Please write between 200 and 250 words on both of the following: (1) Explain two differences between the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court; (2) In your answer refer t
The “Third” United Nations_ How a Knowledge Ecology Helps the UN Think _ Ethics & International Affairs
“First United Nations,” in Carayannis and Weiss’s vocabulary, privileges the perspectives of
governments and potentially excludes transnational interest groups. The “Second United Nations”
consists of the employees of the United Nations itself, the international civil service, who must
generally answer to the national governments. The “Third United Nations,” in the book’s
conceptual framework, consists of the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), experts,
individuals, and academics who operate outside of any official government capacity—in other
words, civil society. Those in civil society are uniquely positioned to articulate the political
interests of communities with shared values who do not necessarily share a defined territory,
including environmentalists and human rights advocates; indigenous groups; racial, ethnic, and
religious communities outside of formal governmental power; labor groups; and businesses, to
name just a few. Such value-based communities of political interest, which transcend national
boundaries, must be heard for the United Nations to successfully generate the conversations we
need to address global problems with global solutions.
The “Third” United Nations offers an analytical framework to understand and perhaps ultimately
improve the ways that civil society discourse contributes to UN-led discourses and policymaking
processes. The book gives numerous examples of historical contributions from civil society and
helps develop a vocabulary for discussing them. A close examination of the book suggests why
the Third United Nations is such an important part of the decisionmaking ecosystem of the United
Nations. The book sums up the Third UN’s role using a metaphor: civil society helps the United
Nations system to think. This is correct, but from the perspective of a discursive approach to
democratic theory, the role of the Third UN is even deeper. The Third UN, as part of the global
public sphere, helps to develop and identify policy options for states and other actors in the
global system. The nature of their deliberations helps to ensure that both the ends and the means
are rationally justifiable. This impact is deepened as a wider range of diverse perspectives are
included in the conversations surrounding UN policymaking. The book highlights a number of
examples of ways that ideas and research developed in civil society have gradually transformed
norms advanced by states and others about what is politically desirable and practical. Examples
include human rights discourses leading to the adoption of global accountability for war crimes,
changes in how economic development is situated relative to environmental concerns, and
changes in sovereignty norms to permit international action to deal with serious humanitarian
atrocities. Every case of norm change led by civil society is unique, but practitioners in civil
society organizations should read this book to get insights into how to make their contributions to
UN and other intergovernmental policymaking more deliberate.
Some might ask: Why should unelected NGO members, interest groups, and even universities be
taken seriously as designers of the global rules and norms under which we all live? After all, these
actors are not necessarily representative of official governments, which have the primary
responsibility for maintaining security, justice, and opportunity for their societies. But this is
precisely their value, as The “Third” United Nations shows. International nongovernmental
organizations (INGOs) have contributed to policy changes on a variety of UN issues, including the
role of women in security, the global ban on the deployment of land mines, the establishment and
operation of the International Criminal Court, and the development of the Sustainable
Development Goals (pp. 41–62). Another objection, this one specific to the role of INGOs in
policymaking, points out that such activists are often from the advanced industrial world, and
thus may amplify privileged voices at the expense of more marginalized communities. Yet in my
own research, I have seen the opposite occur, where war crimes victims from some of the poorest
parts of the world find that their voices reach larger audiences as part of civil society alliances
with INGOs based in the Global North, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Nevertheless, it is incumbent on privileged actors within this Third UN to be deliberately inclusive
of voices and perspectives of more marginalized peoples. Civil society has at least as much hope
of doing that as some of the elite-run governments that are formal members of the United
Nations. The final chapters of The “Third” United Nations provide a high-level view of how some
previously excluded voices at the UN have gradually become more influential in policy
conversations centered around the United Nations in recent decades, including those of Brazilian
civil society, China, and transnational business interests (pp. 120–50).
In addition to analyzing the role of civil society, Carayannis and Weiss discuss the role of great
leaders in advancing new ideas about global problems and potential solutions as part of civil
society (pp. 63–67). They note that such prominent individuals often serve on high-level panels
and commissions after they have left formal employment, either as representatives or ministers of
states, or as officials in the UN Secretariat. They write that “liberated from official positions and
accompanying constraints, prominent individuals who represent a spectrum of opinion and
nationalities can aim to raise the visibility of a particular global challenge and alternative solutions
by hammering out a new consensus” (p. 64).
