The forces of United Nations (U.N.) cooperation, a small group of activists, and a global supportive political climate converged and were successful in effecting major change in international public policy by bringing restorative justice language from the background of the ancillary sessions to the floor of the U.N. Congress and into written documents. This article examines how this occurred and how international policy is formed. It discusses and documents the transfer of local policy to the international arena using the U.N. forum and restorative justices as a case study. To answer these questions, the article is divided into four sections. The first section provides the context of the study by describing the background of the U.N., restorative justice, and the state of policy research. The second section sets the stage by describing the three forces that are simultaneously evolving: (1) the U.N. forum; (2) the non-governmental organization (NGO) activities; and (3) the individual member states’ activities. In the third section, the process of collective problem definition (Blumer 1971) is articulated as a framework to describe policy development using restorative justice in the U.N. as a case study. The fourth and final section discusses the findings of the case study as a policy process and in the context of how future researchers may implement the process through presenting a traditional research development framework and discussing the intersection and independence of research and policy framework. References