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This article reviews the state of the literature on the politics of global health governance and associated political dynamics of actors involved in this issue space. We identify seven eras in the field, beginning with the period of empire and colonialism and ending with the COVID-19 outbreak. The field of global health has long had a focus on infectious disease, often rooted within a state-centered approach to transnational global health problems with recurrent debates about whether and how restrictions on trade and travel should be imposed in the wake of disease outbreaks. This statist focus is in tension with more cosmopolitan visions of global health, which require broader health system strengthening. In the mid-2000s, a golden age emerged with the influx of new financing and political attention to addressing HIV/AIDS and malaria, as well as reducing the risk posed by infectious disease outbreaks to economies of the Global North. Despite increased awareness of noncommunicable diseases and the importance of health systems, events of recent years (including but not limited to the COVID-19 outbreak) reinforced the centrality of states to global health efforts and the primacy of infectious diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of climate and security has matured over the past 15 years, moving from the margins of academic research and policy discussion to become a more prominent concern for the international community. The practice of climate and security has a broad set of concerns extending beyond climate change and armed conflict. Different national governments, international organizations, and forums have sought to mainstream climate security concerns emphasizing a variety of challenges, including the risks to military bases, existential risks to low-lying island countries, resource competition, humanitarian emergencies, shocks to food security, migration, transboundary water management, and the risks of unintended consequences from climate policies. Despite greater awareness of these risks, the field still lacks good insights about what to do with these concerns, particularly in 'fragile' states with low capacity and exclusive political institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 outbreak is the most serious test of the international system since the 2008 global financial crisis. Rather than cooperate to contain and respond to a common threat, the world's leading powers--the United States and China--have increasingly blamed each other through wildly speculative theories about the origins of the virus. The World Health Organization sought to coordinate a global response, but it has been hamstrung and has come under attack. Given past cooperation between major powers to mobilize and eradicate smallpox and previous US leadership to fight HIV/AIDS and the 2014 West African Ebola crisis, the limited cooperation and lack of leadership are puzzling. What explains the anemic global response to date? This article draws from structural international relations theory to suggest a partial but somewhat dissatisfying answer. International organizations are inherently weak and now face opposition by major powers. The international system simultaneously incentivizes states to cooperate and address common threats, but it also encourages countries to take care of themselves, potentially at the expense of others. Which of these motives dominates cannot be explained by structural theory, thus requiring us to look to other factors such as the attributes of states and leaders themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Paris Agreement is in trouble.Herewe assess the potential for climate leaders to bring the global climate regime back on track by developing a strategic understanding of followership. In other words, leaders need to know how to encourage other actors to follow them. We develop a typology of follower types--Enthusiasts, Pliables, Reluctants, and Hard Nuts--distinguished based on motivation and capacity. We identify the scope for a participation cascade based on the distribution of follower types.We argue that achieving a participation cascade may be more likely if leaders appreciate three insights from theories of collective action. First, break down the climate mitigation problem into smaller, more manageable challenges, such as sectoral approaches. Second, prioritize major emitters and areas with high mitigation potential and politically feasible action. Finally, emphasize benefits to potential followers. Together, the strategies can help reduce the number of Hard Nut cases by making the cost/benefit calculus more attractive to prospective followers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is expected to have severe consequences on the lives and livelihoods of millions of people around the world, but its effects will not be evenly distributed. Africa is thought to be especially vulnerable, given both high exposure to climate change and relatively low community resilience and governance capabilities. With climate change adaptation looming ever larger as an important policy area, understanding where climate vulnerabilities are located therefore has immense practical significance. This article details the methodological refinements made to an existing model of climate security vulnerability, the rationale for the approach, and the findings. The model introduces more fine-grained data and new methods of normalizing the data to retain more granularity, as well as other changes. The vulnerability maps show the Horn of Africa (Somalia in particular), South Sudan, the eastern coasts of Madagascar and Mozambique, northern Nigeria and southern Mali, Burundi, Sierra Leone and Guinea, as well as pockets along rivers and coasts in Egypt and Nigeria to be the most vulnerable. For validation, the model is also compared to maps of climate-related disaster counts, fatalities, and affected populations derived from the EM-DAT International Disaster database. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many experts argue that climate change will exacerbate the severity and number of extreme weather events. Such climate-related hazards will be important security concerns and sources of vulnerability in the future regardless of whether they contribute to conflict. This will be particularly true where these hazards put large numbers of people at risk of death, requiring the diversion of either domestic or foreign military assets to provide humanitarian relief. Vulnerability to extreme weather, however, is only partially a function of physical exposure. Poor, marginalized communities that lack access to infrastructure and services, that have minimal education and poor health care, and that exist in countries with poor governance are likely to be among the most vulnerable. Given its dependence on rainfed agriculture and its low adaptive capacity, Africa is thought to be among the most vulnerable continents to climate change. That vulnerability, however, is not uniformly distributed. Indicators of vulnerability within Africa include the historic incidence of climate-related hazards, population density, household and community resilience, and governance and political violence. Among the places in Africa most vulnerable to the security consequences of climate change are parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and South Sudan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discusses the foreign policy attitudes of what they term elites of the U.S. Republican Party in the latter 20th century and early 21st century. They examine the public policy preferences of the U.S. citizenry as recorded by the American National Election Studies (ANES) survey and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA), once known as the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. It compares and contrasts the emphasis upon domestic policy and foreign policy of the American people, the impact that the September 11, 2011, terrorist attacks on the U.S. had on policy priorities, and debate within the Republican Party on foreign policy.

The author reflects on the strategic approach of U.S. President Barack Obama to fight the pandemic outbreak of HIV/AIDS in some developing countries. Barack's administration invested more than $15 million for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) extension program to treat people with HIV-positive. He also considered the development of donor community to provide moral responsibility on the ARV treatment.

Focuses on the issues attributing to the division between the U.S. and Europe. Dispute about climate change; Conflict of government policy on global warming; War of the U.S. against terrorism.

Analyzes the regime of Cuban President Fidel Castro. Types of post-totalitarian regimes; Factors contributing to the post-totalitarianism of Cuba during the 1980s; Information on the economic and political crisis confronted by the Cuban government during the 1990s.