Epidemic of Fear: SARS and the Political Economy of Contagion - Innovation in Global Health Governance - page 25

Historians, including william Mcneill (1977) and alfred crosby (1986), continued
this discourse, noting the perennial influence of pathogens (and their vectors of
transmission) upon the course of history and the fate of states (Diamond 2005). this
historical tradition constitutes the theoretical bedrock for the investigations launched
by political scientists who began their inquiries in the latter half of the 1990s (Pirages
1996; Price-Smith 1999). The nascent field of health security enjoyed a pronounced
increase in salience in 2000, as the U.S. national Intelligence council (2000) issued
its national Intelligence estimate on the threat that infectious disease posed to U.S.
material interests. the inexorable expansion of the HIv/aIDS pandemic throughout
the latter half of the 1990s resulted in the epidemic being designated a major threat
to global security by the United nations Security council (UnSc) in 2000. this
dramatic rise in the significance of global public health issues was augmented by
the anthrax bioterror attacks of 2001 in the United States, and resulted in efforts by
the academic and policy community to link health concerns to foreign policy and
national security.
In the post-September 11 era there has been a surge of scholarly activity in
the field of health and international affairs. Such investigations have identified the
emergence and recrudescence of pathogens as a threat to the economies, governance,
and security of states and their populations (Price-Smith 1999; Peterson 2002; Singer
2002). Those who advocate a state-centric view see contagion as a significant threat
to the material interests of the state such as its population base, economy, trade,
foreign investment, the capacity of the military, and the apparatus of governance.
this school perceives the state as motivated by self-interest to protect its power
base, which by extension entails the protection of the health of its populace from
pathogenic depredation.
Due to the comparatively recent emergence of the SarS coronavirus, literature
on the political dimensions of the epidemic is sparse. Elizabeth Prescott (2003)
argues that the SarS epidemic illustrates the increasingly acute nature of complex
interdependence among states in the domain of public health, and provides lessons
that may help states in their efforts to prevent bioterrorist attacks. She observes
that the emergence of the contagion 'illuminated significant and vital weaknesses
in global and local preparedness for surprise outbreaks' (211). Melissa curley and
nicholas thomas (2004) argue that infectious diseases (the SarS outbreak in
particular) represent a significant and growing threat to human security in southeast
asia, while David Fidler (2004) conceptualises SarS as a threat to the material
interests of the state, which would seem to fit classical realist models. A classical
(or republican) realist perspective views epidemic disease as a distinct threat to
the material and perhaps ideational interests of the sovereign state, through its
destruction and debilitation of the populace, disruption of institutions of governance,
and generation of fear that erodes prosperity. 3 a caveat, however, is required: even
though classical or republican realism supports the notion of disease as a threat to
the material interests (i.e., to prosperity and governance) of the state, strategies of
self-help in an increasingly globalised world are likely to be less than effective.
this is particularly true of countries in the developing world that possess lower