
Jersey City for the sake of seeing anything beautiful. Where could
we, in our own country, find such a scene, as this, of business and
pleasure combined. Yet all this could be duplicated in America if the
principle were but understood. As will be seen, city planning
develops artistic taste, civic pride and patriotism. It also makes for
better citizenship, adds to our comfort and our happiness and it
stimulates industrial prosperity.
“Of late we have heard so much of Tut-Ankh-Amen, one of the great
Pharaohs. Let us see if we can locate him.” Shifting the indicator
back and forth over the map of Egypt, Carl continued, “Here we have
the sand waves sweeping in their slow but inevitable march past the
silent Sphinx and the pyramids at Luxor. Yes, here it is. We see
before us the last resting-place of a great Pharaoh, which for some
3400 years has remained undisturbed. But now it has been entered
and its valuable treasures taken away by a group of archeologists.
“Witness the procession of visitors in carriages and on camel’s back,
all come to gape with awe at the funeral fittings of a king. We cannot
look down into the tomb itself, but we can see the valuable treasures
as they are carefully carried away on stretchers borne by native
Egyptians who apparently have no scruples against despoiling the
grave of a ruler of their country.
“We see here treasure chests, costly vases, chairs, thrones and the
like, as well as the mummy of the king. Art as well as history may
gain to a great extent, but let us consider a while. Is it right?
“Tut-Ankh-Amen, as well as the other Pharaohs, was buried
according to the rites of the religion of Egypt. In his mortal life he had
this great tomb prepared, so that his body could be placed in it, when
death came, and remain untouched through the ages. After the king
had been buried and the last seal put in place, the tomb became
consecrated ground, hallowed to the memory of the life that had
departed. Because of this, many a logical mind will consider the
ruthless digging up of the remains a ghoulish act and a desecration
of the body’s last resting-place. Surely if it were the grave of a less
notable person than an ancient Pharaoh such would be the
description of the act and the diggers would be called ‘ghouls’ and
‘grave robbers’ instead of archeologists.
“What would be said if some wealthy or more powerful foreign nation
came to our own country to carry away the bodies of our great
Washington or Lincoln, or say of some of our soldiers who lost their
lives on the field of battle?
“It may be said that the removal of these highly valuable treasures
will serve mankind, but mankind could be better served if the cost of
such removal were used in the aiding of needy peoples.
“Beneath Constantinople, the Turkish capital, are buried the
treasures of the old Pashas, and this is one of the reasons that
makes both England and Russia so anxious to control that city.
“The treasures buried with Kings, Pashas or Pharaohs were buried
in accordance with the beliefs of the people, and no other nation,
especially a nation of a different religion, should have the right to
exploit these graves and treasures to their own advantage.
“However, that is but a matter of opinion and has nothing to do with
my new invention, the telephoto device, which has enabled you to
see these things for yourselves.”
Tremendous applause greeted Carl as he finished his lecture.
Immensely elated, he shouted, “I am satisfied. I have a machine that
is one hundred per cent. perfect.”
The words were hardly out of his mouth, when a great seven-league
boot kicked him off the globe, while a voice said, “The hell you have!”
Falling through space he looked back and saw another man, a
young fellow he had seen in his audience, pick up the machine
saying, “Here we have it, one hundred per cent. perfect.”
And again came the gigantic boot and the voice, “The hell you have!”
and he, too, slid off the planet.
A second man, one of the type termed “nut” came along and seeing
the device, called out gleefully, “Years ago I invented this, but could
not make it work. Now I shall claim it mine.”
And again that sneering “The hell you will!” followed by so forceful a
kick that the old man flew in a wide arc over Carl’s head and
descended rapidly to the depths beneath.
All the while Carl noticed that it was becoming hotter and hotter. At
first he could not grasp the meaning of it, but then came the dawning
of the truth that Hades was his destination. He turned around and
screamed, “What is all this about?”
From somewhere in the far distance, he heard a deep even voice
respond, “Young man, if everybody should come into the possession
of one hundred per cent. perfection, which by the way is an
impossibility, there would be no incentive for improvement, and that
would stagnate all possible progress.”
Carl became intensely hot and was perspiring dreadfully. His very
vitals were burning and a terrible thirst was consuming him, but he
managed to say, “But I have it and I am going to hold on to it!”
A hand was on his arm, and a melancholy yet sweet voice barely
audible came to him, saying, “Please, Mr. Lohman, have a drink.”
Carl was but half awake, his mind still floating in airy regions, but he
managed to rouse himself, and opening his eyes, he saw his
charming nurse, Grace, standing at the side of his bed.
A teaspoonful of warm water was poured between his parched lips.
