Católica Porto Business School invites its community to attend the next CEGE4ALL: Service Management & Performance Seminar by Joanna Spear (Elliott School of International Affairs), on “Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Firms’ Pandemic Foreign Policies?”.
Location: Católica Porto Business School, Edíficido do Paraíso, room EP002
Date: 14 April, 2025
Time: 11.30 am to 12.30 pm
Format: hybrid - You can attend the seminar either in person (room EP002) or online.
Registration required by 13 April
This seminar presentation addresses some practical questions about the international behavior of pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms making vaccines against Covid-19 and through that begins to operationalize the idea of these firms having distinct foreign policies. Building on the existing literature about non-state actors having foreign policies, we ask: how did firms formulate and implement their foreign policies during the pandemic?
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Dr. Joanna Spear is a Research Professor of International Affairs and Principal Investigator of the FAO Regional Skill Sustainment Initiative. She was previously Director of the Elliott School’s Security Policy Studies Program and the Founding Director of the National Security Studies Program. Prior to joining GW, she was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Dr. Spear has published on a variety of subjects in international security, including arms control, U.S. foreign policy making, post-conflict peace building and arms exports. Dr. Spear has a PhD from the University of Southampton and did her post-doctoral work at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. During 2023-24 she was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, working on a new project on “The Foreign Policies of Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Firms with Vaccine Candidates Against Covid-19.” |
At two points during the pandemic pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms had strong hands to play in their negotiations with multiple states. First, when governments were scrambling to secure Advanced Purchase Agreements for doses early in the pandemic and were willing to make major concessions to the firms, and second, when the firms vaccine candidates had been authorized for use and multiple governments wanted their deliveries as quickly as possible, and firms controlled when governments received their orders.
The seminar presentation addresses several policy questions: How did the pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms creating vaccine candidates against Covid-19 secure contracts with multiple states? How did they negotiate with other firms? How did they distribute vaccine doses internationally? And how did the firms seek to mitigate the threat of “vaccine nationalism” coming from some of their customers?
