ABSTRACT
The term “United Nations system” figures prominently in talk and reports about what the world organization does, plans, and operates. A quick search of official documents turned up some 140,000 recent uses of the phrase. That seems to imply a deliberately created, harmonious structure, based on unity of purpose, process, action, and result. In fact, those two words cover—aside from the United Nations—thirty-one formal international organizations of state participants. Their expenditures, including the UN itself, total more than $48 billion in 2015. Their staffs include tens of thousands from every land on earth. 1
