Vaccine nationalism: contested relationships between COVID-19 and globalization

Abstract

This article offers a review of the emergent literature on ‘vaccine nationalism' - the act of gaining preferential access to newly developed vaccines by individual countries - in the context of COVID-19, paying close attention to the complex relationships between the global public health crisis and globalization. The coexistence of nationalist and globalist approaches to COVID-19 vaccines suggests simultaneous and contentious processes of globalization and deglobalization; the growing political and economic divide in the world; the lack of (or lag in) our consciousness of global interconnectedness, especially in non-economic spheres; and various structural barriers to global collaboration when facing a common threat to humanity’s future. Although these tensions - not necessarily novel - are unlikely to end globalization given the extant intertwining of global economic networks, they have been sharpened and intensified during the pandemic and, thus, constitute a pivotal - or make-or-break - moment for us to critically imagine a postpandemic world.