The paper argues that the end of the Cold War marked a turning point in the evolution of UN thinking. The first part of the paper puts forward a conceptual framework centred on the notions of global governance, ideology, and global public policy. It shows that these three notions are useful tools for an understanding of UN ideas. This conceptual framework is used in the second part to analyze the three issues that have dominated the UN agenda throughout the post-Cold War period: security, development, and human rights. The third part then explains how this agenda has recently been extended to include a new issue: global democracy. The article demonstrates that even though the UN is perpetually constrained by states, it does exercise a distinctive form of intellectual leadership in global affairs.
