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OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 6/1/2021, SPi
The “Third” United Nations

The “Third” United

Nations
How a Knowledge Ecology Helps
the UN Think
TATIANA CARAYANNIS
and
THOMAS G. WEISS
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
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© Tatiana Carayannis and Thomas G. Weiss 2021
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First Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
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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
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).
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
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
xvi   
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
   xvii
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
xviii   
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
   xix
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
xx   
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]
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
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
 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,
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.
 5
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
6  “  ” 
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.
 7
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
8  “  ” 
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
 9
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
10  “  ” 
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).
 11
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
12  “  ” 
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
 13
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.
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
 “”  15
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),
16  “” 
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.
 “”  17
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
18  “” 
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
 “”  19
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
20  “” 
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
 “”  21
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.
22  “” 
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
 “”  23
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
24  “” 
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
 “”  25
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
26  “” 
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
 “”  27
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
28  “” 
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
 “”  29
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
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.
 “”  31
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.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Radio mates
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
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under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Radio mates
Author: Benjamin Witwer
Illustrator: Frank R. Paul
Release date: December 11, 2023 [eBook #72380]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: E. P. Co., Inc, 1927
Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RADIO

MATES ***
Radio Mates
“Think of it! A twist of a switch and the living, breathing piglet slowly
dissolved before my eyes and vanished along a pair of wires to my
aerial, whence it was transferred as a set of waves in the ether to the
receiving apparatus—there to reincarnate into the living organism
once more, alive and breathing, unharmed by its extraordinary
journey!”
RADIO MATES
by Benjamin Witwer
From the telegraph to the telephone was but a step. From the telephone to
radio constituted but another such step, and we are now enjoying radio
broadcast from stations thousands of miles away. Every time you have an
X-ray photograph taken you are bombarded, not by rays, but by actual
particles that go right through the walls of the tube, which particles are just
as real as if they were bullets or bricks, the only difference being that they
are smaller. Thus our scientists lead up to the way of sending solids
through space. While impossible of achievement, as yet, it may be
possible, years hence, to send living beings through space, to be received
at distant points. At any rate, the author of this story weaves a fascinating
romance around this idea. It makes excellent reading, and the plot is as
unusual as is its entire treatment.
It was a large brown envelope, of the size commonly used for

