Domestic politics and the WHO’s International Health Regulations: Explaining the use of trade and travel barriers during disease outbreaks

Catherine Z. Worsnop ()
Additional contact information
Catherine Z. Worsnop: Worcester State University

The Review of International Organizations, 2017, vol. 12, issue 3, No 2, 365-395

Abstract: Abstract During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO), acting under the authority of the International Health Regulations (IHR), recommended against the imposition of trade or travel restrictions because, according to WHO, these barriers would not prevent disease spread. Why did 47 states impose barriers anyway? This article argues that states use barriers as political cover to prevent a loss of domestic political support. This logic suggests that governments anticipating high domestic political benefits for imposing barriers during an outbreak will be likely to do so. Logistic regression and duration analysis of an original dataset coding state behavior during H1N1 provide support for this argument: democracies with weak health infrastructure—those that stand to gain the most from imposing barriers during an outbreak because they are particularly vulnerable to a negative public reaction—are more likely than others to impose barriers and to do so quickly.

Keywords: International organizations; World Health Organization; Global health; Compliance; Domestic politics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11558-016-9260-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:revint:v:12:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s11558-016-9260-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... iology/journal/11558

DOI: 10.1007/s11558-016-9260-1

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of International Organizations is currently edited by A. Dreher

More articles in The Review of International Organizations from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().