Ideas Matter: Voices from the United Nations.

This article is based on UN Voices: The Struggle for Development and Social Justice (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), a volume of oral history interviews with 73 individuals who were key to the evolution of UN development thinking. This article has two purposes: to provide a flavour of the UN story that those 73 voices tell in the book; and to discuss its central conclusions about the role of international organisations as intellectual actors. Oral history as method and product provides insights in solving a key puzzle in contemporary affairs -- how ideas eventually become part of international discourse, policy, and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]