Ingvild Bode is a JSPS postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability at the United Nations University, Tokyo, Japan.

This book highlights how temporary international civil servants play a crucial role in initiating processes of legal and institutional change in the United Nations system. These individuals are the "missing" creative elements needed to fully understand the emergence and initial spread of UN ideas such as human development, sovereignty as responsibility, and multifunctional peacekeeping.

1. Introduction, 2. The agency of empowered individuals, 3. Accounting for the influence of empowered individuals in the United Nations system: The constitutive empowerment model, 4. Mahbub ul Haq and the idea of human development, 5. Francis Deng and the concern for internally displaced persons, 6. Marrack Goulding and the diversification of peacekeeping, 7. Conclusion