Deepening Global Health Politics: Policies, Agendas, and Democratic Complexity

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Health policymaking, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, sits at the intersection of a range of political forces—democratic and anti-democratic, technocratic and corporatist. In global health, these include concerted efforts by national and international actors to influence the focus of health policy, drive resources in certain directions, and variously strengthen or weaken the democratic character of policy making. As a result, some national governments move aggressively to adopt policies aligned with global public health norms while others do not. Some advance policies that challenge powerful interest groups, while in other countries policy processes are dominated by such interests. Heterogeneity in health outcomes between similar countries is at least partly attributable to differences in policy and the institutions through which policy is made—which makes understanding and comparing these an important nexus for public health and political science. Increasingly robust global health data and growing policy networks make new analyses possible. This panel focuses on this opportunity to deepen the study of global health politics with new tools, data, and ideas—coming from four different vantage points, each seeking to cut new methodological and theoretical ground. Kavanagh, Pillinger, Prieto Norato and Katz present a detailed new cross-national dataset of HIV-related policies, coded comparatively with international norms, and an analysis showing how this policy surveillance work can complement data on health and political institutions to answer important questions both in public health and in political science. Smith, Cho, Rosen, Shawar, and Shiffman examine policy agenda setting through an arenas model in order to facilitate comparative analysis of priority for global health issues—describing how trends in attention in the global health research arena have shifted over time between disease and health systems issues. Ho, Mabeu, and Pongou analyze individual-level data in more than 4 million observations from 40 sub-Saharan African countries. Democracy’s effects acting through policy are more complicated than prior work suggests and they find that benefits may in fact accrue to those with limited access to resources. Eduardo Gómez presents a four-country comparative study on the failure to regulate the marketing and sales of “junk food” which advances a new theory of interest group behaviour linking interest groups to accountability and responsiveness to population health needs. Together these papers demonstrate that a focus on deepening our understanding of global health provides fertile ground for the study of broader political and policy phenomena.

Sub Unit

• Division 48: Health Politics & Health Policy

Individual Presentations

• Comparing Policies, Politics & Disease: The HIV Policy Lab - Matthew Kavanagh, Georgetown University; Mara Pillinger, Georgetown University

• Analyzing the Global Health Agenda: Trends in Research Attention, 2004-2018 - Stephanie L. Smith, Virginia Tech; Jeremy Shiffman; Yusra Ribhi Shawar, Johns Hopkins University; Andrew Cho; Sarah Rosenberg

• Democracy and the Poor - Carmen Jacqueline Ho, University of Guelph; Marie Christelle Mabeu; Roland Pongou, University Of Ottawa

• Junk Food Politics: Political Influence of Junk Food Industry in Emerg Economies - Eduardo J. Gomez, Lehigh University

Chair

• Ashley M Fox SUNY at Albany

Discussants

• Joshua Busby University of Texas, Austin

• Claudio A. Méndez Universidad Austral de Chile