scholarly journals Hard Currency, Solidarity, and Soft Power: The Motives, Implications, and Lessons of Cuban Health Internationalism

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Baggott ◽  
George Lambie
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Health Interventions ◽  
Treatment Programs ◽  
Health It ◽  
Emergency Relief ◽  
Multilateral Cooperation

This article explores Cuba’s health assistance and support for other countries. It explores the rationale and motivations for Cuba’s internationalism in health. It then details the various aspects of its health interventions, including emergency relief, strengthening of health systems, treatment programs, training of health professionals, engagement in multilateral cooperation, and biotechnology. The article analyzes the benefits of Cuba’s health internationalism for Cuba and for others. It also explores potential adverse consequences and criticisms of Cuba’s approach. The article concludes by noting that Cuba has been ahead of the game in integrating foreign policy and health policy and that its experience may hold lessons for other countries seeking to develop global health strategies.

Medical Diplomacy and Iranian Foreign Policy

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Ali Bagheri Dolatabadi ◽  
Mehran Kamrava
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Islamic Republic ◽  
The Future ◽  
Regional Influence ◽  
Medical Advances

Abstract Despite numerous studies of Iran in recent decades, the country’s concerted efforts to expand its medical diplomacy have been largely overlooked by experts and observers alike. This is despite the fact that the Islamic Republic has sought to employ medical diplomacy as a viable tool for expanding its soft power for a number of years. Over the course of the last two decades, in fact, Iranian authorities and health professionals have considered their medical advances to greatly add value to the country’s overall diplomatic profile. This article examines three basic questions: first, how has Iran used medical diplomacy to increase its regional influence in the Middle East? second, what are the factors that have contributed to the country’s success in this area? And, third, what are likely to be the regional consequences of Iran’s enhanced medical diplomacy in the future? The answers to these questions will present an overall picture of the current and future depth and voracity of Iran’s soft power.

7. Brazil and the multipolar world

2020 ◽  
pp. 101-117
Author(s):  
Anthony W. Pereira
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Global Health ◽  
International Development ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
International System ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Health It ◽  
Peaceful Resolution ◽  
Almost All

‘Brazil and the multipolar world’ examines Brazil’s foreign policy tradition. Brazil has a strong diplomatic tradition that emphasizes moderation, the peaceful resolution of conflicts, and Brazil’s ability to seek consensus by maintaining dialogue with almost all other states. Indeed, Brazil usually positions itself in favour of moderate reform of the institutions of global governance and as a gentle critic of the inequalities and injustices of the international system. The chapter then describes Brazilian contributions to global politics in areas such as international development, the environment, security, and global health. It also looks at the rupture promoted by the Bolsonaro administration in 2019.

When People Come First

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Health Science ◽  
Health It ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
New Research ◽  
Health Enterprise ◽  
Conceptual Work

This book critically assesses the expanding field of global health. It brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars to address the medical, social, political, and economic dimensions of the global health enterprise through vivid case studies and bold conceptual work. The book demonstrates the crucial role of ethnography as an empirical lantern in global health, arguing for a more comprehensive, people-centered approach. Topics include the limits of technological quick fixes in disease control, the moral economy of global health science, the unexpected effects of massive treatment rollouts in resource-poor contexts, and how right-to-health activism coalesces with the increased influence of the pharmaceutical industry on health care. The chapters explore the altered landscapes left behind after programs scale up, break down, or move on. We learn that disease is really never just one thing, technology delivery does not equate with care, and biology and technology interact in ways we cannot always predict. The most effective solutions may well be found in people themselves, who consistently exceed the projections of experts and the medical-scientific, political, and humanitarian frameworks in which they are cast. This book sets a new research agenda in global health and social theory and challenges us to rethink the relationships between care, rights, health, and economic futures.

The AKP’s Foreign Policy

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 21-46
Author(s):  
Kubilay Arin
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
The West ◽  
Islamic Revival ◽  
Western State ◽  
New Strategy ◽  
Over Time

When Turkey’s Justice and Development Part (AKP) came to power in 2002, it brought a new strategy to foreign policy. Some scholars ascribed this reorientation to the rise of neo-Ottomanism, others to Islamization, and yet others to a Middle Easternization of foreign policy. All labels have one element in common: They give weight to Islam and Turkey’s imperial past as soft power assetsin the conduct of foreign policy by rejecting secular Kemalism in the country’s diplomacy. The AKP capitalized on Turgut Özal’s neo-Ottomanist foreign policy and Necmettin Erbakan’s multi-dimensional foreign policy by using Turkey’s pivotal geopolitical location to transform it into a global actor. The ongoing Islamic revival has caused the country’s attempted full westernization to slow down. But the West itself is hardly a monolithic bloc, given its own many internal cultural, linguistic,religious, political, and economic differences. I therefore describe Turkey as a “hybrid,” a modern and developing “semi-western” state, and argue that over time it will become ever more “socially conservative.”

