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in the history of the world politics of public health and perhaps even in the history of
international organizations.
Fidler (2004, 139-145) also suggests that these recommendations were
unauthorised, issued without consultation, and economically damaging to certain
member states. the claims of wHo independence thereby relates not only to the
substance of the recommendations and the manner in which the organisation issued
them, but also their effect. this argument is best summarised as follows:
In issuing alerts and advisories, WHO exercised significant power in the absence of any
agreed policy or legal framework and without deference to the sovereignty of affected
states. These actions revealed WHO as an autonomous actor influencing events directly
rather than just acting as a convenient device for coordinating the sovereign behaviour
of its member states. without any express policy or legal basis for its actions, wHo
took steps with serious political and economic consequences for states affected by SarS
(Fidler 2004, 142).
a similar argument has been offered by cortell and Peterson (2006, 255-271),
who cite the wHo's actions in containing the SarS pandemic as one case of an
Io successfully engaging in 'agency slack' and ultimately amending its operational
procedures and mandate. combining principal-agent theory and constructivist
approaches, they argue that the WHO demonstrated this slack, which has been defined
as when an agent takes 'independent action undesired by the principal' (Hawkins
et al. 2006, 8), first when it used public health information from nongovernmental
sources to criticise china publicly, and second when it issued the global alerts and
travel advisories (cortell and Peterson 2006, 269-270). cortell and Peterson contend
that these actions demonstrated that the wHo's bureaucracy (the agent) formed
independent preferences distinct from its member states (the principals). Using the
full range of institutional manoeuvring available to them, wHo staff then asserted
their own preferences despite member states' intentions to the contrary. cortell and
Peterson (269, 279-280) conclude, as a result, that the wHo used the 2003 SarS
pandemic as an opportunity to engage in agency slack. while themes related to
Fidler's thesis do emerge (the most striking being the considerable similarity between
independent power and agency slack), cortell and Peterson's (257) critique seeks to
Prior to evaluating these claims, however, it is necessary first to outline why they
are significant. By arguing that the WHO's bureaucracy engaged in agency slack,
cortell and Peterson have suggested, perhaps unwittingly, that the autonomy exercised
by the organisation was in some way inappropriate. according to the framework
they employ, only two forms of slack are possible: shirking, defined as 'when an
agent minimizes the effort it exerts on its principal's behalf', or slippage, which
has been defined as 'when an agent shifts policy away from its principal's preferred
outcome and toward its own preferences' (Hawkins
et al. 2006, 8). although cortell
and Peterson argue that it was this latter form of agency slack that was affected by
