The Coronavirus Pandemic and Global Governance: The Domestic Diffusion of Health Norms in Global Health Security Crises

Shreejita Biswas

doi:10.1177/09735984211042094

Abstract

The recent outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic demands imperative discussions in the field of health security and global governance. Traditional studies on health care and global governance have acknowledged the significance of “global” as it rested on the fact that epidemics and pandemics are not restricted within national boundaries. The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the hierarchical division of norm diffusion. Despite the structural inequalities, the patterns of behavior of various countries, such as China, the USA, Italy, South Korea, and India, in managing the crisis suggest a favorable ground for bringing in the importance of national-level decision-making in the global versus local debate. Building upon the arguments from norm theories of diffusion, the article contributes to our understanding that for an effective analysis of the politics of global health governance, the power of local channels in the diffusion of essential health norms cannot be undermined. The article studies the role played by the local-level diffusion processes, in this case, the national state actors in reshaping and integrating essential health norms to make it workable for broader global relevance. As a result, following the norm theories of diffusion, this article analyzes the global–local dynamics with regard to public health in the context of the spread of the COVID-19 health security threat.

Highlights

This article seeks to address the domestic-level diffusion processes of global health norms in the context of the recent outbreak of the COVID19 pandemic, which came to be known as COVID-19, affecting the lives across several countries
Though a pandemic of such a scale has necessitated the need for global governance, it brings into the argument—how have the domestic diffusion processes affected the conditioning of the global health norms in cases of health security risks? The diverse strategies adopted by various countries at the domestic level in the COVID-19 case suggest that we need to broaden the global–local nexus in the cases of health security threats by analyzing the position of the local in the global and local interface
Though the states have faced hurdles in their own territorial sphere of operation, we find them to be active role-players in this global health security threat, integrating the necessary health norms to contain the virus in their population

Summary

Introduction

The article studies the role played by the local-level diffusion processes, in this case, the national state actors in reshaping and integrating essential health norms to make it workable for broader global relevance. These emerging debates regarding the COVID-19 crisis has shown the need to re-evaluate the norm diffusion literature in the context of health security threats by studying the domestic-level processes in a new light in the global–local interface.

Results

Conclusion