It is true that prominent individuals can speak more freely, and even advance innovations that are
likely to provide workable solutions to global problems, once they are repositioned in the “Third
UN,” outside of official governmental or intergovernmental positions. This book starts to unpack
why that is the case. For a number of structural reasons, the active leaders of states, their foreign
ministries, and other civil servants tend to have a strong status quo bias, and they are pressured
to pursue their nation’s interests. This focus on national interests can encourage a zero-sum
perspective on global issues and resources. A focus on a state’s relative power can also lead its
representatives to focus on the distributional consequences of particular policy choices, rather
than the overall return on investment in those policies at a global level. Moreover, while they are in
power, leaders often perceive taking new dramatic action as being riskier than staying with the
status quo, even though status quo approaches may have higher costs in the long run.
The situation for international civil servants who make up “the Second UN” is little better. The
secretary-general is appointed only with the consensus of the five permanent members of the
Security Council, and so only candidates who are deferential to the national interests of those five
states are ever considered or reappointed. Moreover, the United Nations relies on member states
to provide resources and authorization for its activities, so it can never stray very far from the
consensus views of its most powerful members. For these reasons, it is not surprising that office
holders of the First and Second United Nations can only make particularly innovative
contributions to the discourse of ideas once they are out of office. At this point, they are likely to
understand what is really needed to advance shared global interests because they have served in
the United Nations. Additionally, they are likely to have a clear understanding of what might be
politically possible because they are familiar with member states’ vital interests and bottom lines.
The “Third” United Nations demonstrates that global civil society can indeed help the United
Nations to think. The world needs global civil society to better conceptualize global problems and
help advance solutions that take into account a wider set of interests and perspectives. In the end,
the ideas that endure will be the ones that best help the world confront its global challenges.
—Michael J. Struett
Michael J. Struett is associate professor of political science and department chair in the School of
Public and International Affairs at North Carolina State University. He is the author of The Politics
of Constructing the International Criminal Court: NGOs, Discourse, and Agency (2008), and is
broadly interested in institutions and norms of global governance.
The United Nations is unique in its capacity to convene
global discourse, particularly conversations to address global
problems that humanity must face together. If the United
Nations is to “save succeeding generations from the scourge
of war, pandemics, and climate change” (p. 13), as Tatiana
Carayannis and Thomas G. Weiss put it in The “Third” United
Nations, those conversations must succeed at identifying
viable global solutions, and solutions that reflect reasonable
consideration of perspectives of people all over the earth. Of
course, by design, the United Nations represents the
governments but not necessarily the people of its 190-odd
member states. As such, any discourse organized by this
“First United Nations,” in Carayannis and Weiss’s vocabulary, privileges the perspectives of
governments and potentially excludes transnational interest groups. The “Second United Nations”
consists of the employees of the United Nations itself, the international civil service, who must
generally answer to the national governments. The “Third United Nations,” in the book’s
conceptual framework, consists of the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), experts,
individuals, and academics who operate outside of any official government capacity—in other
words, civil society. Those in civil society are uniquely positioned to articulate the political
interests of communities with shared values who do not necessarily share a defined territory,
including environmentalists and human rights advocates; indigenous groups; racial, ethnic, and
religious communities outside of formal governmental power; labor groups; and businesses, to
name just a few. Such value-based communities of political interest, which transcend national
boundaries, must be heard for the United Nations to successfully generate the conversations we
need to address global problems with global solutions.
The “Third” United Nations offers an analytical framework to understand and perhaps ultimately
improve the ways that civil society discourse contributes to UN-led discourses and policymaking
processes. The book gives numerous examples of historical contributions from civil society and
helps develop a vocabulary for discussing them. A close examination of the book suggests why
the Third United Nations is such an important part of the decisionmaking ecosystem of the United
Nations. The book sums up the Third UN’s role using a metaphor: civil society helps the United
Nations system to think. This is correct, but from the perspective of a discursive approach to
democratic theory, the role of the Third UN is even deeper. The Third UN, as part of the global
public sphere, helps to develop and identify policy options for states and other actors in the
global system. The nature of their deliberations helps to ensure that both the ends and the means
are rationally justifiable. This impact is deepened as a wider range of diverse perspectives are
included in the conversations surrounding UN policymaking. The book highlights a number of
examples of ways that ideas and research developed in civil society have gradually transformed
norms advanced by states and others about what is politically desirable and practical. Examples
include human rights discourses leading to the adoption of global accountability for war crimes,
changes in how economic development is situated relative to environmental concerns, and
changes in sovereignty norms to permit international action to deal with serious humanitarian
atrocities. Every case of norm change led by civil society is unique, but practitioners in civil
society organizations should read this book to get insights into how to make their contributions to
UN and other intergovernmental policymaking more deliberate.
