Cooperadio - The Global Cooperation Podcast

With the spread of the SARS-CoV2 virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) quickly found itself caught between calls to resolve the crisis and accusations of having delayed an efficient pandemic response in the interest of certain member states. While expectations were high for the WHO to deliver on its mandate as guardian of global health, countries with self-interested agendas undermined the WHO‘s role by providing insufficient funding and engaging in forum shopping.

How can the WHO rise to the enormous challenge of  promoting good health and well-being globally in spite of these impediments? What role do other actors of the global health architecture play, and how do they interact with the WHO? And what impact do private-public-initiatives or other less formal institutions like the G20 have on the future of global health governance?

We had the chance to discuss these and other questions with Prof. Dr. Anna Holzscheiter, Chair of Political Science with a focus on international politics at TU Dresden and the head of the research group 'Governance for Global Health' at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB).

In our ‘Research Feature’, Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn introduces his state-of-the-art work on the usefulness of blockchain technology for climate finance and for improving the input and output legitimacy of climate governance. He tries to map the possibilities and limits of techno-centric climate governance by asking: Can new emerging blockchain experiments actually enable outputs that reduce greenhouse gas emission? Follow this link to find his latest paper!

For additional information on the episode, visit our website. We look forward to your feedback or questions on Twitter: @GCR_21 ! Use the hashtag #cooperadiopodcast Or send us an e-mail: [email protected].

Our guests of this episode are also on Twitter: @AHolzscheiter and @MalcolmCV

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction, 

03:45 - Interview with Anna Holzscheiter,

35:18 - Research Feature

Further reading: 

Laura Pantzerhielm, Anna Holzscheiter, Thurid Bahr (2019): Governing effectively in a complex world? How metagovernance norms and changing repertoires of knowledge shape international organization discourses on institutional order in global health,Cambridge Review of International Affairs.

Further Reading by Anna and her research group 'Governance for Global Health': Publications GOGH

Jan Aart Scholte, Soetkin Verhaegen, Jonas Tallberg (2021): Elite attitudes and the future of global governance, International Affairs, Vol. 97, Issue 3, May 2021, Pages 861–886.

COVID-19 has uncovered the interdependencies of our globalized era and revealed how quickly interruptions in this system translate into peoples everyday lives all around the globe. So how has “the world” fared in (politically) managing this challenge as a whole? Have we succeeded in cooperating globally to overcome this crisis? And what does our response to this one tell us about any challenges of the future, such as the climate change emergency?

A couple of weeks ago, our host Prof. Jan Aart Scholte spoke with Dr Richard Ponzio, Director of the "Global Governance, Justice & Security“ Program and Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. He wanted to know: Does traditional multilateral cooperation have a future? What will diplomacy post-COVID-19 look like? And what role could private actors play in the global cooperation architecture of the future?

As a mode of global cooperation, multilateralism has been under strain long before the onset of the pandemic, as certain actors have been contesting either its functionality or even its value altogether. Evidence of an increasingly fragile internationalism, where great powers instrumentalize institutions for geopolitical calculations, has loomed not just since the protectionist turn of the Trump administration. However, Richard sees reason to be mildly optimistic about how this crisis will be dealt with, given, for instance, the United States‘ return to a more international profile under the Biden administration.

In our ‘Research Feature’ segment we talk to Michele Tedeschini about his work on the legacy of the New International Economic Order and how its ideas still resonate in today’s international relations and influence the relationships of countries of the so-called “Global South” with each other, and with the industrialized nations of “the West”.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction

02:55 - Interview with Richard Ponzio

46:00 - Research Feature: Michele Tedeschini

For further info on Michele‘s work see his website or follow him on twitter: @mtedeschini. You can find the edited volume „Contingency in International Law“ here, and Michele‘s paper here. 

If you have feedback or questions for us, we look forward to your comments to our twitter account @GCR_21 via the hashtag #cooperadiopodcast or you can get in touch via e-mail: [email protected].

If you have any questions for Richard, follow him on twitter: @RichardPonzio! 

Further Reading by Richard Ponzio:

„Coping with New and Old Crises“

„Perils and pitfalls of America‘s return to the multilateral order“

For over a year now, Covid-19 and its effects have taken centre-stage in the life of people around the world. From day-to-day private matters to big decisions of international politics and the global economy, few things are left unchanged by the pandemic. It has uncovered the extreme interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of our globalized era. So how has “the world” fared in managing this challenge? Have we succeeded in cooperating globally to overcome this crisis, and what does our response to this one tell us about any challenges of the future, such as the climate change emergency?

To our first guest on “Cooperadio”, Professor Thomas Hale of Oxford University, the Coronavirus pandemic is a “wake-up call to the weakness of our current efforts in cooperation and the need to strengthen them to anticipate the crises to come.” It has demonstrated just how unprepared the international system is to deal with such fundamentally transnational threats and exposed once more the problematic effects of (overt or covert) nationalism and national self-interest.

With show host Professor Jan Aart Scholte, he discusses different actors' and institutions' potential for managing the global crises of the 21st century. They look, among other things, at how the pandemic challenges our preconception of the appropriateness of states intervening in societies for “the greater public good”, and what lessons we can draw from this for the analysis of global governance in the future.

In our ‘Research Feature’ segment we talk to Alena Drieschova about her work on Representants and International Orders and about how international politics can be witnessed in our everyday lives.

Timestamps: 

00:00 - Introduction

02:43 - Interview with Thomas Hale

22:33 - Research Feature: Alena Drieschova

You can find more information on our website. 

If you have feedback or questions for us, we look forward to your comments to our twitter account @GCR_21 via the hashtag #cooperadiopodcast or you can get in touch via e-mail: [email protected]. 

If you have any questions for Thomas, follow him on twitter: @thomasnhale or find out more about his work on his University of Oxford website. The Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker is available on this site.

For further info on Alena‘s work see her personal website.