The role of philanthropy in international relations

In September 2017, Bill Gates gave an interview to The Guardian newspaper in which he warned that philanthropic organisations like the one he heads – the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) – are ‘absolutely not’ able to replace cuts in official global development aid proposed by countries like the United States.Footnote ¹ The fact that private charitable organisations cannot wholly replace government aid should not necessarily be surprising. What is surprising, according to most contemporary International Relations scholarship, is that anyone would expect that a philanthropic organisation could play such a role in global politics. The fact that this is part of the conversation is evidence of how important philanthropy has become to global politics.

Philanthropy and philanthropic organisations need to be taken seriously as relevant and important actors by International Relations as a discipline. Philanthropic organisations have the power to shape and alter the global political agenda – and can do so in ways distinct from other types of non-state actors. In order to wholly appreciate the dynamics of global governance in the current era and understand the dynamics of global governance in the future, it is imperative that International Relations incorporate philanthropy as an important force in global politics and philanthropic organisations as relevant actors for analysis. This does not mean that philanthropic organisations are replacing states; rather, philanthropic organisations augment the exercise of international relations. As such, they possess their own power domains. Not only do they have unique opportunities to exert influence on the system in which they exist, but they can also help to shape and reshape that system.

Philanthropy’s role in international relations reflects changes in governance and governmentality within international society. It provides further evidence for appreciating non-state actors in global governance, but exercises that power and influence in unique ways that differ in key ways from non-governmental organisations, private business, and other non-state actors. It raises questions about legitimacy and authority and whether our standard understandings of these ideas accurately reflect the realities of international society. By understanding philanthropy within international relations and taking its influence seriously in our analysis, we have an avenue for better understanding the changing dynamics of global governance. Furthermore, there is a deep need to move beyond an explicit focus on specific institutions and more towards a holistic understanding of philanthropy and its unique role within international relations. The American politics literature has started to develop a small but robust literature on philanthropy within a domestic context, looking at how the growth of philanthropy raises questions about legitimacy, power, and policymaking.Footnote ² These are issues with which International Relations needs to grapple, and it would benefit the discipline’s theorising to recognise how these same issues resonate with many of its core concerns.

The role of philanthropy and philanthropic organisations reflects some of the unique contours of the current global political and economic systems, but it is not entirely unique to the modern era. Indeed, one of the more striking realities that becomes apparent in analysing philanthropy’s role in global politics is that its current role is more of a return to previous practices. Indeed, many of the initial efforts that gradually evolved into the contemporary global governance system – and International Relations as a field – came about only because of the support of major philanthropic donors. In arguing for international relations to take philanthropy seriously, this article is also a plea for the discipline to better acknowledge its own history and development.

To illustrate the role of philanthropy in international relations, this article will draw examples primarily from the realms of international and global health. When philanthropic foundations first emerged on the international scene in the early twentieth century, health issues were their first area of focus before addressing other cross-national challenges like agricultural production.Footnote ³ As a result, the independent influence of philanthropy within international relations is perhaps most pronounced in the health space.

This article proceeds in six sections. First, I define philanthropy and describe its global reach. Second, I describe the relationship between philanthropy and shifting notions of governance and governmentality and how international relations has largely ignored the role of philanthropy as an important element of analysis. Third, I look at the role of philanthropy in global politics historically. Fourth, I describe the role and importance of philanthropy for global health and global health governance. Fifth, I examine how philanthropic organisations raise questions about legitimacy and authority. Finally, I conclude by raising ideas about the future of philanthropy within international relations.

Defining philanthropy

Conceptually, the meaning of philanthropy has shifted over time. When ‘phylanthropie’ appeared in the first comprehensive English language dictionary in 1623, the term was simply defined as ‘humanitie’. Most early definitions of philanthropy equated the idea with love of humanity and benevolence. It is not until the late nineteenth century and the emergence of the first cohort of philanthrocapitalists like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller that the definition of the term shifts to incorporate an active and financial element. It moves from a definition rooted more in attitude towards one rooted more in action.Footnote ⁴

Robert L. Payton and Michael P. Moody define philanthropy as ‘voluntary action for the common good’.Footnote ⁵ At its core, philanthropy has two key components. The first is financial: philanthropy generally involves some element of financial transfer such as monetary donations to groups, causes, or individuals. The second is outcome-based: philanthropy seeks to use those finances to promote the welfare of others or improve the public good.Footnote ⁶ This does not necessarily mean that philanthropy is wholly selfless; Theo N. M. Schuyt explains that philanthropy can be driven by anything from a sense of religious obligation to fear.Footnote ⁷ Rather, the idea is that the donor is not the primary beneficiary of the largesse. This article will specifically focus on global philanthropy; that is, voluntary action for the common good in states other than the one where the organisation is headquartered.

