Political Economy for Health Blog
Posts are by members of the Peoples Health Movement PEH Network. Anyone may comment but you will need to register before your first comment will be published.
This blogsite is a resource of the People’s Health Movement. Its purpose is to provide a platform for discussion of the applications of political economy to the struggle for health. (The People’s Charter for Health provides an overview of PHM’s analyses and objectives: the ‘struggle for health’).
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China, unequal exchange, and the present world-historic juncture
Professor Jason Hickel’s speech to the Fudan University forum (18 April 2025) on “Socialist Perspectives on Global Governance in a Multipolar World.” Published by Progressive International. “My objective this morning is to analyse the world economy from the perspective of unequal exchange. I will describe how this works, how it poses an obstacle to development,…
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Pharmaceutical patents and data exclusivity in an age of AI-driven drug discovery and development
Artificial intelligence (AI) stands to drastically reduce both the risks and costs normally associated with the development of new medical products. This could fundamentally reshape pharmaceutical innovation, challenging both the justification for high medicines prices to recoup investment in research and development (R&D) and the market exclusivity systems – including patents and data exclusivity –…
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Who’s Afraid of Trump’s Tariffs?
C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh (posted on IDEAS blog, 1 April 2025) observe that the weaponization of tariffs by US President Donald Trump has generated fear and loathing across the world. These threats are not only purely performative; nor are they just transactional in nature. The logic of these tariff threats in most cases…
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Has the Indian Patents Act succeeded in ensuring access to affordable medicine?
Prof Biswajit Dhar (in The Leaflet, 16 April 2025) argues that the major flexibilities in the Indian Patent Act – Section 3(d) and the compulsory licensing system – to make medicines affordable, have been under-implemented. As prices of medicines have skyrocketed, secondary patenting has proliferated while compulsory licensing has been invoked only once. In full…
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Oligarchy and the subversion of democracy – warnings from South Africa
Wim Naudé (in Review of African Political Economy, 11 April 2025) warns that South Africa’s oligarchy offers a case study in how elite control can subvert democracy and entrench inequality. Since the end of Apartheid, the country has embraced neoliberal economic policies that favour mining, finance, and agri-business elites, pointing to a strong collusion between…
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Operation ‘save capitalism’ in America
By C.P. Chandrasekhar in Frontline 7 March 2025 Make no mistake: Trump and his team do not wish to destroy the US state; they aim to capture it and make it even more an instrument to serve the rich. If the first month of Donald Trump’s second term as US President is any indication, global…
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Resources on Pandemic Treaty
The 13th session of the INB closed on 21 Feb 2024. See report of INB13 here. See also, courtesy of Health Policy Watch, the status of the draft treaty at the beginning of INB13, here. Useful sites for following the development of the draft treaty: INB Index page; HPW Pandemic Treaty Collection; Medicines, Law and…
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Controlling capital: Inflation targeting and external vulnerabilities in the Brazilian economy
Fernando Rugitsky, Phenomenal World, 21 Feb 2025 Central banks are back in the spotlight. After more than three decades of low inflation in rich countries, the rise in prices observed between 2021 and 2023 forced academic discussions into the public sphere. Such debates are not restricted to technical economic issues but deal explicitly with the…
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PEPFAR under review: what’s at stake for PEPFAR’s future
Jirair Ratevosian et al (22 Feb 2025) in Lancet 405(10479),603-5 The US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) faces a pivotal moment, confronting one of its most challenging periods since its launch in 2003. The new policy priorities of the administration of US President Donald Trump, along with reports of 21 abortion services performed under…
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American Workers vs. Surveillance Capitalism: The Future of Digital Trade Policy
By Burcu Kilic in CarrCentre Commentary (Kennedy School, Harvard), 10 Feb 2025 It has only been a few weeks since President Trump’s inauguration, and already, the relationship between political power and tech power has fundamentally shifted. Big tech CEOs not only had the front-row seats at the inauguration and received VIP treatment on Capitol Hill,…
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