After reviewing the four values authority might pursue - wealth, security, justice and freedom (an argument developed at more length in **States and Markets (1988)**, she uses these value choices to interrogate the three main paradigms used to think about the international political economy, liberalism, structuralism and nationalism. She then examines UN economic multilateralism utilising an eclectic combination of all three perspectives and concludes that as each approach continues to look to international organisation to sustain the values it emphasises, despite its failings economic multilateralism is likely to continue to be regarded as a worthwhile enterprise.