Most philanthropy is channelled through organisations established to distribute funding for various projects. The structure and rules for operating vary widely, though. Some philanthropic organisations rely on public donations, while others draw on funds from a single source like an individual (or small group of individuals) or a corporation. Depending on the country in which they operate, philanthropic organisations may be exempt from some or all taxes or provide tax incentives to their donors. Some philanthropic organisations award funds through public competition, while others determine recipients internally according to their own principles. Philanthropic organisations typically focus their energies on one or a small number of issue-areas, but those issue-areas may change over time. The United States alone has an estimated 85,000 philanthropic foundations with approximately 5,000 new ones being formed annually.Footnote ⁸ While the range of philanthropic organisations varies extensively, what unites them is this common purpose to distribute funds to others.

Global philanthropy brings significant financial resources to international relations. At $43.9 billion, the United States was the largest single source of global philanthropy in 2014. That same year, the United States government provided approximately $33.1 billion in official development assistance.Footnote ⁹ This means that philanthropic support outpaced official governmental support by nearly one third and equals nearly 30 per cent of total global official development assistance that year. While dollar amounts alone do not constitute power, the relative amount of funding going towards global philanthropy efforts vis-à-vis official development assistance from sovereign governments suggests that global philanthropy has the potential to exert significant influence on global politics. Linsey McGoey suggests that the percentage of American disposable income going towards philanthropic organisations is relatively static, but that philanthropy’s growth is buoyed by increasing wealth in countries like China, India, and Russia.Footnote ¹⁰

Governance, governmentality, and power in philanthropy

Understanding the role of philanthropy within international relations forces us to explicate the larger relationships between the private sector(s) and international society. The connection between private business and international relations has received relatively little attention, and much of what it has received has focused more on functional-level critiques rather than sustained engagement on the implications of these changing relations.Footnote ¹¹

Remarkably, while international relations has shown greater willingness to consider how non-state actors can influence global politics, very little of that attention extends to considering philanthropy’s role. Governance in international society is changing. While it traditionally has been seen as exclusively the province of states, the emergent form of governance is more of a hybrid in which state and non-state actors work in tandem (with or without explicit coordination) on the provision of public goods. Rather than simply trying to influence state behaviour, this hybrid form of governance involves non-state actors being directly involved in these processes.Footnote ¹² In this way, we can think of contemporary governance structures as representing part of a new ‘global public domain’.Footnote ¹³ The field of global governance is largely predicated on the avoidance of privileging an analytical hierarchy in which states are automatically more important than non-state actors and instead purports to embrace ‘a multiactor perspective on world politics’,Footnote ¹⁴ yet many of the texts on private authority and non-state actors do not consider the role of philanthropic organisations, their resources, or their potential sources of power. A. Claire Cutler et al.’s edited volume is among the first to analyse private forms of governance in a sustained and serious way, but it does not devote any space to philanthropy and private funding.Footnote ¹⁵ One could argue that such an omission is not surprising, given that some of the wealthiest philanthropies today did not yet exist. Even if that is the case (and it is a questionable assertion at best), Rodney Bruce Hall and Thomas J. Biersteker’s edited volume on private authority in global governance does no better.Footnote ¹⁶ It includes chapters on topics such as multinational corporations, global civil society, the growth of private regulatory schemes, transnational crime, and private military contractors – but it says nothing about charity, philanthropy, or private foundations. Kendall Stiles discusses the role of non-governmental organisations within international relations and their potential leverage, but NGOs and philanthropy are not identical.Footnote ¹⁷ Furthermore, he frames the conversation in terms of competition between states and NGOs for a finite amount of power rather than understanding the complementarity of the relationships between them. Indeed, evidence within the American domestic context suggests that philanthropic giving varies in relation to government funding in particular issue-areas.Footnote ¹⁸ This reaffirms the idea that governments and philanthropy exist in somewhat of a reciprocal relationship with one another.

