The recent creation of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), an organization of local authorities of universal scope, is the culmination of the emerging process of a new political actor on the international scene. The article describes and analyses some aspects of the interaction between this global political actor-in-the-making and the United Nations (UN) system. The theoretical question it addresses is how the new global actor has — even if partially — achieved its objectives, given its limited power resources […]