mailing pamphlets or catalogues. Yet it was registered, and had
come by special messenger that afternoon, my landlady informed
me. Probably it was a strain of that detective instinct which is present
in most of us that delayed my opening the missive until I had
carefully scrutinized the handwriting of the superscription. There was
something vaguely familiar in its slanting exactitude, yet when I
deciphered the postmark,—“Eastport, N. Y.,”—I was still in the dark,
for I could not remember ever having heard of the place before. As I
turned the packet over, however, my pleasant tingle of anticipation
was rudely chilled. Along the flap was a sinister row of black sealing
wax blobs, which seemed to stare at me with a malignant fore-
knowledge. On closer examination, I noticed that each seal retained
the impression of a coat-of-arms, also elusively familiar.
With a strange sense of foreboding I dropped the missive on the
table. Queer what ominous significance a few drops of wax can
impart to an ordinary envelope. Deliberately I changed into smoking
jacket and slippers, poked the well laid fire and lit a pipe before
finally tearing open the seals.
There were many typewritten sheets, commencing in letter form:
54 Westervelt Ave.,
Eastport, New York,
February 15th.
Dear Cousin George:
Now that you have identified me by referring to my signature on
the last page (which I had just done) you will no doubt wonder at the
occasion for this rather effusive letter from one so long silent as I
have been. The fact of the matter is that you are the only male
relative with whom I can communicate at this time. My nephew,
Ralph, is first officer of a freighter somewhere in the Caribbean, and
Alfred Hutton, your mother’s first cousin, has not been heard from
since he embarked on that colonizing scheme in New Guinea, nearly
a year ago.
I must do all in my power to prevent the bungling metropolitan
police from implicating Howard Marsden in my disappearance. It
would take no great stretch of the imagination to do just that, and
were the State to require Marsden’s life as forfeit for my own, then
my carefully planned revenge would be utterly frustrated. I have
been cultivating the village postmaster for some weeks, ever since
this plan began to shape definitely in my mind. I am mailing this letter
at three o’clock this afternoon, for I have noticed that at that hour the
postal section of the store is generally deserted. I shall ask him if his
clock is correct, thus fixing the time in his mind. Please remember
these points. Then I shall register this letter, taking care to exhibit the
unusual collection of seals on the back. I shall manage to inform him
also that I stamped the seals with my ring and will show him the
coat-of-arms, explaining its meaning in detail. These villagers are a
curiosity-ridden lot. Upon returning home, I shall drop this same ring
into the inkwell which stands upon my desk. Finally I shall proffer my
friend the postmaster a fifty-dollar bill in paying for my registry. The
registry slip itself will be found within the hatband of my brown hat,
which I shall place in the wall safe of my study.
You are becoming more amazed as you proceed, no doubt asking
yourself if this letter is the product of a madman or a faker. Before
you have finished you will probably be assured that both
assumptions are correct. It matters little, for I will at least have firmly
established the fact that this letter was mailed by no one else but
me. As for the rest, Howard Marsden will corroborate what follows.
To begin at the beginning. As you know, or perhaps you do not
know, for I forget that our correspondence has been negligible of
late, five years ago I accompanied the Rodgers expedition into
Afghanistan. We were officially booked as a geological mission, but
were actually in search of radium, among other things. When I left, I
was practically engaged to Venice Potter, a distant relation of the
Long Island Potters, of whom you have perhaps heard. I say
“practically” engaged because the outcome of this expedition was to
furnish me with the standing and position necessary for a formal
demand for her hand. As I said, that was nearly five years ago.
Four months after my departure her letters ceased coming and
mine were returned to me unopened. Two months later I received an
announcement of her betrothal to Howard Marsden. Received it out
