This volume was inspired by the contemporary health crisis in the world and the
manifest failure of the existing galaxy of global governance arrangements to cope.
It takes as its central theme the need for innovation in the ideas and institutions of
global health governance that have dominated for so long and still stand in centre
place, but are now rapidly challenged, contested, and changing in response to new
entrants in the field.
This book continues the tradition in Ashgate Publishing’s Global Environmental
Governance series of exploring the central issues and contemporary challenges of
global governance in places where the stable single-issue areas of old are coming
together in today’s more intensely integrated, interconnected world. Nowhere
is this fusion greater than in the field of health. Here the environmental causes
and consequences of health are quickly becoming more understood. The broader
socioeconomic determinants and results of health are becoming a dominant paradigm
in the health field. And the link between trade and health is moving to centre stage.
Such interwoven issues now stand at the core of the global health policy agenda and
thus of this book. But they and their components are still largely governed by the
single-issue international organisations of old. Only a few integrative bodies—the
United Nations, the G8, and new multi-stakeholder forums—are called upon to forge
the needed connections and coherence in an effective way. That is why the need for
innovation in global governance provides the focus for this work.