Whither United Nations Economic and Social Ideas?

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
This article sets out a working framework to analyze the contribution of the United Nations (UN) to global economic and social policy, and to development discourse and practice, at the start of a multi-year research effort. It seeks to better understand the sources, evolution, and impact of key UN development ideas, and the role of the UN as an intellectual actor in the multilateral marketplace of ideas. The first part of the article outlines how recent literature about ideas has informed our work. The second part explores methodological debates with especial attention to the shortcomings of ideational approaches, addressing conceptual difficulties in dealing with ideas, and offering some thoughts both about what these debates may add to our understanding as well as ways that a contribution to scholarly debates will result. The third part poses key research questions and outlines how we propose analyzing the relationship between ideas and policy.

This publication has 24 references indexed in Scilit: