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Despite self-congratulatory rhetoric, Canada compromised COVID-19 vaccine equity with policies impeding a proposed global waiver of vaccine intellectual property (IP) rules. To learn from Canada's vaccine nationalism we explore the worldview - a coherent textual picture of the world - in a sample of Government of Canada communications regarding global COVID-19 vaccine sharing. Analysed documents portray risks and disparities as unrelated to the dynamics and power relations of the Canadian and international economies. Against this depoliticised backdrop, economic growth fueled by strict IP rules and free trade is advanced as the solution to inequities. Global vaccine access and distribution are pursued via a charity-focused public-private-partnership approach, with proposals to relax international IP rules dismissed as unhelpful. Rather than a puzzling lapse by a good faith 'middle power', Canada's obstruction of global COVID-19 vaccine equity is a logical and deliberate extension of dominant neoliberal economic policy models. Health sector challenges to such models must prioritise equity in global pandemic governance via politically assertive and less conciliatory stances towards national governments and multilateral organisations. Mobilisation for health equity should transform the overall health-damaging macroeconomic model, complementing efforts based on specific individual health determinants or medical technologies.

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From the earliest studies of soft power in International Relations, the importance of educational exchanges has been well-established. Studies of international education in the context of Canadian soft power often draw on cases from the higher education sector. This article argues that greater attention should be paid to the K-12 level, especially as budgetary pressures in Ontario's education system are leading school boards to rapidly expand their international student recruitment efforts. Although this is not an example of intentional soft power projection, it nevertheless represents an important reminder that subnational actors may accidentally become paradiplomats whose actions have consequences on the international level. Further, this case reveals the importance of paying attention to actors typically overlooked by IR scholarship. Drawing on Joseph Nye's theory of soft power and in conversation with prior research on international education as a mechanism of soft power projection, this article traces the thread between budgetary pressures in Ontario school boards and the broader context of soft power projection.

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This study aims to evaluate the relationship between renewable and non-renewable energy consumption and economic growth in post-Soviet Eurasian countries by employing panel data from 15 countries from 1996 to 2018. The results reveal that the contribution of renewable energy consumption (REC) to economic growth is greater than non-renewable energy consumption. The overall findings imply that the transformation of energy consumption from non-renewable to renewable offers environmental advantages and growth opportunities. Furthermore, the transition to renewables may also expand the range of foreign relations policy options available for these countries, which, in turn, might contribute to a better alignment with evolving global regimes. Transition demands towards the long-term sustainability of global energy sources put pressure on countries to expand their domestic policy efforts and join international cooperation efforts. Therefore, post-Soviet Eurasian countries should develop strategic policy mechanisms and reforms designed to accelerate investments in renewable energy technologies.

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The role of higher education in the foreign policy of states has been increasing significantly in order to generate soft power. Nevertheless, the literature on the educational aspect of soft power has yet to be systematically reviewed. Therefore, this systematic review is conducted to delineate and analyze the major studies in the field of international higher education which indicates education as a soft power resource for a country. To identify the multiple and contrary arguments on the topic, this study reviewed 48 peer-reviewed articles published from 2001 to 2022. The data collected from the reviewed papers are organized into five sub-sections outlined in the results sections. The contradictions in the literature are examined within the sub-sections in order to understand the various perspectives on education as a resource of soft power. Through analyzing the data mentioned in the results section, this study provides a framework of the essential conditions to harness education as a soft power resource. Furthermore, this review also suggests prospects for future research in this area.

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We analyze in this article the effects of personality on attitudes toward foreign policy through a comprehensive aspect-level approach. We claim that previous observed null domain-level effects are the product of the aspect-level effects of opposing signs. By and large, we show that some personality effects are of comparable size or bigger than demographics studied in the literature, and that some of these effects are unique and independent of demographic covariates. Our results show that openness, orderliness, and compassion render people to be more supportive of cooperation. Assertiveness is the primary driver of support for the use of military force, whereas politeness and withdrawal ground reverse effects. Volatility roots isolationism postures, whereas industriousness, enthusiasm, and compassion show strong opposing effects. Moving beyond the Big Five personality domain approach provides us with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how personality is associated with attitudes toward international issues.