there in Afghanistan, when I had returned to the coast for supplies.
We’ll skip that next year, during which I stuck with the expedition. We
were successful. I returned.
Then I found out where the Marsdens were living, here in
Eastport. I’d met Marsden once or twice in the old days, but paid him
little attention at the time. He seemed but another of the moneyed
idlers; had a comfortable income from his father’s estate and was
interested in “gentleman farming,”—blooded stock and the rest. I
decided that it was useless to dig into dead ashes for the time being,
at least until I could determine the lay of the land, so to speak.
Meanwhile I had my researches to make, a theory I had evolved as a
sort of backfire to fill that awful void of Venice’s loss,—out there on
the edge of the world. Countless sleepless nights I had spent in a
feverish attempt to lose myself in scientific speculation. At last I
believed I had struck a clue to conclusions until now entirely
overlooked by eager searchers. I decided to establish my laboratory
here in Eastport, perhaps devoting any leisure hours to an
unravelling of that mystery of my sudden jilting. With a two-year-old
beard and sunbaked complexion there were few who would have
recognized me under my real name, and none in my assumed role of
“Professor Walters.”
Thus it was that I leased an old house not half a mile from Marsden’s
pretentious “farm.” I converted the entire ground floor into a
laboratory, living in solitary state upon the upper floor. I was used to
caring for myself, and the nature of my experiment being of such
potentialities, I felt that I wanted no prying servants about me.
Indeed, it has turned out to be of such international importance that I
feel no compunction whatever in utilizing it for my own selfish ends.
It could be a boon to humanity, yet its possibilities for evil in the
hands of any individual or group is so great as to render it most
dangerous to the happiness of the human kind on this small globe.
One day, some three months after I had taken up my residence in
Eastport, I had a visitor. It was Marsden. He had been attracted by
the sight of my novel aerial, just completed. By his own admission he
was an ardent “radio fan,” as they are popularly termed, I believe,
and he spent the better part of an afternoon bragging of stations he
had “logged” with his latest model radio set. Aside from my vague
suspicions of his complicity in the alienation of my beloved Venice, I
must admit that even then I felt an indefinable repulsion towards him.
There was something intangibly unwholesome about him, a
narrowness between the eyes which repelled me. Yet, although at
that time I had no plan in mind, nevertheless I encouraged him in my
most hospitable manner, for even thus early I felt, that at some time
not far distant, I might be called upon to utilize this acquaintanceship
to my own advantage.
This first visit was followed by others, and we discussed radio in
all its phases, for the man had more than a smattering of technical
knowledge on the subject and was eager to learn more. At last, one
day, I yielded to his insistence that I inspect his set and agreed to
dine at his house the following evening. By now I felt secure in my
disguise, and although I dreaded the moment when I should actually
confront my lost love once more, yet I longed for the sweet pain of it
with an intensity which a hard-shelled bachelor like you will never
understand. Enough. I arrived at the Marsden’s the next evening and
was duly presented to my hostess as “Thomas Walters.” In spite of
my private rehearsals I felt a wave of giddiness sweep over me as I
clasped that small white hand in my own after the lapse of almost
five years, for she was, if possible, lovelier than ever. I noted when
my vision cleared that her eyes had widened as they met mine. I
realized that my perturbation had been more apparent than I
imagined and managed to mutter something about my alleged “weak
heart,” a grimmer jest by far than I intended. Frantically I fortified
myself with remembrances of those barren days in Afghanistan,
where I stayed on and on, impotent to raise a hand in the salvage of
my heart’s wreckage.
We chatted politely all through that interminable meal, no morsel
of which aroused the faintest appreciation on my dry tongue. Finally
the chairs were pushed back and my host excused himself to bring
