Political will and political power: Global norm-setting and the governance of non-communicable diseases

Accounting for 65% of global mortality in 2010, non-communicable diseases (NCDs)—including cancer, cardiovascular and respiratory disease, and diabetes—are a significant and growing health concern. The conditions are a complex governance issue, touching upon a variety of policy domains and accelerated by a globalized food industry. Despite the threat that the diseases pose, the proportion of development assistance dedicated to NCDs has remained at 1-2%% for the past 30 years. This project attempts to identify whether this lack of investment is due to inadequate political will or scarcity of strong governance solutions. First, the project examines the evolution and current status of global norm-setting for NCD governance, using civil society and intergovernmental mobilization as indicators for political will. The project utilizes a hyperlink analysis to characterize the NCD transnational advocacy network, catalogues the number of major NCD events, and tracks phrase salience and IGO spending on NCDs over time. These analyses reveal a profusion of interest in the conditions, implying that inadequate political desire cannot explain funding stagnation. Then, the project assesses industry regulatory schemes based in hard international law, utilizing the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control as a case study. After identifying key similarities between the food and tobacco industries through analysis of internal documents, the project ultimately finds that the treaty functioned primarily to sustain norms rather than regulate industry and is thus not an appropriate governance solution. The project finally recommends investment into national NCD policy, which can complement ongoing social mobilization. In applying theories of international issue emergence, this project poses a novel challenge to the oft-cited humanitarian vision of global health by illustrating the extent of political influence on the international health agenda.