The Role of the Business Sector in Global Health Politics

Author(s):  
Kelley Lee ◽  
Julia Smith

The influence of for-profit businesses in collective action across countries to protect and promote population health dates from the first International Sanitary Conferences of the nineteenth century. The restructuring of the world economy since the late twentieth century and the growth of large transnational corporations have led the business sector to become a key feature of global health politics. The business sector has subsequently moved from being a commercial producer of health-related goods and services, contractor, and charitable donor, to being a major shaper of, and even participant in, global health policymaking bodies. This chapter discusses three sites where this has occurred: collective action to regulate health-harming industries, activities to provide for public interest needs, and participation in decision-making within global health institutions. These changing forms of engagement by the business sector have elicited scholarly and policy debate regarding the appropriate relationship between public and private interests in global health.

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 117
Author(s):  
Giovanni Pesce

<p>Discretionary power, a central feature of administrative power, comes into play when administration is called to select an option between two or more solution and a way of balancing between public and private interests. After the 20<sup>th</sup> century, devastated by wars, public deficit and debt, most State models circumscribed their markets to the detriment of the global one, turning the old economic models into new ones after the 1958 Treaty of Rome and, after the phase following the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, and the crisis of 2008, the final concept is that the EU Members States should restructure the public finances, facing the increase of the public goods and services demand and with the rested rights. The purpose of this article was to enquire whether the European and national rules may limit the discretionary power while expanding the administrative one.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 393-402
Author(s):  
Sotiria Grek ◽  
Paolo Landri

Although the global Covid-19 pandemic is still affecting our lives enormously, we know that a new era of deep reflection about ‘normality’, our planet and our existence on it has also begun. The ‘Education in Europe and the Covid-19 Pandemic’ double Special Issue intends to be part of this reflexive discussion about the post-pandemic European education policy and research space. This is a space shaped continuously by crises and opportunities, by utopias of a shared progressive and liberal education for all, but also the dystopias of nationalism, populism, climate destruction and now a global health emergency. This editorial offers an overview of the current crisis context and of the articles; further, it positions the journal within the post-pandemic research and policy debate about how to understand the impact of the pandemic on the changing forms of education and its enduring inequalities.


1940 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 481-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart A. Rice

The profusion of American statistics is a frequent source of astonishment to statisticians of other nations. Statistics are assembled and published by official agencies at all levels of government; by trade and industrial associations; by individual business concerns; by the church, universities, and the press; by professional research organizations; by a multitude of societies and associations with innumerable aims and programs; and sometimes by the plain citizen himself. Collectively, the statistical activities of the nation comprise a system in the same sense that the activities of four and one-half million business units comprise a national economic system.There is, in fact, a functional relationship between the national statistical system and the socio-economic order of which it is a part. The primary functions of social and economic statistics are to illuminate practical problems, to assist in the determination of policies, and to aid in arriving at administrative decisions. No sharp line can be drawn in these respects between public and private affairs. Statistics find their raison d'etre as tools, to be used by public officials and by all manner of private interests, and in each case to make some part of the socio-economic system work more effectively.


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 9-16
Author(s):  
Mayo Fuster Morell

In order for online communities to assemble and grow, some basic infrastructure is necessary that makes possible the aggregation of the collective action. There is a very intimate and complex relationship between the technological infrastructure and the social character of the community which uses it. Today, most infrastructure is provided by corporations and the contrast between community and corporate dynamics is becoming increasingly pronounced. But rather than address the issues, the corporations are actively obfuscating it. Wikiwashing refers to a strategy of corporate infrastructure providers where practices associated to their role of profit seeking corporations (such as abusive terms of use, privacy violation, censorship, and use of voluntary work for profit purposes, among others) that would be seen as unethical by the communities they enable are concealed by promoting a misleading image of themselves associated with the general values of wikis and Wikipedia (such as sharing and collaboration, openness and transparency). The empirical analysis is based on case studies (Facebook , Yahoo! and Google) and triangulation of several methods.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 18-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Noonan ◽  
Shan Zhou ◽  
Robert Kirkman

Sustainable cities will require major infrastructure investments coupled with widespread behavioral change. Examples of smart, green technologies abound, but evidence for actual use lags. This partly owes to the tension between public support and private choices: individuals thinking as members of the public may see solutions as smart for the city, but thinking of their private interests may see those same solutions as not smart for themselves. This also owes to the disconnect between private and public choices, on the one hand, and the workings of complex systems, on the other. Even if public and private interests align, existing built environment systems may resist change. This article examines public perception and use of the Atlanta BeltLine, a pioneering sustainability initiative to transform the auto-dependent city into a greener, denser city. Analyzing a general public survey reveals widespread support for the BeltLine alongside reticence from residents to change their commute or greenspace use. The findings also show that drivers of public support and prospective use of the BeltLine differ. Public support may be insufficient if individual use decisions do not follow. Yet, private adoption decisions may not follow until and unless the systems in which they are embedded are already changing.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document