Vaccination Politics
The Comparative Politics and Policy of COVID-19 Vaccination
Comparing COVID-19 vaccination policies and politics around the world
Description
COVID-19 vaccines were a historic triumph, with less than a year between the initial identification of the microbe and effective vaccines being administered. They were also a public administration challenge, demanding that governments of the world procure and administer billions of doses in widely different contexts. In many countries they were intensely polarizing, catalyzing a rise in anti-vaccination politics.
Vaccination Politics brings together public health and political science expertise for a global, systematic comparison of vaccination politics. The authors look at 32 countries’ experiences—from Austria to Malawi and the United States to Hong Kong—to understand how trust, wealth, pharmaceutical industries, regulators, international organizations, and health systems succeeded or failed at acquiring vaccines and vaccinating citizens. It shows how different governments and populations navigated challenges. Global inequality, political trust, contestation over health system priorities, and opportunistic politicians all played roles in shaping the subsequent politics of health and vaccination around the world. A conclusion brings together lessons for policy and key issues for further research. While the next pandemic is unknown to us today, the response to it will be shaped by the positive and negative legacies of COVID-19 vaccination politics.
Scott L. Greer is Richard Carl Jelinek Professor of Health Management and Policy, Professor of Global Public Health, Professor by Courtesy of Political Science at the University of Michigan, and Professor in the Linz Institute for Transformative Change and Institute of Political Science and Social Policy at the Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
Elize Massard da Fonseca is Associate Professor of Public Administration at the São Paulo School of Business Administration, Getulio Vargas Foundation, Brazil.
Holly Jarman is Associate Professor of Health Management and Policy and Global Public Health at the University of Michigan.
Elizabeth J. King is Associate Professor of Health Behavior and Healthy Equity and Global Public Health at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health and Director of the Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies at University of Michigan.
Reviews
“Scott Greer and colleagues ask how governments, institutions, and societies navigated the defining public health challenge of our era. This book is essential reading for scholars, policymakers, public health professionals, and students, offering unparalleled insights into trust, governance, equity, and the political forces that shaped vaccination success and failure worldwide.”
- Martin McKee CBE, Professor of European Public Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and former President, European Public Health Association
“Vaccination Politics is an extraordinary work of comparative health politics. It shows a central paradox of COVID-19: science created vaccines, but politics determined who benefited and whether they were trusted. Its lessons could hardly be more timely. As vaccines open new possibilities and populism increasingly politicizes public health, innovation is not enough without the political capacity to deliver it fairly and sustain trust.”
- Josep J. Figueras, Director Emeritus, European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies