International Governance and World Affairs Project to Begin

7/24/2006

The Center for Public Justice is pleased to announce that Dr. Steven Meyer, a professor of political science at National Defense University in Washington, D.C., will serve as a Visiting Scholar with the Center for Public Justice during the next 12 months. His research and writing project will focus on the challenges of governance in a world where most of the institutions familiar to us are undergoing rapid change.

Meyer is a long-time student of international affairs, with special expertise on NATO, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans. His years of public service and teaching have also taken him to many other parts of the world, including Asia, on a regular basis where he meets with top public officials on defense, the environment, and political affairs.

Meyer's sabbatical project will be conducted in cooperation with the Center's president James Skillen, who has been giving more and more attention to American foreign and defense policies. The two hope to define a more extended project that can continue beyond 2007 and draw in additional experts on various patterns of global change.

What is Meyer's plan for the year? "To date," he says, "the overwhelming majority of research and analysis of world affairs has focused on the economic and technological aspects of globalization. While this is extremely important, it is not sufficient. There has been very little investigation into patterns of governance in the world that is emerging. By governance I mean the system of rules exercised in a political system where power, authority, and legitimacy come together. For 500 years, governance has been built on the foundation of state sovereignty in which the right to govern is, in most cases, recognized as legitimate."

However, Meyer continues, "with the advent of technologically driven globalization, this pattern of governance and state sovereignty has begun to change--and in some places is changing quite rapidly. The state is not disappearing, but it now shares the international stage with other increasingly important forms of political organization. If this is the nature of the world that is emerging, we need to rethink the very nature of governance and political community."

Skillen is delighted that Meyer is choosing to work with the Center during his sabbatical. "The kind of questions Meyer is addressing are precisely those that concern us in our effort to develop policy recommendations about American foreign and defense policies," says Skillen. "Moreover, Steve and I are both participating in a project on America's role in the world being conducted this year by the Center for Christian Studies at Gordon College, led by Harold Heie, one of the Center's trustees. So it looks like we will be engaged in a process of creative synergy. I am hopeful that our combined efforts this year can open out to many more years of work in this field."