down some pieces of apparatus he had recently purchased,
concerning which he professed to desire my invaluable opinion.
No sooner had he left the room than the polite smile dropped from
Venice’s face like a discarded mask.
“Dick,” she cried, “what are you doing here?”
It was my first inkling that she suspected my true identity. I rallied
quickly, however, and allowed my self-encouraged bitterness its
outlet.
“Had I believed you would recognize me, Mrs. Marsden, I should
not have inflicted my unwelcome presence upon you, I can assure
you.”
She bit her lips and her head raised with a jerk. Then her mouth
softened again as her great eyes searched mine.
“Yes, but why—” she broke off at the sound of approaching
footsteps. Suddenly she leaned forward. “Meet me in the pine grove
to-morrow afternoon—four o’clock,” she breathed. Then her husband
entered.
The remainder of the evening I was forced to listen to Marsden’s
eager dissertation on the alleged “static eliminator” which had been
foisted upon him on his last trip to the city. Mechanically I answered
or grunted in simulated appreciation when a pause in his endless
monologue warned me that some reply was expected of me; but my
pulses were leaping in exultation because of the fleeting hope which
those few words from my lost Venice had kindled. I could not
imagine why the offer to bridge the breach of years should come
from her so voluntarily, yet it was enough for me that she
remembered and wished to see me. I cared not why.
I arrived nearly an hour early that next afternoon, for I had been
unable either to sleep or work during the interim. I shall not bore you
with the particulars of that meeting, even were I free to reveal such
sacred details. Suffice to say that after the preliminaries of doubt and
misunderstanding had been brushed away—and it was not the
simple process this synopsis would seem to infer, I can assure you—
I stood revealed as the victim of a most ingenious and thoroughly
knavish plot. Boiled down, it resembles one of those early movie
scenarios.
You remember I spoke of Venice as related to the Long Island
Potters, a branch of the family highly rated in the Social Register?
You will also remember that before I undertook that expedition I was
never particularly certain whence my next year’s expenses were to
be derived, nor to what extent, if you understand what I mean. At
about the time I was preparing for this expedition which I hoped
would make me financially and scientifically independent, this
wealthy branch of the family seriously “took up” my darling Venice,
inviting her to live with them that summer. I remember now all too
late, that even during that confusion of mind caused by the agony of
leaving my loved one, coupled with the feverish preparations for
departure, chill clouds of censure came from the aloof Potters. They
made no effort to mask their disapproval of my humble self and
prospects, yet in my blindness I had never connected them
intimately with what followed.
It was, in short, the old story of the ingenious man-on-the-ground,
the “good match,” aided and abetted by the patronesses of the “poor
relation.” The discriminating Marsden naturally fell in love with
Venice, and to his great surprise and chagrin, was decisively
repulsed by her. Never before having been refused anything he
really wanted in his comfortably arranged life, he became
passionately desirous of possessing her. Accordingly, my darling
was shown a letter, forged with such diabolical cleverness as to be
almost indistinguishable from my own hand. It purported to intrigue
me with a very ordinary female at a period coincident with the time I
had been so fervently courting my dear one.
She refused to credit the document and dispatched me a
voluminous explanation of the whole occurrence. Attributing my
silence to the exigencies of distance, she continued to write me for
over a month. When no answer arrived after nearly three long
months, she at length delivered a hastily planned ultimatum, to which
she was later persuaded to adhere through the combined pressure
of Marsden and her family, beating against the razed defences of her
broken heart. Then it was that I received the betrothal
announcement, the only communication her watchful family had
permitted to escape their net of espionage.
As the story unfolded, my heart pounded with alternate waves of

