A Case Study in Vaccine Sharing Across Nations

Abstract

Research on social equity has grown substantially in recent years and has elevated the importance of addressing structural and systemic patterns of inequity in public service delivery. Through a social equity lens, this article explores the vaccine-sharing policies of China, India, the European Union, and the United States. Using the case of international vaccine sharing and a text-as-data approach, this article argues that the state actors’ commitments to sharing COVID-19 vaccines were insufficient to uphold fairness, justice, and equity. The article concludes with recommendations for practice and public administration theory development to expand the scope of social equity research to betweennation cases.