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Air pollutants allegedly originating from China have become a thorny issue in South Korea. Despite a neutral view of the topic on the part of the South Korean government, recent public polls show a high correlation between the air pollution issue and negative sentiment toward China. How has the media reported on China regarding air pollutants in South Korea? What is the effect of media reports on air pollution on anti-Chinese sentiment and foreign policy attitudes? By examining news headlines and Twitter data in 2015 and 2018, this work finds that media reports blaming China for air pollution doubled during the 2015-2018 period. Discourse surrounding air pollution also shifted: negative sentiment directed at both the Chinese government and the Chinese people increased in 2018 compared to 2015. In addition, an original online survey experiment shows that China-blaming articles have a causal effect on increasing related resentment, particularly toward Chinese people, and that this effect is moderated by age group. Such articles have also had negative effects on foreign policy attitudes via increased anti-Chinese sentiment; greater hostility toward the Chinese people is found to have a causal effect on reduced support for strengthening relations with their country. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11366-023-09849-z.

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Russia's foreign policy concept, last updated in 2023, envisioned economic and political cooperation with countries of the Asia-Pacific as important for advancing Russia's agenda as a global power and emphasised the need to improve connectivity across Eurasia. This article applies a novel theoretical framework for analysing Russia's approach to connectivity in Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Drawing from policy documents and secondary sources, the article identifies three different geographical spaces targeted by Russian connectivity policy: East of the Russian Federation, post-Soviet Central Asia, and Greater Eurasia. It is argued that the attempts to improve the cooperative connectivity of the Russian Far East have been half-hearted. In contrast, the attempt to retain and rebuild connectivity within the post-Soviet space has followed the logics of competition, containment, and coercion. Moreover, by promoting the Greater Eurasian Partnership, Russia has sought to keep status equality with China against the backdrop of the latter's Belt and Road Initiative. The article maintains that Russia is a connectivity actor of its own right, even if there is a major gap between its connectivity strategy and its implementation. It further suggests that the war in Ukraine has accelerated the trend towards coercion and disconnectivity.

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Climate changes affect planet ecosystems, living beings, humans, including their lives, rights, economy, housing, migration, and both physical and mental health. Geo-psychiatry is a new discipline within the field of psychiatry studying the interface between various geo-political factors including geographical, political, economic, commercial and cultural determinants which affect society and psychiatry: it provides a holistic overview on global issues such as climate changes, poverty, public health and accessibility to health care. It identifies geopolitical factors and their effects at the international and national levels, as well as considers the politics of climate changes and poverty within this context. This paper then introduces the Compassion, Assertive Action, Pragmatism, and Evidence Vulnerability Index (CAPE-VI) as a global foreign policy index: CAPE-VI calculates how foreign aid should be prioritised for countries that are at risk or already considered to be fragile. These countries are characterised by various forms of conflict, disadvantaged by extremes of climate change, poverty, human rights abuses, and suffering from internal warfare or terrorism.

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During 2016 China's policies towards North Korea appeared to undergo considerable short-term change, increasingly distancing itself from its neighbour and instead supporting the international community's response. Existing research has focused on long-term policy change and given little importance to short-term changes in policy, or has drawn on realist and constructivist theories which expect consistency and struggle to account for these changes. This article took an identity discourse approach to understanding the 2016 short-term changes in China's North Korea policy. It used quantitative computer assisted text analysis methods to measure changes in the dominance of different identity discourses related to North Korea that are produced on the Chinese Internet. It found that around 2015-2016, a previously more dominant "revolutionary" identity discourse lost dominance to a "stakeholder" identity discourse. The article argues that this change made possible the shift in approach to North Korea at the start of 2016 and indicates ways the short-term policy changes at this time may contribute to longer-term change in China's behaviour.

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Sanctions are among the most widely used foreign policy tools of governments and international organizations in response to national or international wrongdoings. Beyond the dichotomous question of whether to adopt or not to adopt sanctions against a target, decision-makers develop different designs when they impose restrictions: targeted sanctions like asset freezes and travel bans, arms embargoes, or economic sanctions such as financial restrictions and commodity bans. What accounts for this variation in the design of sanctions regimes? This article investigates this question by developing a configurational explanation that combines domestic- and international-level factors for the choice of an economic versus a targeted sanctions design. I test these factors on original data mapping European Union (EU) autonomous sanctions against third countries in force in 2019 through set-theoretic methods. The analysis shows that a militarily strong target's serious misbehavior through grave human rights violations triggers EU action in the form of economic sanctions, however, only in combination with two conditions: first, the EU reacts to a misbehavior through the adoption of an economic design when the United States imposes economic sanctions, too (path 1); second, the salience of a target's conflict triggers an economic design of sanctions in case of grave human rights violations (path 2). Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11558-022-09458-0.