This question of power, who exercises it, and in which arenas different actors possess power is central to many of the debates about philanthropy’s independent role in international relations. As such, it is worthwhile to delve into what power means. Robert A. Dahl provides a canonical definition of power: ‘A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do.’Footnote ¹⁹ By Dahl’s own admission, this is necessarily an incomplete definition, but it accords with our intuitive notion of what constitutes power. He adds, though, that power is inherently a relational concept – a caveat that is often overlooked when scholars cite Dahl’s definition, but plays a large role in helping to break power out into its various components.

Writing two decades after Dahl, Steven Lukes divides power into three different dimensions. The first mirrors Dahl’s definition – power as the ability to get someone to do what they would not otherwise do. It is focused on a specific issue at hand. The second dimension, building upon the work of Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz,Footnote ²⁰ is less about specific issues and more about getting issues on the agenda. It allows for the exercise of power it allows an actor to control the context in which decisions are made. The third face of power, and Lukes’s unique contribution to the debate, is about manipulation. It shares a certain resonance with Marxist ideas of false consciousness in that this third face focuses on getting others to accept certain ideas, decisions, or frameworks as right without questioning them.Footnote ²¹ These three faces of power matter for international relations because they speak to the different means through which power is exercised. Power is not always overt and coercive; it can also be about framing and controlling the discussion.

Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall aim to disaggregate power, but they specifically put it in the context of international relations and how international relations theories have treated power. In particular, they lament how international relations has too often relegated power solely to the realm of realism. Not only does this obscure other interpretations of power, but it also overly identifies power with its overt, manifest dimensions. They start by defining power as ‘the production, in and through social relations, of effects that shape the capacities of actors to determine their circumstances and fate’.Footnote ²² From this definition, they generate two analytical dimensions of power: kinds (the range of social relations of interaction and constitution) and specificity (how much power operates through specific and direct or indirect and diffuse channels). These two dimensions allow Barnett and Duvall to create a taxonomy of four different types of power: compulsory (direct control of one actor over another); institutional (indirect control over others through diffuse channels and interactions); structural (control over another’s capacities through direct structural relations); and productive (an indirect form that emphasises the subjectivity created within systems of meaning and signification).

These disaggregated concepts of power are particularly important for three reasons. First, they allow for a multiplicity of actors to exercise power (or have power exercised over them). Power is not solely a state-based phenomenon within international relations. Individuals, international organisations, non-governmental organisations, and private businesses can all exercise various elements of power. Second, institutional structures are in and of themselves a form of power. They help to set the international agenda, condition the circumstances under which issues are discussed, and allow (or deny) certain actors from participating. These efforts, even if they are seemingly benign, exercise a high degree of power over policy outcomes. Third, the ways in which questions are framed or the types of information deemed credible and reliable is powerful. It is a very diffuse form of power, and has much in common with Lukes’s third face of power, but it is powerful nonetheless.

When philanthropy and international relations intersect, they raise questions of power. The financial largesse of major philanthropic donors can alter the balance and exercise of power within the international system. Wealth could provide a donor with power over other actors, allowing the donor to force a recipient to do something it would not otherwise do – the donor will only give a state money if that government agrees to certain policies. Wealth could also allow a donor to exercise material structuralist power if the donor can limit the scope of political and institutional processes that prevent another party from raising issues important to it. This same wealth could allow the donor to exercise discursive power by ‘influencing, shaping, or determining [another’s] very wants’.Footnote ²³ In each of these instances, the concern about philanthropy and international relations is that money gives the donor the ability to alter the political agenda to benefit itself over the greater good. At the domestic level, for example, Kate Wright et al. have explored the tensions that exist when philanthropists fund journalism outlets, and Tereza Kuldova explores how outlaw motorcycle clubs use philanthropy as a tool to improve their images without shifting their underlying behaviours.Footnote ²⁴ Lena Partzsch and Doris Fuchs acknowledge these potential power dimensions, but argue that they miss the operating dynamics of philanthropy in international relations. Instead of focusing on how philanthropic actors have power over others, they suggest analysing how they have power with others. In this formulation, neither side can exercise sole power, so the parties must find common ground, develop shared values, and organise together to create collective strength.Footnote ²⁵ While both power over and power with dimensions may operate simultaneously, Partzsch and Fuchs argue that disambiguating the dimensions of power allows for a more nuanced understanding of how philanthropic organisations exercise power within the international realm.

