Understanding change in global health policy: ideas, discourse and networks

How is radical change in global health policy possible? Material factors such as economics or human resources are important, but ideational factors such as ideas and discourse play an important role as well. In this paper, I apply a theoretical framework to show how discourse made it possible for public and private actors to fundamentally change their way of working together--to shift from international public and private interactions to global health partnerships (GHPs)--and in the process create a new institutional mechanism for governing global health. Drawing on insights from constructivist analysis, I demonstrate how discourse justified, legitimised, communicated and coordinated ideas about the practice of GHPs through a concentrated network of partnership pioneers. As attention from health policy analysts turns increasingly to ideational explanations for answers to global health problems, this paper contributes to the debate by showing how, precisely, discourse makes change possible.