Browsing by Author "Granmo, Anders"
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- ItemHealth norms in the global governance of development: A constructivist analysis(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019-04) Granmo, Anders; Fourie, Pieter Paul; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Political Science.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: As states and regions become increasingly interconnected at the hands of globalisation, the politics of health are increasingly relevant to the sustainable future envisioned by global governance. This study identifies, describes and explains the emergence of health (and cognate) norms in global development discourse and governance since the end of the Cold War. Adopting a political scientific perspective within the constructivist epistemology, the study identifies and analyses the trajectory of norms that have emerged and come to inform the health goals of the United Nations Development Agenda. It seeks to address the questions of how and why health has materialised in global development in the timeframe between 1989 and the present moment; in doing so, it identifies processes, actors, institutions, and interactions between the spheres of development thinking and international relations. The main lens through which this is pursued is by analysing two separate but interrelated case studies: the Millennium Development Goals, and the Sustainable Development Goals. The discrete but interdependent components of the project provide overview and insights regarding the context of global development thinking and practice, and into the subtleties of global health, and of global health governance. This includes a short history of development practice and discourse, an introduction to the multifaceted field of global health, and the relationship between these spheres. Furthermore, the study examines and reviews the theoretical foundations upon which it builds its analysis, and subsequently investigates its subject matter in a detailed and chronological procedure. The study finds that the relevant norms have emerged, suffused, and subsequently become internalised through the various direct and indirect negotiation processes that created the policies formalised as global development goals. The importance of effective norm entrepreneurs and their ability to connect with established normative structures referred to by the study as meta-norms and super-norms proved essential to this process, particularly when further bolstered by traditional concerns of high politics. The study underscores the topicality and increasing traction of global health within International Relations, and conversely, the utility of IR constructivist analysis for understanding contemporary global health and development challenges.
- ItemThe politics of health diplomacy : traditional & emerging middle powers compared (the case of Norway & South Africa)(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2015-04) Granmo, Anders; Fourie, Pieter; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Political Science.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Globalization is changing the face of health concerns worldwide and states are reacting by modifying their foreign policies to keep up with the resultant challenges and opportunities. The purpose of this study is to investigate, using the case studies of South Africa and Norway, the similarities and differences in how emerging and traditional middle powers respectively approach the new foreign policy phenomenon of health diplomacy. The study is interested in the reasons for how and why these similarities and differences manifest themselves in practice. Health diplomacy is a multifaceted concept which envelops negotiation involving health in a number of different concerts and across a wide spectrum of actors. Despite its novelty within the fields of both Global Health Governance and International Relations, the literature offers limited but sufficient frameworks that have utility for its study. The study surveys the literature on middle powers, and its sub-categories of emerging and traditional middle powers. Whilst identification with the middle power category requires the fulfilment of a number of criteria, this further categorization is made on the background of both quantifiable and behavioural characteristics, making their respective members’ inclinations and rationales for engaging in specific foreign policy types typically divergent on a number of issues. The two countries selected for case studies, South Africa and Norway, are generally regarded as exemplars of the two respective middle power categories. In these case studies the health diplomacy of these countries is assessed on the basis on the frameworks developed in the first half of this study, serving as the empirical foundation upon which the subsequent analysis is based. The findings speak volumes both for the two different middle power types and for the respective case study states. A common emphasis on multilateralism is one unsurprising similarity, as middle powers of both types tend to share this general preference in their foreign policy undertakings. However, as South Africa’s health diplomacy is nascent and Norway’s well-developed, divergences are obvious in terms of what strategies the respective countries use in order to gain the international influence that they covet. Furthermore, domestic and regional issues clog the agendas of emerging middle powers, whilst traditional ones enjoy stability in this regard and are able to seek opportunities elsewhere. These characteristics are exemplified in an extreme sense in South Africa, where a genuine health crisis is ravaging the country; conversely, in Norway, domestic issues are relatively minor, and niche diplomacy has bred massive success. At bottom, health diplomacy is a significant nascent area of interest within International Relations broadly, and in niche diplomacy and global health governance specifically, and demands further study.