John Mathiason is Professor of International Relations at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University, teaching distance collaboration and in-person courses in International Public and NGO Management, Evaluation of International Programs and Projects and Qualitative Skills in International Relations. He is Program Manager for International Education and Distance Learning in the Executive Education Program of the Maxwell School, where he facilitates courses in results-based management. He is the Director of the Geneva Practicum, a summer graduate internship program of Syracuse University Abroad and is a research associate of the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflict (PARC) and the Center for Environmental Policy and Administration (CEPA). He was previously Adjunct Professor of Public Administration at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University and Assistant Professor of Communications at the University of Washington.
He has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Professor Mathiason's e-mail address is
He can also be reached at
He is the Managing Director of Associates for International Management Services, an international consulting company. In this capacity he has provided management training and advisory assistance to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Provisional Technical Secretariat of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, the United Nations International Institute for Training and Research for the Advancement of Women, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane and the Club of Madrid. He has directed or participated in training in Internet accessibility, policy research and advocacy for the United Nations, the ASEAN Secretariat, Disabled Peoples’ International, the World Blind Union, the Economic Opportunities Commission of Hong Kong and UNDP-Ecuador. He has directed evaluations for the SSM Foundation of the Dominican Republic and done policy analysis and advocacy planning for AARP and Disabled People’s International.
Academic Links
UN Studies Project of the Academic Council on United Nations Studies (ACUNS)
Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflict (PARC) of the Maxwell School, Collaborative Governance and Transnational Conflicts Projects
Recent Unpublished Articles
Comments on "Experience gained in the planning and budgeting process" 6 June 2007
He was a career staff member of the United Nations Secretariat for over twenty-five years, having started with the United Nations as a technical assistance expert in evaluation of social aspects of agrarian reform in Venezuela in 1966. Joining the United Nations Secretariat in 1971, after three years on the faculty of the School of Communications of the University of Washington, he held posts dealing with rural and community development, program planning and coordination and spent two years in Pakistan as a development assistance administrator for UNDP.
His last nine years in the United Nations were as Deputy Director of the Division for the Advancement of Women. In that capacity he was responsible for managing substantive preparations for and support to the negotiation process during the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China. He was the principal drafter of many United Nations publications including the 1994 World Survey on the Role of Women in Development, Women in Politics and Decision-making in the Late Twentieth Century (1992) and Systematic Monitoring and Evaluation for Integrated Development Programmes (1978) as well as many reports of the Secretary-General.
Professor Mathiason's research interests are focused on means of improving the management of the international public sector. He has published on United Nations reform (including articles in the journal Public Administration and Development on program planning in the reform process entitled "Who Controls the Machine"). He organized, moderated and read a paper in a panel on UN reform at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association in Toronto in 1997. His article "What Kind of International Public Service Do We Need in the Twenty-first Century" was published in Global Governance in April-June 2008. He has also done research and published on international governance of the Internet including papers to the International Studies Association and the International Telecommunications Society and he moderated a panel at the Harvard Conference on the Impact of the Internet on Communications Policy. He is a member of the Internet Governance Project and with his colleagues Profs. Milton Mueller, Jeanette Hoffman, Hans Klein, Derrick Cogburn and Lee McKnight, has prepared papers on Internet governance in preparation for the World Summit on an Information Society and on its follow-up. He has done research on disarmament and read a paper on one element, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, at the annual meeting of the Northeastern International Studies Association in 2001. A book entitled Eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction: Prospects for Effective International Verification,written with Berhanykun Andemicael was published by Palgrave/Macmillan in March 2005 in the United Kingdom and the United States. A second book, Invisible Governance: International secretariats in global politics, was published by Kumarian Press in January 2007. His third book entitled Internet Governance: the New Frontier of Global Institutions was published in the Routledge series on international institutions in August 2008.