Applying Global Governance Lessons From the Classroom to the Global Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic rages on, and educators are integrating its consequences into academic lessons, teaching students to apply these concepts to realistic solutions. Directly affected are lessons covered in Professor Sue J. Goldie’s course GenEd 1063: World Health: Challenges and Opportunities, including the lesson for transnational global risks, a component of the final module Cross-Sectoral Global Challenges: Thinking Across Disciplines. The four major components of global governance are global public goods, managing externalities, global solidarity, and stewardship/leadership. Here, we bring a piece our virtual classroom to you, showcasing what global governance looks like through the lens of a pandemic. 

1. Global Public Goods. Global public goods are creations that can be shared—free of cost—by all. We normally see this as guidelines and standards, benefits of research, and access to new technologies, including vaccines. As inequities in resources prevail, public goods can address these inequities by ensuring that everyone can get their feet on the ground, and build innovative, tailored solutions from the ground up.
2. Managing Externalities. Managing externalities involves sovereign nations taking steps to protect their citizens, and evaluating how that can fit into the good of the global community. Managing externalities include enforcing tobacco laws, pollution policies, and pandemic preparedness. If these are addressed domestically, then their harmful effects are much less likely to affect others across the globe. Managing externalities also includes coordination in preparedness, surveillance, and information sharing when an unexpected event—such as a global pandemic—does occur. 
3. Global Solidarity. Mobilizing global solidarity conventionally means at least one nation gives development aid and humanitarian assistance to another. This involves technical cooperation, special attention to protecting agency for the dispossessed—that is, stateless, refugees, and asylum seekers. While some countries may not have the financial means and infrastructure to invest, it is even more crucial for others to step up and fulfill responsibilities of global citizenship. After all, as our world becomes increasingly interconnected and interdependent, so too, does our health. 
4. Stewardship/Leadership. Since global leaders and international institutions such as the United Nations cannot force cooperation, we must agree to hold each other mutually accountable. Leaders must work cohesively—harmonized, aligned, and serving the global community, ensuring global consensus along the way. Effective stewardship involves establishing strategic direction, complying with mechanisms to convene, and having productive discourse through discussions and debates. Negotiation requires years of consensus building, as we can see through some of our world’s most crucial targets—the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  

To learn more about global governance, explore our resource pack on global health systems and governance. Additionally, freshly updated and curated data are available in our COVID-19 resource pack.