Even more importantly, the relationship between philanthropy and power demonstrates that power is not a zero-sum resource; the increase in the power and influence of philanthropic organisations does not necessitate or imply a diminution of power for states. As Ole Jacob Sending and Iver B. Neumann emphasise, rather than being about the transfer of power from one set of actors to another, the increased power among philanthropies and other non-state actors within global politics is evidence of the changing logic of governance. It moves non-state actors from being passive recipients who are acted upon to active subjects that are both subject and object of governance.Footnote ²⁶ It is thus an illustration of the shifts in governmentality within international society. The increased importance of philanthropy on the international stage ‘reflects a wider redefining and reconfiguring of the respective roles and responsibilities of governments, civil society, and the private sector towards more strategic and collaborative alliances’.Footnote ²⁷

One of the ways in which power can operate, and in which philanthropy has played a key role in international relations is in shaping how scholars study the world around them. The emergence and growth of International Relations as a discipline – and the social sciences more broadly – rely heavily on international philanthropic support. Donald Fisher analyses the role of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial in promoting a particular form of social scientific research and criticises it for weakening academia’s ability to critique the existing political and economic orders. In the aftermath of the First World War, the Rockefeller Foundation, Fisher argued, promoted the idea of social scientific research as value-neutral and encouraged ‘objective knowledge’. By promoting these ideas and – perhaps more importantly – funding university research, the Rockefeller Foundation contributed to the development of a Gramscian intellectual hegemony that facilitated ‘the preservation and maintenance of the social order’.Footnote ²⁸ It is worth noting, though, that other researchers have looked at the documentary evidence from the Rockefeller Foundation’s archives from this same period and found that the foundation largely pursued a hands-off policy towards its grantees and did little to craft a specific idea or narrative among the researchers who received its funding.Footnote ²⁹ Inderjeet Parmar looks at the role of the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford foundations in the post-Second World War era and presents an argument that resonates with Fisher’s earlier critique.Footnote ³⁰ He posits that these philanthropic organisations acted as adjuncts for American foreign policy interests and actively worked to promote pro-American visions across a range of academic disciplines outside of the US. Nicolas Guilhot argues that philanthropic investments in higher education make little sense unless we consider how such foundations wish to promote a particular vision of the social sciences and their resultant social and regulatory prescriptions that will benefit the interests of the wealthy patrons of those organisations.Footnote ³¹ By this thinking, George Soros’s support for Central European University is less about altruism and more about educating the next generation of policymakers to enact laws that will protect Soros’s own interests and promote his vision. These efforts simultaneously promote the transfer of policy norms and ideas across international borders, allowing their influence to be multiplied significantly.Footnote ³²

Philanthropic organisations have had profound effects on how scholars study international relations. Support from the Ford Foundation encouraged the study of behaviourialism and rationalism within American political science and International Relations.Footnote ³³ At the same time, the Rockefeller Foundation sponsored the 1953 Conference on Theory that privileged realist theory in the aftermath of the Second World War.Footnote ³⁴ Almost simultaneously, the Rockefeller Foundation provided crucial financial support to the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, a group that began meeting in 1959 and essentially helped give rise and substance to what is now known as the English School of International Relations.Footnote ³⁵

It is implausible to argue that philanthropic organisations are neutral actors; rather, it is more appropriate to argue that their influences and biases are too often left unexplored. ‘Foundations … nurture a set of values which are often left implicit’, explains Peter D. Bell.Footnote ³⁶ Writing when he was on leave from his position as the Ford Foundation’s country representative to Chile, Bell continues,

The issue is not that philanthropy is apolitical; it is that there is too often an assumption that philanthropy is apolitical. Choices about who to support and the manner in which to provide that support is inherently political. Indeed, it is precisely because the political power of philanthropic organisation too often goes unexplored that governments have tried to funnel money to them as extensions of their own foreign policy apparatuses – efforts that frequently collapse when the public discovers that philanthropic funding is actually coming from government sources.Footnote ³⁸

Historical importance of philanthropy in global politics

Looking at philanthropy historically is important for three reasons. First, it allows us to recognise broad trends and identify historical continuities. Second, it emphasises the recurring issues that emerge within the intersection between international relations and philanthropy. Third, and perhaps most importantly, it moves the focus away from specific philanthropic foundations and towards a more holistic understanding of philanthropy within international relations. Too often, the International Relations literature that does engage with philanthropy engages solely with specific foundations, which too often leaves it unable to understand how philanthropy fits within the broader analytical universe.