China, International Society, and Global Health Governance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Youde
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Global Health ◽  
International Society ◽  
Global Health Governance ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Governance System ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
Policy Tool ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship

China possesses the world’s largest economy, but that economic clout has not necessarily translated into taking leading roles within existing global health governance institutions and processes. It is a country that both contributes to and receives financial assistance from global health institutions. It has incorporated health into some of its foreign policy activities, but it has largely avoided proactively engaging with the values and norms embodied within the global health governance system. This ambivalent relationship reflects larger questions about how and whether China fits within international society and what its engagement or lack thereof might portend for international society’s future. This chapter examines China’s place within global health governance by examining its interactions with international society on global health issues, its use of health as a foreign policy tool, and its relationships with global health governance organizations.

Divergent Perspectives in Global Health Governance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Prah Ruger
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Global Public Good ◽  
Global Health Governance ◽  
Actor Model ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
Rational Actor ◽  
Global Health Policy ◽  
Self Interest

The global health governance (GHG) literature frames health variously as a matter of security and foreign policy, human rights, or global public good. Divergence among these perspectives has forestalled the development of a consensus vision for global health. Global health policy will differ according to the frame applied. Fundamentally, GHG today operates on a rational actor model, encompassing a continuum from the purely self-interest-maximizing position at one extreme to a more nuanced approach that takes others’ interests into account when making one’s own calculations. Even where humanitarian concerns are clearly and admirably at play, however, the problem of motivations remains. Often narrow self-interest is also at work, and actors obfuscate this behind altruistic motives.

Politics of Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Turkey: Limits and Prospects of Populism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatih Resul Kılınç ◽  
Şule Toktaş
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Syrian Civil War ◽  
Turkish Politics ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
Mass Influx ◽  
Asylum Seekers And Refugees ◽  
The Eu

This article addresses the international movement of asylum seekers and refugees, particularly Syrian immigrants, and their impact on populism in Turkish politics between 2011 and 2018. The article argues that populist politics/rhetoric directed against Syrians in Turkey remained limited during this period, especially from a comparative perspective. At a time when rising Islamophobia, extreme nationalism, and anti-immigrant sentiments led to rise of right-wing populism in Europe, populist platforms exploiting specifically migrants, asylum seekers, and the Syrians in Turkey failed to achieve a similar effect. The chapter identifies two reasons for this puzzling development even as the outbreak of the Syrian civil war triggered a mass influx of asylum seekers and irregular immigrants into Turkey. First, the article focuses on Turkey’s refugee deal with the EU in response to “Europe’s refugee crisis,” through which Turkey has extracted political and economic leverage. Next, the article sheds light on Turkey’s foreign policy making instruments that evolved around using the refugee situation as an instrument of soft power pursuant to its foreign policy identity. The article concludes with a discussion of the rise of anti-Syrian sentiments by 2019.

scholarly journals Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Blues: Powering BRI Research Back on Track to Avoid Choppy Seas

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Marc F. Blanchard
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Chinese Foreign Policy ◽  
Silk Road ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
The Road ◽  
Political Costs ◽  
Maritime Silk Road ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
On The Road

AbstractThis piece examines and critiques the massive literature on China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It details how research currently seems stuck on the road to nowhere. In addition, it identifies a number of the potholes that collective research endeavors are hitting such as that they are poorly synchronized. It also stresses that lines of analysis are proliferating rather than optimizing, with studies broadening in thematic coverage, rather than becoming deeper. It points out that BRI participants are regularly related to the role of a bit player in many analyses and research often is disconnected from other literatures. Among other things, this article recommends analysts focus on the Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) or Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) in specific regions or countries. It also argues for a research core that focuses on the implementation issue (i.e., the issue of MSRI and SREB project implementation), project effects (i.e., the economic and political costs and benefits of projects), and the translation issue (i.e., the domestic and foreign policy effects of projects) and does work that goes beyond the usual suspects. On a related note, research need to identify, more precisely, participants and projects, undertake causal analysis, and take into account countervailing factors. Furthermore, studies need to make more extensive use of the Chinese foreign policy literature. Moreover, works examining subjects like soft power need to improve variable conceptualization and operationalization and deliver more nuanced analyses. Finally, studies, especially by area specialists, should take the area, not the China, perspective.

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