Some might ask: Why should unelected NGO members, interest groups, and even universities be
taken seriously as designers of the global rules and norms under which we all live? After all, these
actors are not necessarily representative of official governments, which have the primary
responsibility for maintaining security, justice, and opportunity for their societies. But this is
precisely their value, as The “Third” United Nations shows. International nongovernmental
organizations (INGOs) have contributed to policy changes on a variety of UN issues, including the
role of women in security, the global ban on the deployment of land mines, the establishment and
operation of the International Criminal Court, and the development of the Sustainable
Development Goals (pp. 41–62). Another objection, this one specific to the role of INGOs in
policymaking, points out that such activists are often from the advanced industrial world, and
thus may amplify privileged voices at the expense of more marginalized communities. Yet in my
own research, I have seen the opposite occur, where war crimes victims from some of the poorest
parts of the world find that their voices reach larger audiences as part of civil society alliances
with INGOs based in the Global North, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Nevertheless, it is incumbent on privileged actors within this Third UN to be deliberately inclusive
of voices and perspectives of more marginalized peoples. Civil society has at least as much hope
of doing that as some of the elite-run governments that are formal members of the United
Nations. The final chapters of The “Third” United Nations provide a high-level view of how some
previously excluded voices at the UN have gradually become more influential in policy
conversations centered around the United Nations in recent decades, including those of Brazilian
civil society, China, and transnational business interests (pp. 120–50).
In addition to analyzing the role of civil society, Carayannis and Weiss discuss the role of great
leaders in advancing new ideas about global problems and potential solutions as part of civil
society (pp. 63–67). They note that such prominent individuals often serve on high-level panels
and commissions after they have left formal employment, either as representatives or ministers of
states, or as officials in the UN Secretariat. They write that “liberated from official positions and
accompanying constraints, prominent individuals who represent a spectrum of opinion and
nationalities can aim to raise the visibility of a particular global challenge and alternative solutions
by hammering out a new consensus” (p. 64).
It is true that prominent individuals can speak more freely, and even advance innovations that are
likely to provide workable solutions to global problems, once they are repositioned in the “Third
UN,” outside of official governmental or intergovernmental positions. This book starts to unpack
why that is the case. For a number of structural reasons, the active leaders of states, their foreign
ministries, and other civil servants tend to have a strong status quo bias, and they are pressured
to pursue their nation’s interests. This focus on national interests can encourage a zero-sum
perspective on global issues and resources. A focus on a state’s relative power can also lead its
representatives to focus on the distributional consequences of particular policy choices, rather
than the overall return on investment in those policies at a global level. Moreover, while they are in
power, leaders often perceive taking new dramatic action as being riskier than staying with the
status quo, even though status quo approaches may have higher costs in the long run.
The situation for international civil servants who make up “the Second UN” is little better. The
secretary-general is appointed only with the consensus of the five permanent members of the
Security Council, and so only candidates who are deferential to the national interests of those five
states are ever considered or reappointed. Moreover, the United Nations relies on member states
to provide resources and authorization for its activities, so it can never stray very far from the
consensus views of its most powerful members. For these reasons, it is not surprising that office
holders of the First and Second United Nations can only make particularly innovative
contributions to the discourse of ideas once they are out of office. At this point, they are likely to
understand what is really needed to advance shared global interests because they have served in
the United Nations. Additionally, they are likely to have a clear understanding of what might be
politically possible because they are familiar with member states’ vital interests and bottom lines.
The “Third” United Nations demonstrates that global civil society can indeed help the United
Nations to think. The world needs global civil society to better conceptualize global problems and
help advance solutions that take into account a wider set of interests and perspectives. In the end,
the ideas that endure will be the ones that best help the world confront its global challenges.
—Michael J. Struett
Michael J. Struett is associate professor of political science and department chair in the School of
Public and International Affairs at North Carolina State University. He is the author of The Politics
of Constructing the International Criminal Court: NGOs, Discourse, and Agency (2008), and is
broadly interested in institutions and norms of global governance.