One of the first philanthropists to have a clear effect on global politics is Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie amassed his wealth through investments in the railroad industry and founding the Carnegie Steel Corporation, a business he later sold to J. P. Morgan and eventually became part of US Steel Corporation. During his life, Carnegie became one of the wealthiest people ever, with an estimated net worth at its peak of $372 billion in 2014 dollars.Footnote ³⁹ He became known during his life for writing the article ‘The Gospel of Wealth’ in 1889 that famously proclaimed, ‘The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.’Footnote ⁴⁰ He firmly believed that disparities in wealth within a society were the consequence of human progress that ultimately benefited the population as a whole, but that successful entrepreneurs had an obligation to administer their wealth for public benefit during their lives and afterwards.Footnote ⁴¹ In a vein similar to The Giving Pledge,Footnote ⁴² Carnegie publicly called on fellow wealthy industrialists to engage in philanthropy rather than horde their money for themselves or their immediate families.

While Carnegie dedicated much of his wealth to domestic causes like endowing universities and building libraries, he was very active in international affairs in the early part of the twentieth century. Most prominently, he gave $1.5 million in 1904 to build a ‘temple of peace’ in The Hague that would serve as a permanent international court, research centre for international legal scholars and practitioners, and a forum for hosting international peace conferences.Footnote ⁴³ His support of these efforts fit into broader trends within International Relations at the time. In particular, Carnegie’s contribution allowed for the furthering of the ideas and aspirations of the international peace movement at a time when peace on the European continent was widely perceived as fragile due to the erosion of the old alliance system, the emergence of new political actors (particularly a unified Germany), and the decline of other political entities (especially the Ottoman Empire). In an effort to prevent war from breaking out, there were strong political ideas encouraging the creation of some sort of arbitration court paired with regular diplomatic congresses and developing a sense of collective security.Footnote ⁴⁴ Groups like the Inter-Parliamentary Union developed during this time and attracted financial support from men like Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Sr, and Alfred Nobel.Footnote ⁴⁵ Starting in 1900, delegates to international peace conferences began to solicit Carnegie’s support for creating a ‘Palace of Peace’ because of his longstanding association with the international peace movement. Carnegie sought to demonstrate to the international community that the embrace of rationality, diplomacy, and international law could help prevent future conflict. His ideas and support fit into the same milieu as Norman Angell’s The Great Illusion, which argued that European economic integration would make military conflict unthinkable. Upon completion of the Peace Palace, Carnegie envisioned it as the headquarters for the Permanent Arbitration Court and the major world repository for international law.Footnote ⁴⁶

Carnegie’s involvement in international relations went beyond just providing money; he took an active role in the actions of the organisations that received his money. He hosted a peace conference in New York in 1907 with representatives of the leading European powers and called for the creation of a League of Peace – a sort of proto-League of Nations – in 1913.Footnote ⁴⁷

In retrospect, Carnegie’s philanthropy may seem to have failed and appear quixotic. The Peace Palace he supported opened in 1913 – only a year before the outbreak of the First World War. His diplomatic efforts and promotion of the international peace movement could not prevent war. While that is true, Carnegie’s actions presaged later international political activity. The League of Peace was not created prior to the war, but the League of Nations emerged in its aftermath (and, further demonstrating the commitment to international bodies designed to reduce the likelihood of war, the United Nations replaced the League of Nations). More institutions have emerged to administer international law. Harvey et al. assess his work as ‘Little of real substance came of Carnegie’s efforts, but the seeds of future developments were sown, and The Hague Peace Palace, which he funded, remains a memorial to his commitment.’Footnote ⁴⁸

The Rockefeller family also played a prominent role in international relations through its various philanthropic activities in the twentieth century. John D. Rockefeller Sr, the family patriarch, made his money as the head of Standard Oil – a fact that inspired journalistic exposés and public opprobrium. Before creating the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913, John D. Rockefeller Sr, repeatedly tried to receive a national charter for his foundation from the US Congress and was rebuffed because of his status as a robber baron and Congress’ interest in breaking up Standard Oil’s monopoly.Footnote ⁴⁹ Rockefeller managed to eventually circumvent Congress’ objections by obtaining a charter from New York state rather than the federal government. Rockefeller’s philanthropic involvement, though, predates the creation of his eponymous foundation. In 1891, he appointed Frederick T. Gates, a Baptist minister and businessman, to serve as his principal aide for philanthropy.Footnote ⁵⁰