exaltation and red rage at the treacherous Marsden. Because of
selfish duplicity, he had robbed us both of five years’ happiness, for I
had forced my darling’s admission that she had never loved him, and
now despised him as a common thief. My brief moment of delirious
joy was sharply curtailed, however, when I came to press her to
separate from this selfish swine. After some demur she confided that
he was a drug addict. She said that he had been fighting desperately
to break this habit ever since their marriage, for his jealous love of
her was the only remaining weapon with which to combat his deep
rooted vice. Deprived of his one motive, my darling earnestly
assured me that it would be a matter of but a few short years before
the white powders wrote Finis to yet another life. I could see but a
balancing of an already overdrawn account in such an event, and
said so in no uncertain terms. She did not chide me, merely patiently
explained with sweet, sad resignation that she held herself
responsible for his very life for the present. That although she could
not love and honor him as she had promised, yet she was bound to
cleave to him during this, his “worse” hour. And so we left it for the
time, our future clouded, yet with no locked door to bar the present
from us.
We met almost daily, unless Marsden’s activities interfered. At
those times I was like a raging beast, unable to work, consumed with
a livid hatred for the cunning thief who had stolen my love while my
back was turned. I could not shake her resolution to terminate this
loveless match, even though she now loathed the mate she had
once tolerated. But in spite of the formlessness of our future, my
work progressed as never before. Now my days were more than a
mere procession of dates, for each was crowned with the glow of
those few stolen moments with my darling Venice.
Came the day of my first complete success. Some weeks
previously I had finally succeeded in transmitting a small wooden ball
by radio. Perhaps I should say that I had “dissolved” it into its
vibrations, for it was not until this later day that I had been able to
materialize or “receive” it after it had been “sent.” I see you start and
re-read this last sentence. I mean just what I say, and Marsden will
bear me out, for as you shall see, he has witnessed this and other
such experiments here in my laboratory. I have explained to him as
much as I wanted him to know of the process, in fact, just enough so
that he believes that a little intensive research and experimentation
on his part will make him master of my secret. But he is entirely
ignorant of the most important element, as well as of the manner of
its employment.
Yes, after years of study and interrupted experimental research I
was enabled finally to disintegrate, without the aid of heat, a solid
object into its fundamental vibrations, transmit these vibrations into
the ether in the form of so-called “radio waves” which I then attracted
and condensed in my “receiving” apparatus, slowly damping their
short kinked vibration-rate until finally there was deposited the
homogeneous whole, identical in outline and displacement,—entirely
unharmed from its etheric transmigration!
My success in this, my life’s dream, was directly the result of our
discoveries on that bitter expedition into Afghanistan. All my life I had
been interested in the study of vibrations, but had achieved no
startling successes or keen expectations thereof until we stumbled
upon that strange mineral deposit on what was an otherwise ill-fated
trip for me. It was then that I realized that radioactive niton might
solve my hitherto insurmountable difficulty in the transmission of
material vibrations into electronic waves. My experiments thereafter,
while successful to the degree that I discovered several entirely new
principles of resonic harmonics, as well as an absolute refutation of
the quantum theory of radiation, fell far short of my hoped-for goal.
At that time I was including both helium and uranium in my improved
cathode projectors, and it was not until I had effected a more
sympathetic combination with thorium that I began to receive
encouraging results. My final success came with the substitution of
actinium for the uranium and the addition of polonium, plus a finer
adjustment which I was able to make in the vortices of my three
modified Tesla coils, whose limitations I had at first underrated. I was
then enabled to filter my resonance waves into pitch with my
“electronic radiate rays,” as I called them, with the success I shall
soon describe.
Of course, all this is no clearer than a page of Sanskrit to you, nor
do I intend that it shall be otherwise. As I have said, such a secret is
far too potent to be unloosed upon a world of such delicately poised
nations, whose jaws are still reddened from their recent ravening. It
needs no explanation of mine to envision the terrible possibilities for
evil in the application of this great discovery. It shall go with me—to
return at some future, more enlightened time after another equally
single-minded investigator shall have stumbled upon it. It is this latter
thought which has caused me to drop the hints that I have. My
earnest hope is that you will permit the misguided Marsden to read
the preceding paragraph. In it he will note a reference to an element
which I have not mentioned to him before, and will enable him to
obtain certain encouraging results,—encouraging but to further
efforts, to more frantic attempts. But I digress.
With my success on inanimate objects, I plunged the more
enthusiastically into my work. I should have lost all track of time but
for my daily tryst with Venice. Her belief in me was the tonic which
spurred me on to further efforts after each series of meticulously
conducted experiments had crumbled into failure. It was the
knowledge that she awaited me which alone upheld me in those dark
moments of depression, which every searcher into the realms of the
unknown must encounter.
Then came the night of November 28th, the Great Night. After
countless failures, I finally succeeded in transmitting a live guinea pig
through the atmosphere and “received” it, alive and well, in the
corner of my laboratory. Think of it! A twist of a switch and the living,
breathing piglet slowly dissolved before my eyes and vanished along
a pair of wires to my aerial, whence it was transferred as a set of
waves in the ether to the receiving apparatus,—there to reincarnate
into the living organism once more, alive and breathing, unharmed
by its extraordinary journey! That night I strode out into the open and
walked until dawn suddenly impressed the gray world upon my
oblivious exaltation, for I was King of the Universe, a Weaver of
