Globalisation and the Politics of Global Health

2018 ◽  
pp. 36-58
Author(s):  
Matthew Sparke
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Global Health Governance ◽  
Global Public Health ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
Health Security ◽  
Health Politics ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter examines how the politics of global health have been shaped by globalisation. This means evaluating its effects on both the material level of political-economic integration and on the ideational level of political-cultural discourse. The former is conventionally tied through a focus on trade and travel to global public health security, and the latter is often associated with global humanitarian care. Going beyond this dualistic divide, however, this chapter argues that globalisation has spun a connective thread running through both regimes. This connective thread is the pro-market neo-liberal governance that sutures globalisation’s integrative and ideational dynamics with powerful binding implications for health. Due to these ties that bind, processes of neo-liberalisation deeply influence global health, creating global health vulnerabilities and problems through structural violence while also shaping and steering the delivery of global health responses. Global health governance remains influenced by other international and postcolonial health regimes that continue to inspire alternatives to the global expansion of neo-liberal norms. However, the same market forces that have made globalisation a synonym for processes of neo-liberalisation have also now become the dominant transnational influence shaping the ‘global’ in global health politics.

scholarly journals President Donald Trump as global health’s displacement activity

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 491-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Harman ◽  
Sara E. Davies
Keyword(s):  
Reproductive Health ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Human Security ◽  
Global Health Governance ◽  
Global Health Security ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
Health Security ◽  
Displacement Activity ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractThe United States presidential election of Donald Trump in 2016 was observed by global health commentators as posing dire consequences for the progress made in global health outcomes, governance, and financing. This article shares these concerns, however, we present a more nuanced picture of the global health governance progress narrative pre-Trump. We argue that Trump’s presidency is a displacement activity to which global health’s pre-existing inequalities and problems of global health security, financing, and reproductive health can be attributed. Unfettered access to sexual and reproductive rights, sustained financing of health system strengthening initiatives, affordable medicines and vaccines, and a human security-centred definition of global health security were already problematic shortfalls for global health governance. Trump no doubt exacerbates these concerns, however, to blame his presidency for failings in these areas ignores the issues that have been endemic to global health governance prior to his presidency. Instead of using Trump as a displacement activity, his presidency could be an opportunity to confront dependency on US financing model, the lack of a human-security centred definition of global health security, and the norm of restricting reproductive health. It is such engagement and confrontation with these issues that could see Trump’s presidency as being a catalyst for change rather than displacement as a means of preserving the uncomfortable status quo in global health. We make this argument by focusing on three specific areas of US-led global health governance: reproductive health and the ‘global gag rule’, health financing and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and pandemic preparedness and global health security.

scholarly journals Beware the Kindleberger Trap in Global Health Governance

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Jin Jiyong
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Stress Test ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Health Governance ◽  
Global Public Health ◽  
Global Public Goods ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
Health Crisis

The Covid-19 pandemic is both a public health crisis and a stress test for global health governance. Effective health governance hinges on the provision of global public goods for health. Generally, the hegemon underwrites the operation and stability of the global public health architecture by ensuring the sustained supply of global public goods for health. But when the hegemon is unable or unwilling to shoulder this responsibility, global health governance may run the risk of falling into a Kindleberger Trap. The leadership vacuum that is opening up amid the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating the process. At present, China should adopt a three-pronged approach to promote bilateral health cooperation with leading countries like the United States, strengthen regional institution-building with ASEAN, South Korea, Japan, and Belt and Road countries, and improve the performance, credibility, and integrity of global organizations like the WHO and G-20. The Kindleberger Trap in global health governance can be overcome by adapting regional health coordination to make it more agile and effective.

The Proliferation of Human Rights in Global Health Governance

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 534-544 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lance Gable
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Health Outcomes ◽  
Good Health ◽  
Global Health Governance ◽  
Global Public Health ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
The Past ◽  
Multiple Levels

As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, threats to global public health continue to proliferate. New and novel risks to health have emerged consistently over the past 30 years. Moreover, our shrinking world now allows health threats to spread more quickly than ever before. Given these realities, efforts to protect and improve global health must be expansive, flexible, and able to take into account the variety of circumstances that may imperil good health. These efforts also must consider the multiple levels and varying contexts in which laws, policies, and other factors govern global health and affect health outcomes.

