Description: Olav Stokke traces this fascinating story and demonstrates the UN's essential role and its future challenges in aiding the least developed countries and the globe's billion poorest inhabitants.
Review Quotes:
"Stokke (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs) has written the 11th volume in the United Nations Intellectual History Project. Taking a largely narrative and chronological approach to a vast and complex subject, the author ultimately concludes that the UN's most important contribution to development 'has been to generate and successfully promote globally a holistic development concept, almost consistently keeping the social and human dimensions of development at the core.' He argues that this focus is correct, and that in this respect the UN has been right more often than some other development agencies such as the World Bank's International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He makes sound points along the way, noting that UN programs have always been lightly funded and operate in a decentralized or horizontally organized system, with much diversity of thought and many political disagreements. There are 62 pages of appendixes filled with data and 114 pages of reference notes. [The author] . . . provides a sound reference work. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate and research collections. --Choice"--D. P. Forsythe, University of Nebraska, Feb. 2010
"...a sound reference work...Recommended. --ChoiceFeb. 2010"--D. P. Forsythe, University of Nebraska
"A fascinating and deeply researched study. . . . Olav Stokke has done a remarkable job of weaving together this complex story."--From the foreword by Louis Emmerij, Richard Jolly, and Thomas G. Weiss