Description
This study discusses the agency of an IO based on a public-private partnership (PPP) model, exploring GAVI’s secretariat’s influence on decision-making within GAVI. It is important to have a framework to understand IOs based on a PPP model because this type of IOs, which first became prominent in global health in the early 2000s with the creation of organisations such as GAVI and the Global Fund, have played an increasingly important role in global health governance.
Applying Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore (2004)’s framework of IO authority to GAVI, this study aims at exploring how GAVI’s secretariat utilises the sources of authority in order to influence decision-making in GAVI’s board during the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on the data from the observations of GAVI Board meetings and the interviews with GAVI’s policy making actors in 2020 and 2021, I argue that that Barnett and Finnemore’s framework helps us understand the (partial) autonomy of IOs and applies to GAVI, an organisation based on a public-private partnership model, in a similar way to more traditional member state-based IOs, and that an exceptional situation tends to increase the secretariat’s exercise of authority.
