GHE Research Papers

How Europe can better support Global Health governance: a global public goods approach

04 April 2011

The third paper in the GHE research series provides a discussion on global public goods theory and its relevance for governance for global health in Europe. Many global health challenges bring to mind the concept of public goods, a concept that is well established in economics but has so far been primarily applied to national phenomena. Within the national context we have learned that public goods pose very special provision or governance challenges, so-called collective action problems. Carried over to the global level through increasing openness and interconnectedness of economies and policy fields global public goods pose even more collective-action challenges, not least because the institution of the state (that helps us nationally to overcome collective action-problems) has no equivalent at the international level.

Written by Inge Kaul and David Gleicher, his paper proposes how European institutions and governments could explore how and where to strengthen their roles in meeting health-related global challenges through the collective provision of national and regional building blocks for global public goods.

The paper can be accessed in PDF by following this link.