International and Global Cooperation in Response to COVID-19

Abstract

What does the international response to the COVID-19 pandemic tell us about the state of international health cooperation and its future? The predominant narrative that international cooperation ‘failed’ in response to COVID-19 may be understood from two competing points of view: first, that there was indeed a ‘failure’ in international cooperation stemming from the relationship between global health and global politics. A rival view, however, might suggest that COVID-19 reveals incremental progress in the area of global health cooperation and the emergence of thick networks of global health governance that includes both state and non-state actors. From this perspective, although COVID-19 presented an unexpected exogenous shock, global health cooperation continued—even multiplied—across various sectors and groups of actors. This suggests that for all the challenges it confronts, global health governance has been developing a complex agency that operates on multiple levels (state institutions, regional organizations, private for-profit actors, civil society, private–public partnerships) such that even when one political track is blocked, other tracks may continue to function. This chapter examines this phenomenon.