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DESCRIPTION:McGill Global Health Programs is delighted to partner with the 
 McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy to present this special semi
 nar by Ted Schrecker\, Professor of Global Health Politics at Durham Unive
 rsity.\n\nAbstract\n\nGlobal health researchers routinely investigate the 
 activities of states\, for example as providers of health services domesti
 cally and development assistance internationally\, and are often funded by
  them through granting agencies. Global health practitioners routinely int
 eract with state agencies\, and may well work for them\, either as employe
 es or through grant-funded projects. A further layer of complexity involve
 s the influence of state actions and policies on health outcomes by way of
  channels such as trade and investment agreements and domestic and externa
 l security interventions. Yet the social science of global health includes
  little theorizing\, or even critical reflection\, on the nature and role 
 of the state - despite the frequency of references\, in discussions of glo
 bal governance and health\, to the supposedly ‘post-Westphalian’ character
  of the global health policy environment.\n\nWhatever one’s view of their 
 rather ambitious claim to have developed ‘a conceptual framework for inter
 preting recorded human history’\, Douglass North and John Wallis remind us
  that in much of the world the state itself is contested terrain\, charact
 erized by ongoing contests among elites over access to the means of violen
 ce. Even outside such contexts political choices are increasingly dominate
 d or constrained by wealth\, whether through direct corruption (a topic po
 litely avoided in many circles)\; by the isolation of personal and corpora
 te wealth through capital flight to offshore financial centres (an indispe
 nsable facilitator of corruption)\; or by the ‘exit option’ that capital e
 njoys with respect to outsourcing or offshoring of production. These are a
 mong the contributors to rising inequalities within national borders\, eve
 n under conditions of formal democracy\, and have important ‘on the ground
 ’ implications for such widely agreed objectives as progress towards unive
 rsal health coverage.\n\nThe operations of formal democracy are in turn un
 der attack not only by concentrations of wealth but also from the recent d
 rift to neoliberal authoritarianism in Russia and the United States\, and 
 aggressive cyber-interventionism by the former. (The US\, of course\, has 
 a long history of interfering with elections outside its borders using low
 er-tech measures.) Finally\, there is the paradox of rapid progress on at 
 least some health indicators in showcase jurisdictions such as Bangladesh 
 and Rwanda that are repressive and retrograde in terms of the integrity of
  political processes and the accountability of governments. Each of these 
 trends on its own is not new\, but together they portend a qualitative cha
 nge in the global political landscape\, and quite possibly the end of both
  the realities and the illusions of progress sustained in the second half 
 of the twentieth century – hence\, the title of this paper. I conclude wit
 h a few tentative observations\, relevant far beyond the global health fie
 ld\, about prospects for survival outside the world we have lost\, and the
  chances for recovering portions of it.\n\nA light lunch will be served.\n
 \ngabriellamonica.kranz [at] mcgill.ca (subject: RSVP%3A%20Ted%20Schrecker
 %20Seminar)  (RSVP)\n\n \n
DTSTART:20170328T163000Z
DTEND:20170328T180000Z
LOCATION:Conference Room\, Charles Meredith House\, CA\, QC\, Montreal\, H3
 A 1A3\, 1130 avenue des Pins Ouest
SUMMARY:Joint IHSP-GHP Seminar: The state and global health: Reflections fo
 r a post-democratic world
URL:https://www.mcgill.ca/globalhealth/channels/event/joint-ihsp-ghp-semina
 r-state-and-global-health-reflections-post-democratic-world-265651
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