Description
Although existing studies on global health governance have made a significant contribution to our understandings of global responses to important global health events (such as major disease outbreaks), they have not yet discussed how decisions get made within global health partnerships.
To fill this research gap, this study traces decision-making process in Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI) in relation to its involvement, as a co-leader, in global efforts to ensure the fair global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. GAVI is a public-private partnership organisation, created in 2000 to improve global vaccine access. The GAVI Board, the highest decision-making authority in GAVI, is designed to include a wide range of stakeholders (such as donors and recipient countries, civil society, vaccine industry, multilateral health organisations etcetera).
By delving into policy-making mechanisms of GAVI through observation of the GAVI Board’s meetings in 2020 and interviews with GAVI’s policy actors, this study shows how power dynamics among GAVI’s policy actors (the GAVI Secretariat and different stakeholders on the Board) influence GAVI’s policymaking. In particular, it argues that the Board’s discussions are influenced through processes of socialisation through which the interests and identities of Board members are reconstituted.
