PERSPECTIVE| FES NEW YORK ECOSOC IS Dead, Long Live ECOSOC THOMAS G. WEISS December 2010  Since its inception in 1946, the UN’s Economic and Social Council(ECOSOC) has witnessed an increase in membership and agenda items that has turned ECOSOC into the UN’s most unwieldy and least significant deliberative body.  Legions of piecemeal ECOSOC reform efforts have amounted to little, and this author makes the case for four changes that would dramatically alter the ways that ECOSOC, and more broadly the United Nations, conducts business.  ECOSOC should move beyond the North-South quagmire and toward issue-based and interest-based negotiations. Moreover, as the UN system has more and more moving parts and is completely decentralized, ECOSOC and the system would achieve more with less through centralization and consolidation.  ECOSOC should also pursue the UN’s comparative advantages and not be on the defensive. G-20 and other groups could help infuse ECOSOC and the UN more broadly with political dynamics that are representative of contemporary global power to the benefit of all. Lastly, ECOSOC should realize that policy ideas and research matter. The system that ECOSOC oversees should provide more intellectual leadership about the fundamentally changed nature of contemporary problems and their solutions.