That was all he could have just then, but to the fevered man it was
nectar of the gods.
Carl, on regaining full consciousness was anxious to know whether
he had said anything of Sana during his coma. He questioned nurse
Grace guardedly, but was told that he had only grunted like a little
pig for a time and then had mechanically delivered a lecture on the
tombs of the Pharaohs.
Satisfied, Carl dosed off into a fitful sleep, to be awakened some
hours later, by plaintive strains of music. Twisting his head in the
direction from which the sounds came, Carl beheld three musicians
standing at the entrance of the ward. He recalled then, of having
heard that they came every Saturday evening to play to the suffering
patients.
Upon the strangely stirred spirit of Carl, the magic of this weird native
music had a subtle effect, and burying his face in the pillow, he wept
bitterly, weeping only as a strong man can weep.
That night no sleep would come to his tired eyes. The pain in his
side had increased much to his alarm. Speaking of it to the night
nurse, she gave him an injection, but it had little effect. Through the
long hours of the silent night he lay staring with unseeing eyes at the
ceiling above him.
The whole of the next day Carl received no nourishment save a
glass of lemon water, although food was promised him the following
day. That night another injection of morphine was given him, and
peaceful sleep came to the tired man.
One hospital day was like another. But on the sixth day Carl became
very ill. His pulse raced and his temperature rose rapidly. A high
fever set in, torturing his very soul.
Carl noted that the night nurse had spoken to Grace of his condition
when she arrived in the morning. Her serious face, when asking him
how he felt, worried Carl greatly. He began to ponder on the success
of the operation. Was it likely to end fatally? But then he did not care.
Sana was gone, burned alive, and in a large measure due to his own
fault. Ever since that fateful hour he had been thinking of how he
could have saved his beloved if he had only acted the part of the
hero; the hero of story book and screen. He had saved Sana from
the clutches of Amshied and he blamed himself for not having taken
sufficient precautions when leaving the burning building. As yet he
did not know how he had been put out of action—all he remembered
was the blow that sent him reeling down in a heap.
Such thoughts depressed him, and he cared little whether he lived or
not.
Although puzzled at this turn of affairs, Grace assured him that he
was in no great danger. Two assistant doctors, in the absence of the
head doctor, were called, but they could not say just what was the
matter. When Dr. Thuillier came, however, a hasty examination was
all that was necessary to disclose the nature of the trouble. An
abscess had formed in the wound, and it was necessary to re-open
it. This was immediately done, the abscess removed, and the
incision closed.
After this second operation Carl’s fever left him and he was much
easier.
For three long weeks after that Carl remained at the hospital, gaining
in strength slowly but surely. During this time Grace was constantly
at his side, tenderly nursing him with all possible skill and patience.
At last came the day when he was pronounced fit to leave. During
the weeks of his convalescence, Grace had often told him of her
desire to return to New York—she was tired of the desert, of the
hospital, of everything in this foreign land. She wanted to go home.
So it had been mutually agreed that they would go home together.
So together, Carl and Grace, bade goodbye to their friends at
Marrakesh and left for Mogador, where they hoped to find passage
by steamer to New York.
CHAPTER XII
THE RUM-RUNNERS
CARL and Grace had luck in catching the boat. Sailings from
Mogador are few and far between, but the English freight steamer
“Resolute” was at the wharf, loading for a return trip to New York.
Inquiring of the vessel’s master as to the chances of securing
passage, Carl was directed to the purser’s office, where he made
arrangements for himself and Grace. Besides themselves, three
other passengers had been booked for the trip.
Shortly afterward the steamer weighed anchor, and Grace and Carl,
standing at the rail, waved farewell to the shores of Africa.
Carl soon made friends with the other men passengers, and much to
his amazement, soon discovered that the “Resolute” was a rum-
boat, operated by a New York bootlegging gang. Captain Billings and
the first and second officers, he learned, were in the pay of this gang
and were known to be ruthless in their methods of dealing with any
member of the crew who saw fit to disagree with them. Billings was
an American, who prior to taking up this calling, had been master of
a Gloucester fishing schooner. Although legally without right to take
charge of a steamer of the size of the “Resolute,” he had been given
papers by the English concern, which, to all appearances, operated
the steamer as a freight boat, but which, in truth, was but a
subsidiary of the rum-running organization.
He learned, too, that the vessel had stowed away in its holds, some
ninety thousand gallons of whisky and brandy, with a value of
perhaps seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This liquor had
been taken aboard at Cadiz, in Spain, to which port it had been
originally shipped from England and France. From Cadiz the ship
had gone to Mogador, which was listed as one of its ports of call, to
take on a miscellaneous cargo. This, Carl was assured, was but

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