Power and Governance

Abstract

It is commonly held that the World Health Organization is the apex institution in the issue of global public health sector. However since the 1970s, the legitimacy and effectiveness of the WHO has continuously been questioned raising doubts about the role it was entrusted with, that is the safeguard of the highest possible level of health for all the international community. The literature of governance often diverges away from the concept of power but in reality

governance necessarily entails an expression of power. In this thesis, a novel approach of governance has been used to analyze the relationship between power and governance of the WHO during the outbreak of SARS in 2003. Despite the prevalent neoliberalist undertone when it comes to defining the concept of governance, governance necessarily entails an expression of power.

The SARS outbreak in 2003 has been chosen to analyze what kind(s) of power the WHO had exercised for the following reasons. Externally the SARS outbreak presented itself as a newly discovered infectious disease and the impact and extent it had caused to the international community. Internally a new director-general Gro Harlem Brundtland was appointed with much expectations of reforming the WHO. This research revolves around the question whether the WHO had the necessary power or not to contain a new disease and lead the global health governance as it should. Analysis of different activities and strategies deployed by the WHO has demonstrated that despite criticisms, the WHO was indeed able to exercise a mélange of governance that are institutional, structural and productive power among them productive power being the most significant one. However it is the finding of this thesis that the WHO cannot solely assume for the task of the successful containment of the SARS outbreak, in the extent that a network of myriad actors has also contributed to the containment of one hundred days of SARS. Therefore it is necessary to acknowledge the finding of this paper is limited to the case of SARS and cannot be applied generally in discussing the governance of the WHO.