For decades, as globalisation and environmental degradation has intensified, global health and development scholars and practitioners have stressed our growing microbial interdependence and the need to develop strategies to manage global disease outbreaks. The 2003 SARS outbreak served as a wake-up call for international organizations (IOs), spurring new health governance initiatives equipped to handle a global disease threat. However, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has illustrated how weak IOs remain at protecting and promoting global public goods for health.
This research project reviews academic and news reports between January 2020 – April 2021 in documenting the failure of IOs to facilitate global COVID-19 vaccine governance. The final paper breaks down the vaccine governance cycle into three phases; research and testing, manufacturing, and procurement and allocation. In all three of these phases, IOs failed to deliver meaningful public goods and protect low- and middle-income countries from mistreatment by wealthy nations and the private sector. The paper analyses these repeated failures from the perspective of existing IO theories.
Overall, COVID-19 vaccine governance is the latest global issue to expose the impotence of our IOs, raising questions about how our international system needs to change in order to successfully handle future global challenges.
Presentation by Danny Lou to the International Studies Association Annual Meeting, April 1, 2022.