Miracles.
Then it was that my great plan began to take shape. With
renewed energy I began the construction of a mammoth transmitter.
At intervals I “transmitted” stray cats and dogs of every description,
filling several books with notes wherein I recorded minutely the
varying conditions of my subjects before transmission. Invariably
their condition upon being “cohered” in the receiving tube, was
excellent. In some cases, indeed, minor ailments had entirely
disappeared during their short passage through the ether. What a
study for the medical profession!
I had, of course, told Venice the object of my researches long ago,
but had never brought her to my laboratory for reasons of discretion.
One afternoon, however, I slipped her in under cover of the heavy
downpour. After I had warmed her with a cup of tea, before her
astonished eyes I transmitted an old she-cat which was afflicted with
some sort of rheumatism or paralysis of its hind legs. When its form
began to reappear in the transparent receiving tube, my darling
gasped in awed wonder. She was rendered utterly speechless,
however, when I switched off the current and released the animal
from its crystal prison. And no wonder, for it gambolled about like a
young kitten, all trace of its former malady having entirely
disappeared! The impression upon Venice was all that I had hoped
for, and when I at length escorted her out into the dusk, I felt her
quick, awed glances flickering over me like the reverence of a shy
neophyte for the high priest.
All was set for the final act. I literally hurled myself into the
completion of my improved set. The large quantities of certain
minerals required caused me an unexpected delay. This I filled with
demonstrations in the presence of Marsden, whom I was
encouraging as a fellow radio enthusiast,—with considerable
unexpected histrionic ability on my part. It was so hard to keep my
fingers off his throat! I pretended to explain to him the important
factors of my great secret, and drilled him in the mechanical
operation of the sets. I had divulged to him also that my greatest
desire was to demonstrate my principle on a human being, and like
all great scientific explorers, proposed to offer myself as the subject.
Venice had strenuously opposed the proposal until the
demonstration on the diseased cat, and even now viewed the entire
proposition with alarm. Yet I insisted that unless applied to human
beings my entire work went for naught, and I finally succeeded in
quieting her fears to a great extent.
At last I am ready. I have told my darling how it is impossible to
transmit anything metallic by the very nature of the conflicting rays
encountered. I have bemoaned the fact that, due to the softness of
my teeth since boyhood, my mouth is one mass of metallic fillings
and crowns, rendering it impossible for me to test the efficiency of
my life’s work. As I had hoped, she has volunteered herself as the
subject for the great experiment, for her white teeth are as yet
innocent of fillings. I have demurred and refused to listen to the idea,
permitting myself to be won over only after days of earnest argument
on her part. We are not to tell Marsden, for there is no doubt that his
fanatical love for her would refuse to tolerate the mere suggestion.
Tonight it shall be accomplished. There is no other way, for that
accursed husband of hers seems to progress in neither direction. He
will be nothing but a mud-buried anchor until the end of her days,
while I—I love her. What other excuse need be offered?
But to the facts. At eight o’clock that drug-soaked love pirate
comes to officiate at my transmission through space. I shall meet
him with a chloroformed soaked rag. Later he will awake to find
himself effectively gagged, with his hands and feet firmly shackled to
the wall of a dark corner of my laboratory. These shackles consist of
armatures across the poles of large electro-magnets which I have
embedded in the walls. At 10:30, a time switch will cut off the
current, releasing the wretch, for, above all things, he must live. I
debated sending a message for his chauffeur to call for him here at
the designated hour. I have decided rather to trust to mechanical
certitude than lay my plan open to frustration because of some
human vagary.
At nine o’clock Venice comes for the great experiment. Marsden
has told her that he will remain in the city over night, at my
suggestion, so that in case I fail to materialize after being “sent” he
cannot be held in connection with my disappearance. She does not
know that I have had my teeth extracted and have been using India
rubber plates for nearly a month. By the time she has arrived, the
effects of the chloroform will have entirely worn off from my would-be
assistant, and I shall have had plenty of time to introduce myself
properly to him and explain the evening’s program which has been
so carefully arranged for his benefit.
Then he will have the excruciating pleasure of watching his
beloved wife dissolve into—nothingness! Soon thereafter he will
witness the same process repeated upon myself, for I have so
adapted the apparatus that I need no outside assistance other than a
time-clock to actuate the mechanism! Then, at the appointed hour,
the current will be shut off and the frenzied wretch will rush to the
distant switch controlling the receiving apparatus. As he throws the
metal bars into their split receptacles there will come a blinding flash,
and behold—the apparatus will have disappeared in a puff of
crystalline particles! The secret has returned whence it came!
Then will come that personally prepared hell for my mean spirited
forger. As I told you, he believes that he is in possession of enough
of the details of my secret to reconstruct the apparatus and duplicate
my success. The added details of this letter will assure him into an
idiotic confidence which will lead him on and on through partially
successful attempts. I know that no matter whether you sympathize
with my actions or not (and I am sure that you do not, for you never
have), your sense of justice will force you to show this letter to the
proper authorities in order to prevent a fatal bungling.
Meanwhile that miserable sneak will be frenzied with the
knowledge that at last, the lover he so long cheated of his loved one
is now with her, alone,—where he, her lawful husband, can never
follow. And we shall be together, unchanged, awaiting the day when
some other enlightened mortal solves Nature’s riddle, when we shall
once more assume our earthly forms, unhindered by other selfish
manbeasts.
Farewell,
Bromley Cranston.
Needless to say, I hurried to Eastport. But my trip was unnecessary. I

