The UN's role in norms and global public goods

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International Organizations Management

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University of Geneva

International Organizations Management

73 ratings

This course provides an introduction to International Organizations and the United Nations, and explores how business and management tools can be applied in these settings to achieve better, more effective results. With a focus on cross-sector partnerships in a changing world, the course offers you insights into the inner workings of international organizations and the challenges they face today. It will introduce you to effective, state-of-the art management tools and principles to help you lead change in this world – taught by senior staff of international organizations themselves. This is an introductory course offered by the International Organizations MBA (IO-MBA) of the University of Geneva, an executive program for change-makers in international organizations, NGOs and social ventures.

From the lesson

Leadership in the UN System

Now that you have a better understanding of the UN system, its shifting context, challenges and opportunities, we move on to explore the concept and practice of leadership in the UN. In this module, we will outline a conceptual framework and key literature on UN leadership. We explore different styles of leadership and examples of the practice of leadership by successive Secretaries General. We analyze several instruments of leadership – leadership through the power of convening, setting goals, marshalling evidence, and what we refer to as visionary leadership. We conclude by examining prospects for future UN leadership and multilateralism in a changing world.

The UN's role in norms and global public goods7:36

Conclusions 4:33

Meet the Instructors

Gilbert Probst
Professor, Organization and Management
Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences
Sebastian Buckup
Visiting professor
International Organizations MBA
Bruce Jenks
Visiting professor
International Organizations MBA
Stephan Mergenthaler
Visiting professor
International Organizations MBA
Cassandra Quintanilla
Teaching and research assistant
International Organizations MBA
Lea Stadtler
Research Fellow
Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences
Claudia Gonzalez Romo
Visiting professor
International Organizations MBA
Julian Fleet
Visiting professor
International Organizations MBA
Tina Ambos
Academic Director of the International Organizations MBA
Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences

In the previous segment,

we held out the prospect of a more inclusive,

a more managed form of globalization.

In this last session,

what I'd like to do is make the case for a UN which fully

embraces two major challenges that we face and that we talk about today.

And that is the need to support the building of norms,

the creation of norms in the international order,

and recognizing the importance of global public goods.

Let me start, in the first place,

with the central importance to the UN of its normative activities.

Norms have always been important part of the UN's work.

So there is nothing in that sense particularly new about it.

But it's been given a new significance in many conferences,

from many leaders of governments,

from the UN itself.

And I think it's evident to many people that as we see a global order being

challenged in terms of the existing rules and norms and even values,

the need for the UN to assert itself and

to provide leadership in the norms area is absolutely critical.

But today there are a number of specific major gaps in the mainstreaming of

normative work in the UN which are providing

a major hindrance to exercising the kind of leadership that is actually required.

And I'll just cite two examples.

There is a major gap between

the normative work of the UN system and its operational work.

So much so that even organizationally the organization is

divided between the normative part and the operational part.

As we move forward,

if we're going to meet the challenges of globalization,

norms and operations have to come closer together.

We can't have a situation where,

for example, in the case of Ebola,

you have an outbreak which should have been covered by

a very extensive set of norms contained in

the World Health Organization health regulations and

the practice which is that governments don't have

the capacity to actually deal with that problem.

Those kinds of gaps between what people say everybody should adhere to and

what actually happens leads to a major disbelief,

a major lack of credibility in the value of norms themselves.

Another gap that I would point to is the financial gap.

There is, for example,

in the UN system it's actually very hard to get

a credible financial number of how much the UN spends on norms.

That's really not satisfactory given the importance of norms.

It's also very difficult to measure the impact of norms.

It's easy to measure delivering food or delivering medicines.

It's not so easy to explain what difference you're making.

So this very important part of the UN's work remains under represented.

The case for it doesn't come out as strongly as it needs to.

The other major area which I believe warrants much

firmer greater attention from the UN is in the era of global public goods.

And the way I like to define global public goods is

those emerging development challenges that require

a collective response in order for a solution to be found.

Professor Stiglitz once said that there are

three ways that you provide global public goods.

Either a great power absorbs the costs of providing it and everybody's happy with that.

Or you have to sit around a table and negotiate that,

or you don't care about providing global public goods and you basically let

everything go to hell because it would be a pretty dire situation that would develop.

Surely, the UN's vocation is to be a major actor in that second option.

The option of sitting around tables, negotiating,

allocation of responsibility on an issue where we know

that a large number of people have to participate if you're going to make any difference.

Climate change is the most well-known and the most obvious case.

So, it's really fundamental again,

if we're going to move forward a new narrative on

global public goods that we address some of the critical gaps that currently exist.

Unfortunately, the UN, many countries,

many middle income countries in particular,

are very suspicious that global public goods is a way to

reduce the amount going into official development assistance,

into public expenditures coming out of those budgets.

But actually, official development assistance is now such a smaller part of

the total flows going internationally

that the solution is not to try and hold onto the breadcrumbs,

but it's to become a major player in an emerging major resource flow which

is the flow that's going to relate to the provision of global public goods

such as the resources that are now going to be going into climate.

So in conclusion, the case for looking in particular at norms and

global public goods should become very evident.

We cannot understand, we cannot continue to understand multilateralism as a kind of

cheap option for meeting challenges where countries do not want to take responsibility.

It should be evident that when we look at global public goods and when we look at norms,

we can only do that work multilaterally.

It's almost by definition,

and therefore it's really critical that we find ways

to reinvent and remake the case for a strong and vibrant multilateralism.

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