Emergent patterns in global health diplomacy: a network analysis of the resolutions adopted by the World Health Assembly from 1948 to 2022
From a complexity perspective on governance, multilateral diplomacy is based on interactions between people, ideas, norms, policies and institutions. This article uses a computer-assisted methodology to better understand governance systems as a network of norms. All World Health Assembly (WHA) resol...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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BMJ Publishing Group
2023-04-01
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| Series: | BMJ Global Health |
| Online Access: | https://gh.bmj.com/content/8/4/e011211.full |
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| author | Kelley Lee Didier Wernli Nicolas Levrat Bastien Chopard Jean-Luc Falcone Stephan Davidshofer |
| author_facet | Kelley Lee Didier Wernli Nicolas Levrat Bastien Chopard Jean-Luc Falcone Stephan Davidshofer |
| author_sort | Kelley Lee |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | From a complexity perspective on governance, multilateral diplomacy is based on interactions between people, ideas, norms, policies and institutions. This article uses a computer-assisted methodology to better understand governance systems as a network of norms. All World Health Assembly (WHA) resolutions that were available from 1948 to 2022 were collected from the WHO Institutional Repository for Information Sharing (IRIS) database. Regular expressions were used to identify how resolutions cite other resolutions and the resulting relationships were analysed as a normative network. The findings show that WHA resolutions constitute a complex network of interconnected global health issues. This network is characterised by several community patterns. While chain-like patterns are associated with specific diseases programmes, radial patterns are characteristic of highly important procedural decisions that member states reaffirm in similar situations. Finally, densely connected communities correspond to contested topics and emergencies. While these emergent patterns suggest the relevance of using network analysis to understand global health norms in international organisations, we reflect on how this computational approach can be extended to provide new understandings of how multilateral governance systems work, and to address some important contemporary questions about the effects of regime complexity on global health diplomacy. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-0b40125def824437b86d2ea1cc001fde |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2059-7908 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2023-04-01 |
| publisher | BMJ Publishing Group |
| record_format | Article |
| series | BMJ Global Health |
| spelling | doaj-art-0b40125def824437b86d2ea1cc001fde2025-01-23T13:05:09ZengBMJ Publishing GroupBMJ Global Health2059-79082023-04-018410.1136/bmjgh-2022-011211Emergent patterns in global health diplomacy: a network analysis of the resolutions adopted by the World Health Assembly from 1948 to 2022Kelley Lee0Didier Wernli1Nicolas Levrat2Bastien Chopard3Jean-Luc Falcone4Stephan Davidshofer54 Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, CanadaGlobal Studies Institute, University of Geneva, Geneva, SwitzerlandGlobal Studies Institute, University of Geneva, Geneva, SwitzerlandDepartment of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, University of Geneva, Geneva, SwitzerlandDepartment of Informatics, University of Geneva, Geneva, SwitzerlandGlobal Studies Institute, University of Geneva, Geneva, SwitzerlandFrom a complexity perspective on governance, multilateral diplomacy is based on interactions between people, ideas, norms, policies and institutions. This article uses a computer-assisted methodology to better understand governance systems as a network of norms. All World Health Assembly (WHA) resolutions that were available from 1948 to 2022 were collected from the WHO Institutional Repository for Information Sharing (IRIS) database. Regular expressions were used to identify how resolutions cite other resolutions and the resulting relationships were analysed as a normative network. The findings show that WHA resolutions constitute a complex network of interconnected global health issues. This network is characterised by several community patterns. While chain-like patterns are associated with specific diseases programmes, radial patterns are characteristic of highly important procedural decisions that member states reaffirm in similar situations. Finally, densely connected communities correspond to contested topics and emergencies. While these emergent patterns suggest the relevance of using network analysis to understand global health norms in international organisations, we reflect on how this computational approach can be extended to provide new understandings of how multilateral governance systems work, and to address some important contemporary questions about the effects of regime complexity on global health diplomacy.https://gh.bmj.com/content/8/4/e011211.full |
| spellingShingle | Kelley Lee Didier Wernli Nicolas Levrat Bastien Chopard Jean-Luc Falcone Stephan Davidshofer Emergent patterns in global health diplomacy: a network analysis of the resolutions adopted by the World Health Assembly from 1948 to 2022 BMJ Global Health |
| title | Emergent patterns in global health diplomacy: a network analysis of the resolutions adopted by the World Health Assembly from 1948 to 2022 |
| title_full | Emergent patterns in global health diplomacy: a network analysis of the resolutions adopted by the World Health Assembly from 1948 to 2022 |
| title_fullStr | Emergent patterns in global health diplomacy: a network analysis of the resolutions adopted by the World Health Assembly from 1948 to 2022 |
| title_full_unstemmed | Emergent patterns in global health diplomacy: a network analysis of the resolutions adopted by the World Health Assembly from 1948 to 2022 |
| title_short | Emergent patterns in global health diplomacy: a network analysis of the resolutions adopted by the World Health Assembly from 1948 to 2022 |
| title_sort | emergent patterns in global health diplomacy a network analysis of the resolutions adopted by the world health assembly from 1948 to 2022 |
| url | https://gh.bmj.com/content/8/4/e011211.full |
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