found Harold Marsden in a “private sanitarium” for the hopelessly
insane. There all day, and as far into the night as the opiates would
permit him, he is to be found seated before a radio set, the
earphones clamped to his head—listening. His statements,
methodically filed away by the head of the place, corresponded
wildly with the prophecies of my strange letter. Now he was listening
to fragmentary messages from those two he had seen precipitated
into space, he maintained. Listening.
And they had disappeared, utterly. I found the large seal ring in
the inkwell on the desk. Also the slip in the hatband of the hat which
had been placed in the wall safe, unlocked. The postmaster
remembered the seals on the letter my cousin had mailed, and the
approximate time he had received it. I felt my own reason wavering.
That is why, fantastic as is the whole affair, I cannot yet bear the
sound of one of those radio loud speakers. It is when that inarticulate
sound they call “static” occurs, when fragments of words and
sentences seem to be painfully attempting to pierce a hostile
medium,—that I picture that hunched up figure with its spidery
earphones,—listening. Listening. For what?
The End
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the July 1927 issue of

Amazing Stories Magazine.
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The "Third" United Nations: How a

Knowledge Ecology Helps the UN Think

The “Third” United Nations

The “Third” United

About the Authors

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

x   

List of Figures, Tables, and Box

A4P Action for Peacekeeping

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DPET Department of Policy, Education, and Training

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HLP High-level Panel

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LGBTQ lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer

   xix

SIPRI Swedish International Peace Research Institute

WFM-IGP World Federalist Movement’s Institute for Global Policy

Think tanks, knowledge brokers, and epistemic communities are phenomena

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

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-

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

• They change the way that issues are perceived.

Global Governance Reﬂects the Reality of the Third UN

decade, it became entwined with another meta-phenomenon of the last dec-

About This Book

It is worthwhile opening a parenthesis about case selection. While we

This chapter begins with a discussion of the complexity and interdependence

Complexity, Continuity, Change, and Confusion

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

Understanding the nature of knowledge production and dissemination

Emphases and Dynamics of the Third UN

ever-changing nature of the non-state actors and intellectual partnerships that

engage with the United Nations at a variety of levels, at a variety of times, on a

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

Figure 1.1 Interactions among the Three United Nations

Why Ideas Matter

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

connection. Those working on HIV/AIDS, climate change, or peacebuilding

is common bill-of-fare for historians, philosophers, students of literature, and

Hence, we do not attempt to follow A. O. Lovejoy, who sought to trace an idea

Members of the Third UN often launch or doggedly pursue notions about

Counting INGOs and TNCs, and Why the Numbers Matter

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

The Yearbook of International Organizations provides the time-series data

Title: Radio mates

Author: Benjamin Witwer

Illustrator: Frank R. Paul

Release date: December 11, 2023 [eBook #72380]

Original publication: New York: E. P. Co., Inc, 1927

Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RADIO

It was a large brown envelope, of the size commonly used for

As the story unfolded, my heart pounded with alternate waves of

Needless to say, I hurried to Eastport. But my trip was unnecessary. I

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the July 1927 issue of

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.

START: FULL LICENSE

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