Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance (NCGG)

The Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance is part of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. It began operation in Fall 2004, and is directed by Helen V. Milner. Carles Boix, Gene M. Grossman, Harold James, Stephen Kotkin, Andrew Moravcsik, Layna Mosley, Elizabeth Levy Paluck, Grigore Pop-Eleches, and James R. Vreeland make up its executive committee.

Our mission is three-fold. First, we seek to create a large and dynamic community of scholars and students interested in both the academic and policy dimensions of globalization and international governance. To accomplish this, the Center directs two visiting fellows program in which the most promising, talented scholars working on globalization and governance issues will spend a year at Princeton. The Center strives to create an intellectual community that serves the main goals of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs: to tackle the most serious issues of the present day and prepare the leaders who will shape the public policies of the future.

A second element is to foster greater integration among various parts of the social sciences at Princeton University. Research on globalization by necessity involves economics, history, and sociology as well as political science. The Center promotes interdisciplinary research at Princeton; numerous faculty from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, Politics, Economics, History and Sociology are associated with the Center and involved in its projects. It also seeks to bring together graduate students in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and in various departments who have interests in globalization issues. And it plays a role in developing more systematic curricular offerings.

The Center promotes engagement with the broader academic and policy community. We will continue to initiate a number of the projects that are conducted jointly with other academic and policy institutions. Running these projects under the auspices of the Center within the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs facilitates these wide-ranging partnerships. Center-sponsored lectures and conferences bring in high-level officials from the American government and international organizations. We continue to foster a collaborative effort to inspire our students to pursue careers in these areas. Overall, the Center strives to develop a tight-knit intellectual community at Princeton and promote ties between the academic and policy communities involved in globalization and international governance issues.

The full press release announcing the Center is available on the SPIA website.