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Background: The CAPE Vulnerability Index serves as a worldwide foreign policy indicator that implies which countries should get assistance first. It provides an evidence-based, well-structured, and well-reasoned strategy for employing aid in bilateral arrangements with mental health as a basis. Objective: The second edition of the CAPE VI has been developed to identify which nations should get priority foreign aid. Materials and Methods: We considered various indices or measures at the country level reflecting the average national health status or factors influencing public health. To make our choice, we used 26 internationally accessible and verified indicators. For the study, we have scored the countries according to these indices and prioritized those with the worst scores. Results: The CAPE Vulnerability Index is based on the number of times a country is ranked among the low-scoring nations. It is based on nine parameters and is an independent measure even though there may be a correlation with similar indices such as life expectancy, disability-adjusted life years(DALYs), physician numbers, and gross domestic product(GDP). Conclusion: We concluded that low-scoring countries were fragile or failed states, such as nations where governments lack complete oversight or power, are often oppressive and corrupt, have allegations of violations of human rights, or are marked by political turmoil in different forms, drawbacks from severe environmental damage, severe impoverishment, inequalities, cultural and racial divisions, cannot supply fundamental amenities, are victims of terrorism, and so on. To address these essential problems impacting fragile nations, administrations, aid donors, local organizations, mental health specialists, and associations should collaborate.

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Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the authorities of Serbia have undertaken a concerted effort to secure China's support in containing the coronavirus. This asymmetrical cooperation, apart from aspects concerning health security, has allowed both sides to obtain considerable political and economic benefits. This article examines how China and Serbia utilize pandemic cooperation to pursue and realize their wider foreign and internal policy goals through patron-client ties, as well as highlighting the pitfalls of this kind of relationship. Although the outbreak of the pandemic and the medical cooperation that followed do not constitute a turning point in the well-established relations between the two countries, the article argues that pandemic cooperation has considerably strengthened relations. In many ways, the pattern observed by the authors resembles China's pandemic exchanges with other countries, especially smaller states with authoritarian inclinations.

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This article examines how health entered Brazilian foreign policy between 1995 and 2010 and the factors that allowed it to support the country's international presence. This issue is rarely examined in the literature on Brazilian health diplomacy. We analyze the specificities of this process within a policy analysis approach. By drawing on literature review, document analysis and key-actor interviews, we revise policies that were triggered by far-reaching and complex historical processes of change in Brazil. The article points to significant interrelationships between foreign policy and social policy, including health. Only during Lula governments (2003-2010) did health actually enter the foreign policy agenda, in significant support of Brazil's growing international presence. Brazil's internationalisation of its domestic policies connected with South-South cooperation exerted a central role. These developments were made possible by the activism and commitment of a variety of State and non-State actors who acted on at least two lines: national and transnational advocacy, and coordinated activities of Brazilian diplomats and government representatives, in collaboration with civil society activists. Institutional arrangements shifted in different conjunctures and were adjusted in a process permanently prone to conflicts and moves.

Este artigo examina como a saúde entrou na política externa brasileira entre 1995 e 2010 e os fatores que possibilitaram apoiar a sustentação da presença internacional do país. Essa questão raramente é examinada na literatura brasileira sobre diplomacia da saúde. Analisamos as especificidades desse processo por meio de uma abordagem de análise de políticas. Utilizamos revisão de literatura, de documentos e entrevistas com atores-chave para rediscutir as políticas desencadeadas por complexos e amplos processos históricos de mudança no Brasil. O artigo aponta importantes inter-relações entre política externa e política social, incluindo saúde. Somente durante os governos Lula (2003-2010) a saúde entrou de fato na agenda da política externa, em apoio significativo à crescente presença internacional do Brasil. A internacionalização das políticas domésticas brasileiras vinculadas à cooperação Sul-Sul exerceu papel central. Esses desenvolvimentos foram possibilitados pelo ativismo e comprometimento de diversos atores estatais e não estatais que atuaram em pelo menos duas linhas: advocacia nacional e transnacional e atividades coordenadas entre diplomatas brasileiros e representantes do governo, em colaboração com atores da sociedade civil. Os arranjos institucionais mudaram em diferentes conjunturas e foram ajustados em um processo propenso permanentemente a conflitos e mudanças

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BACKGROUND: Ethiopia's government and civil society have driven crosscutting initiatives in the last 15 years to improve sexual and reproductive health outcomes, including passing a 2005 abortion law that facilitated reduced rates of maternal death due to unsafe abortion. However, both the government and nongovernmental organizations have relied on external funding for sexual and reproductive health and rights, particularly from the U.S. government, which has been Ethiopia's largest global health donor. This article explores how the implementation and expansion of the 2017-2021 U.S. foreign policy "Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance," also known as the Global Gag Rule-which attached itself to a nongovernmental organization's funding-impacted sexual and reproductive health and rights, including safe abortion care, in Ethiopia. METHODS: This article is based on research conducted by PAI staff in Ethiopia in 2018 with follow-up in 2019. PAI held in-depth semistructured interviews with representatives of 30 organizations in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. Among these groups were U.S.-based and non-U.S. nongovernmental organizations, including community-based organizations, non-U.S. government donors, and Ethiopian government officials. RESULTS: Nongovernmental organizations have been essential to sexual and reproductive health service provision and advocacy in Ethiopia. Because of the sector's reliance on U.S. global health assistance, these organizations; their activities; and, consequently, the wider health system were negatively impacted by the Global Gag Rule. Certain vulnerable groups, particularly adolescents and youth, have traditionally relied on the private sector for sexual and reproductive health services. PAI's research demonstrates that U.S. policy disrupted activities and service delivery, threatened the closure of private clinics, stalled mobile outreach, and impacted safe abortion training of health personnel. Additionally, the Global Gag Rule dismantled partnerships, affected non-U.S. government donors' investments, and caused confusion that limited activities permissible under the policy. CONCLUSIONS: The Trump administration's Global Gag Rule forced non-U.S. organizations to choose between providing comprehensive care or losing U.S. global health assistance, ultimately impacting populations in need of services. Ethiopia provides a clear example of how the Global Gag Rule can threaten a country's domestic health agenda by targeting nongovernmental organizations that are vital to health service delivery and safe abortion care.

In 2005, Ethiopia's government, health advocates, and service providers secured a more liberal abortion law that has been instrumental in reducing maternal deaths due to unsafe abortion. However, these fragile gains are vulnerable because the in-country sexual and reproductive health sector has relied heavily on external funding. The U.S. government has been an important development partner to Ethiopia for global health and, in particular, reproductive health and family planning. As a result, the Global Gag Rule, reimposed and expanded by the Trump administration in 2017, impacted sexual and reproductive health and rights in Ethiopia. U.S. agencies and departments attached this policy to U.S. global health assistance for nongovernmental organizations that were critical partners in service delivery and advocacy. In a country like Ethiopia with a progressive environment for sexual and reproductive health, including safe abortion care, it remains important to examine the impacts of the Global Gag Rule, despite being rescinded in January 2021 by the Biden administration, as the policy has still not yet been permanently repealed and could be reinstated by future administrations.PAI's research sought to document the impacts of the expanded Global Gag Rule on sexual and reproductive health in Ethiopia, with a focus on safe abortion care. Study participants reported that nongovernmental organizations serving rural populations, adolescents and youth, sex workers, and people living with HIV/AIDS were impacted by the loss of U.S. government funding due to noncompliance with the policy. Organizations that chose to comply with the policy were forced to stop critical activities like training on safe abortion care. Outcomes also included self-censorship out of fear of the policy and dismantled partnerships between compliant and noncompliant organizations.

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After some two decades of growing partnership between Seoul and Tehran, South Korea's bilateral relationship with Iran reached a bottom of absolute gloom under the leadership of Moon Jae-in. Most of his presidency coincided with the administration of Donald Trump who followed a relatively contrasting approach toward the North Korean and Iranian nuclear issues. Washington's Pyongyang and Tehran policies were naturally bound to create opportunities as well as troubles for the Moon-led Korean government's dealing with North Korea and Iran. Arguing from a perspective of strategic choice, this study asserts that Moon almost forfeited the ROK's commercial interests in Iran for the sake of advancing his North Korean agenda. As a corollary, the South Korean-Iranian ties sank to an all-time low, culminating in unprecedented diplomatic tensions between the two countries over the issue of Iran's oil incomes frozen in Seoul. The Mideast country's subsequent resort to gunboat diplomacy by seizing a Korean oil tanker in the Persian Gulf did also little to break the gridlock over the dilemma of blocked assets because any satisfactory and lasting solution regarding this intractable trouble largely hinged on resolving the fate of Iran's nuclear deal between Tehran and Washington.

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BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study is to examine how PEPFAR's policies have changed and how these affects Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) issue in two focus countries (Botswana and Ethiopia) and two non-focus countries (Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DR of Congo). METHOD: This study investigates one country with the highest HIV rate (Botswana) and one with the lowest rates (Ethiopia) among the focus countries, as well as one each with the highest rate (Zimbabwe) and the lowest rate (DR Congo) among the non-focus countries. RESULTS: This study finds that President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has tended to change its strategies depending on a recipient country's epidemiology and has spent less in non-focus than in focus countries. CONCLUSIONS: But by revealing the contributions and limitations of PEPFAR in four African countries, this study shows how PEPFAR can improve its future policies in these countries.

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This article is a review of regional cross-border coordination and cooperation around the world. Two questions are raised: when trade dominates, does economic or functional interdependency result in cross-border linkages? Second, when politics and institutions mediate cross-border relations, do economic relations intensify? Specifically, do local-central networks of government actors and institutions mediate such processes when they emerge? To investigate those two questions, this work focuses on cross-border relations in various parts of the world primarily focusing of the role trading relations or local-central relations would play in developing cross-border networks spanning an international boundary. In an era of globalisation, increased trade across regions of the world seem to have led to a specific increased cross-border cooperation, however, taking different forms from intense trading relations to resulting cross-border institutionalisation. Those forms of cross-border cooperation in the various regions of the world, however, do not result from the same drivers: For the purpose of a comparative analysis of cross-border relations, the argument developed here is that regional drivers determine types of relations from no relations to intense trading and government-like forms of cooperation. However, in most cases as suggested below, the prime drivers of cross-border relations, trade, do not necessarily translate into increased border spanning governmental activism, and government cross-border institutionalisation does not necessarily transmute into increased economic integration.

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BACKGROUND: In 2021, donor countries, the pharmaceutical industry, and the COVAX initiative promoted vaccine donation or "dose-sharing" as a main solution to the inequitable global distribution of Covid-19 vaccines. COVAX positioned itself as a global vaccine-sharing hub that promised to share doses "equitably, effectively and transparently," according to rational criteria overseen by independent scientists. This article provides a critical analysis of the principles and practice of "dose-sharing," showing how it reveals the politics at play within COVAX. RESULTS: Donated doses were an important source of COVAX's vaccine supply in 2021, accounting for 60% of the doses the initiative delivered (543 million out of 910 million). However, donations could not compensate fully for COVAX's persistent procurement struggles: it delivered less than half of the two billion doses it originally projected for 2021, a fraction of the 9.25 billion doses that were administered globally in 2021. Donor countries and vaccine manufacturers systematically broke COVAX's principles for maximizing the impact of dose-sharing, delivering doses late, in smaller quantities than promised, and in ad hoc ways that made roll-out in recipient countries difficult. Some donors even earmarked doses for specific recipients, complicating and potentially undermining COVAX's equitable allocation mechanism. CONCLUSIONS: COVAX's pivot from global vaccine procurement mechanism to dose-sharing hub can be seen as a "win-win-win" solution for COVAX itself (who could claim success by having access to more doses), for donor countries (who could rebrand themselves as charitable donors rather than "vaccine hoarders"), and for the pharmaceutical industry (maintaining the status quo on intellectual property rights and protecting their commercial interests). Although dose-sharing helped COVAX's vaccine delivery, its impact was undermined by donors' and industry's pursuit of national security, diplomatic and commercial interests, which COVAX largely accommodated. The lack of transparency and accountability mechanisms within COVAX's overly complex governance structure as a global public-private partnership enabled these practices.

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This paper inquires theoretically into how leaders act and react to the state role of rising power through the case study of India. It brings together role theory and leadership trait analysis, and contends that there is a puzzling interplay between rising status and leaders' characteristics. We project that leaders' traits and styles condition how they enact roles. India and its leaders offer a suitable case for investigating this issue. Since the economically unstable early 1990s, India has gone through a relatively successful era of global emergence. Thus, we examine the relationship between India's roles and the leadership profiles of Prime Ministers Atal Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh and Narenda Modi, specifically their belief in the ability to control events and the need for power. We find especially in Vajpayee and Singh that their traits can help explain India's foreign policy roles and in Modi (first term only) a leader vulnerable to contextual winds. We argue that the interplay of leaders' traits and roles, as expressions of both material and social dimensions, helps assess how they make sense of their country's rising within both the regional and international systems.