Architecture Amidst Anarchy: Global Health\u27s Quest for Governance

Increased concern about global health has focused attention on governance questions, and calls for new governance architecture for global health have appeared. This article examines the growing demand for such architecture and argues that the architecture metaphor is inapt for understanding the challenges global health faces. In addition to traditional problems experienced in coordinating State behavior, global health governance faces a new problem, what I call “open-source anarchy.” The dynamics of open-source anarchy are such that States and non-State actors resist governance reforms that would restrict their freedom of action. In this context, what is emerging is not governance architecture but a normative “source code” that States, international organizations, and non-State actors apply in addressing global health problems. The source code’s application reveals deficiencies in national public health governance capabilities, deficiencies that are difficult to address in conditions of open-source anarchy. Governance initiatives on global health are, therefore, rendered vulnerable

A Theory of Open-Source Anarchy

The rise of the importance of non-State actors in global politics challenges existing theories of international relations, and this article presents a new approach to the non- State actor phenomenon by developing a theory of open-source anarchy. The article reviews the anarchy problem in the study of international relations and how leading theories explain this problem. This analysis questions whether these leading theories can explain the nature of non-State actor participation in contemporary global affairs. The article then develops a theoretical framework that addresses the non-State actor challenge. The framework argues that the nature of anarchy has shifted from a condition monopolized by States to one in which anarchy has become open source and accessible to non-State actors in unprecedented ways. The article explores the relationship between material power and ideas in open-source anarchy to explain the manner in which international relations operate in the early twenty-first century. Democracy and the Transnational Private Sector, Symposium. Indiana University School of Law – Bloomington, April 12-13, 2007