ABSTRACT
Multinational decisional organs were institutionalized in the UN system. All members would participate in a periodic, usually annual, meeting to determine priorities and give overall approval to policy recommendations. The UN version includes triumphs; dysfunction; explicit and implicit rules; ability to reproduce; protection of territory; and adaptive mutations. What follows sketches the emergence, process, activity and inherent difficulties of the so-called UN system. So complex has that become that full exploration requires many volumes. This chapter details the tangle of sustained activity that seeks to deal with global issues. If some momentum propelling the postwar institutional construction rested on the hopes of the four freedoms speech, other impulses came from experience. These had most relevance for the UN specialized agencies that were conceptualized in functionalist theory. The UN system agrees on some policies that governments are obliged to carry out. These are formulated as international legal conventions that governments accept as part of their national law.
