Addressing the increasingly globalised determinants of many important problems affecting human health is a complex task requiring collective action. We suggest that part of the solution to addressing intractable global health issues indeed lies with the role of new legal instruments in the form of globally binding treaties, as described in the recent article of Nikogosian and Kickbusch. However...

A revolution in the governance of global infectious disease threats is under way, accelerated by events triggered by the outbreak of SARS in 2003. This review article analyzes pre-SARS trends in the governance of infectious diseases, examines the impact of the SARS outbreak on these trends, and posits that germ governance is now a criterion of "good governance" in world affairs.

Rapid population growth, urbanization, and the growing challenges faced by the urban poor require redefining the paradigm for public health interventions in the 21st century, creating new approaches that take urban determinants of health into consideration. The widening disparity between the urban poor and the urban rich further exacerbates health inequities. Existing tools for global governanc...

The role of multilateral donor agencies in global health is a new area of research, with limited research on how these agencies differ in terms of their governance arrangements, especially in relation to transparency, inclusiveness, accountability, and responsiveness to civil society. We argue that historical analysis of the origins of these agencies and their coalition formation processes can ...

In the current political economy which seeks to commodify nature and market its services, market-based mitigation measures, like the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program, have become prominent strategies to address climate change. The REDD+ program places an economic value on the carbon stored in forests and offers incentives for developing countries to r...

We study the relationship between the types of issuer and the governance codes contents in the neo-institutional social theory perspective, using a global sample of over 70 national governance codes. We hypothesize that the code recommendations are influenced by the nature of isomorphic pressure to embrace new social practices, exerted by the different types of issuer. The findings show that co...

New global standards of governance are emerging. Citizens of developing countries are demanding better performance on the part of their governments, and they are increasingly aware of the costs of poor management and corruption. Attitudes are also changing in industrial countries where bribery is no longer viewed as a legitimate cost of doing business overseas. At the World Bank and other inter...

Transnational governance is increasingly important to many areas of global politics, including global climate change, where multilateral negotiations have fallen into gridlock. However, we have yet to fully understand how domestic political conditions affect suband non-state actors’ ability to engage in governance beyond the state. Existing approaches to transnational governance emphasize, ofte...

Recent trends in governance include a diminishing role of the nation state and an expanding role of non-government actors in the management of resources and services. The nation state, some argue, is ceding way to a plethora of institutions including global, multinational, regional, and local-level players. Within this multilevel, multi-institutional governance system the role of both the priva...