Melland Schill Roundtable: Who Governs When the World Is Falling Apart?

Global governance looks very different today than it did a few decades ago. Traditional diplomacy and international legal frameworks that once structured multilateralism are weakening, while political polarisation deepens and long-standing alliances fracture. The United Nations is steadily losing influence and funding. Corporate actors and emerging technologies now shape critical aspects of global governance, with artificial intelligence increasingly making decisions with minimal human input and often outside public oversight. Secrecy adds another layer, as governments deploy security and emergency measures to withhold information, reshaping how decisions are made and justified. The 2025 Melland Schill event — traditionally a lecture — will take the form of a special roundtable, bringing together three leading international law scholars to explore these shifts: the changing roles of law and diplomacy, the rise of new agents and sites of negotiation, and the ways secrecy and automation are transforming the processes of global governance.