Civil Society and Global Health Politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 365-385
Author(s):  
David McCoy ◽  
Joseph Gafton
Keyword(s):  
Health Policy ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Global Health ◽  
International Health ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Global Health Governance ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
Health Politics ◽  
Role Of The State

Civil society may be defined as both a space in society and a collection of certain types of actor. As a space, it exists alongside the state and markets; as a set of actors, it interacts with a range of governmental bodies and businesses. Over the past three or four decades, neoliberal globalisation has dramatically changed the distribution of power across society, while also institutionalising a set of policies that have diminished the role of the state, undermined democracy, and established the dominance of market logic. These developments have influenced both international health policy and the structures of global governance. Furthermore, they have also shaped the nature of civil society’s participation in global health policy and governance. Crucially, civil society does not merely intervene in global health politics from outside, but is itself sculpted by the ideologies and political conditions that surround it. This chapter explores the political nature of civil society and its relationship to global health politics, including the political nature of new non-state actors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the emergence of global health partnerships, which have ostensibly increased civil society involvement in global health governance. It argues that civil society participation in global health governance tends to represent powerful and hegemonic interests rather than those most in need. It also discusses how current political, economic and technological developments will influence civil society’s participation in global health politics, and shape the challenges faced by society more generally.

States, Nonstate Actors, and Economics in Global Health Governance

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Youde
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
Global Health Governance ◽  
Development Programs ◽  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
Health Politics ◽  
Past Generation ◽  
Economic Landscape ◽  
Economic Engagement

The economic landscape for global health politics has shifted dramatically over the past generation as private and nonstate actors become increasingly important sources of development assistance for health. The growing economic clout of nonstate actors in the global health space raises questions about the role of states in funding development programs, whether state and nonstate actors work in a complementary fashion, and if there are fundamental shifts in the nature of global governance, legitimacy, and authority under way. This chapter examines the intersection of state and nonstate actors in the economic dimensions of global health governance by examining the different types of nonstate actors getting involved in funding global health programs, the historical experience of nonstate actors in global health, the informal division of labor within global health governance, and potential pathways for facilitating positive economic engagement between state and nonstate actors in the economics of global health.

From Threat to Risk? Exceptionalism and Logics of Health Security

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-276
Author(s):  
Jessica Kirk
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
West Africa ◽  
The Other ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
Recent Contribution ◽  
Health Security ◽  
Health Politics ◽  
The Us ◽  
Complete Alignment ◽  
Explicit Consideration

Abstract The logic of “risk” is increasingly important in the study of global health politics. One recent contribution has even argued that risk is beginning to replace security as the defining logic of health governance and policy. Others dispute this on the basis that risk and security have always operated together in the “securitization” of disease. This article constitutes a theoretical intervention into this burgeoning debate. Does a stronger appreciation of risk warrant the diminishment of security? Are we looking at the “riskification” of health rather than “securitization”? Or would this miss the way these two logics might be complimentary or intertwined in ways that we are yet to theorize? I argue that the global health and securitization literatures are better served by an explicit consideration of risk and security logics in interplay, or never entirely encompassed by the other, nor in complete alignment, yet never truly separate. To do this, I propose a reconceptualization of the central problem—exceptionalism—that allows for risk to be understood as a form of exceptionalist politics. I demonstrate the validity of this approach through an otherwise “easy case” of securitization: the US response to the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

scholarly journals Neoliberal disease: COVID-19, co-pathogenesis and global health insecurities

2021 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2110489
Author(s):  
Matthew Sparke ◽  
Owain David Williams
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
World Order ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
Health Security ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Political Economic

The COVID-19 pandemic has at once exposed, exploited and exacerbated the health-damaging transformations in world order tied to neoliberal globalization. Our central argument is that the same neoliberal plans, policies and practices advanced globally in the name of promoting wealth have proved disastrous in terms of protecting health in the context of the pandemic. To explain why, we point to a combinatory cascade of socio-viral co-pathogenesis that we call neoliberal disease. From the vectors of vulnerability created by unequal and unstable market societies, to the reduced response capacities of market states and health systems, to the constrained ability of official global health security agencies and regulations to offer effective global health governance, we show how the virus has found weaknesses in a market-transformed global body politic that it has used to viral advantage. By thereby turning the inequalities and inadequacies of neoliberal societies and states into global health insecurities the pandemic also raises questions about whether we now face an inflection point when political dis-ease with neoliberal norms will lead to new kinds of post-neoliberal policy-making. We conclude, nevertheless, that the prospects for such political-economic transformation on a global scale remain quite limited despite all the extraordinary damage of neoliberal disease described in the article.

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