Safeguarding deliberative global governance: the case of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Abstract

Abstract It is often argued that multilateralism is no longer an effective mechanism to respond to global priorities and that more deliberative and multisectoral governance is needed. To explore this, the purpose of this article is to examine the practice of mutlisectoral deliberation within the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and to determine whether it has resulted in providing a more deliberative response to global health priorities. To do so, this article will apply various theoretical arguments for deliberative democracy to the results of a four year study on the multisectoral organisation the Global Fund. By making links between theory and practice, the article will argue that the multisectoralism practiced by the Global Fund continues to suffer from a deliberative deficit and that it has not safeguarded equal stakeholder participation, equal deliberation between stakeholders or alleviate the asymmetric power relationships which are representative of current forms of multilateral governance. Nevertheless, by locating these gaps between theory and practice, it is possible to outline deliberative safeguards that might, if constitutionally enhanced, pull the Global Fund closer to its own normative values of multisectoral deliberative decision-making.