The World Health Organization between north and south /

This work discusses the World Health Organization (WHO) and how it adapted to changes in the world economic order, which moved from the New International Economic Order of the mid-1970s to the more neoliberal approaches of the 1980s, and especially how the WHO restructured while maintaining aspects of its own institutional culture and protected its interests in a time of changing external demands. Organizational theory underpins the author's arguments on how internal and external constraints limit institutions, and how they may respond or resist in passive or active ways, reframe sometimes-conflicting expectations, and make strategic adaptations. Chorev (sociology, Brown) does a thorough job of discussing the political, social, and economic factors that moved global culture from principles of equity (the importance of health to social development) to a more market-oriented and technological focus in the 1980s, with the rise of more international organizations, private foundations, and principles of cost effectiveness, with health seen as good for economic growth and productivity. The arguments are sometimes repetitive, other times dense, and they do not address the critiques of the WHO and other international organizations, especially regarding funding and expenditures on the organization itself. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. P. LeClerc St. Lawrence University