When the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) came into being in 1913, it quickly became involved in international politics – particularly in dealing with health issues. With an initial endowment of $100 million, the foundation had a great deal of financial clout.Footnote ⁵¹ In addition, it had a history in working on disease control measures in the southern parts of the United States through the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission’s work, and it sought to take its knowledge and expertise to the wider world. Through its International Health Division (IHD), the RF spent between $18 and $25 million per year on campaigns to combat infectious diseases, support medical research, and provide training for health care workers. The IHD also played a significant role in creating and maintaining the League of Nations through its ongoing financial support for the League of Nations Health Office (LNHO). In fact, the IHD provided roughly half of LNHO’s annual budget throughout its existence.Footnote ⁵² This support for LNHO was absolutely vital for the office’s ability to both implement programmes and circumvent the financial limitations imposed by the League of Nations.Footnote ⁵³ Because of its direct programmes and support for intergovernmental organisations working, John Farley argues that, ‘before the foundation of the [World Health Organization] in 1948, it [IHD] was arguably the world’s most important agency of public health work’.Footnote ⁵⁴ Once the World Health Organization came into being, the Rockefeller Foundation closed down the IHD, and many of its leaders went to work for the new United Nations specialised agency.

The Rockefellers also played key roles in establishing the United Nations and its headquarters in New York. More than two hundred American communities put forward bids to host the organisation, and there was serious talk about locating it in the Black Hills region of South Dakota, but the Rockefellers’ personal diplomacy helped New York win the competition. They hosted delegates to the new organisation at various pre-plenary meetings at their estate in Westchester County, and two generations of the family – David Jr and Winthrop – acquired 17 acres along the East River in Manhattan and donated it to the United Nations for the construction of its new headquarters.Footnote ⁵⁵

The influence of philanthropic organisations extends beyond the realm of political institutions. The Rockefeller and Ford foundations provided the bulk of financial support to research institutes that developed new strains of rice and wheat as part of the Green Revolution.Footnote ⁵⁶ The effects of the Green Revolution and whether it was beneficial remains an ongoing area of scholarly debate, but it is inextricably linked to the larger geopolitical competition during the Cold War and questions of development.Footnote ⁵⁷ The Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, and Russell Sage Foundation all supported economics research and teaching at the university level in part to help influence the next generation of policymakers in the Americas and Europe.Footnote ⁵⁸ The Rockefeller Foundation’s support for its Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy, contributed to the organisation’s long-term goal of creating and sustaining ‘a transatlantic community of like-minded theorists and practitioners’.Footnote ⁵⁹ Similarly, the Ford Foundation used its scholarly support to combat Communism in advanced industrial states,Footnote ⁶⁰ while the Rockefeller Foundation funded the Institute of Pacific Relations to bring together policymakers, scholars, and activists in 17 countries to promote better relations.Footnote ⁶¹ These efforts were part of larger trends in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War where American philanthropic organisations used their resources in efforts to reform and modernise European industrial and managerial practices.Footnote ⁶²

The intersection of philanthropic wealth and international organisations is not unique to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1997, media mogul and CNN founder Ted Turner announced that he was donating $1 billion over the next ten years to the United Nations with much of the funding being directed towards global health issues.Footnote ⁶³ His donation made him ‘one of the most well-known living philanthropists and self-styled prophets of global corporate benevolence’.Footnote ⁶⁴ Indeed, Turner’s donation predated Bill Gates starting his eponymous foundation, and Turner publicly chastised Gates at the time for his reticence to engage in philanthropic giving.Footnote ⁶⁵ Turner’s announcement was striking not just for its size and scope, but also for its framing. The United Nations was in a period of fiscal crisis at the time, caused in part by the United States’ repeated failures to pay its membership dues. Turner described his philanthropic gift as a way to make up for that gap and contribute to the United Nations’ continued effectiveness.Footnote ⁶⁶ In this way, Turner directly positioned his philanthropic activity as occupying a unique niche created by the unwillingness of states to fulfill their obligations. Turner did not intend to replace states; rather, he sought to correct the mistakes state governments had made. He had long been involved with the United Nations Association, and some report that Turner’s philanthropy was prompted by his being ‘in need of something headline-grabbing to say during a speech he was to give after receiving a Global Leadership Award from the United Nations Association’.Footnote ⁶⁷ Though seemingly off-the-cuff, this approach is in line with Turner’s proclivity towards bold and impulsive financial decisions.

According to the United Nations Charter, Turner could neither directly fund any United Nations programmes himself nor become a member of the organisation, but he could direct his donation towards the newly created United Nations Foundation and serve on its board. The foundation would then distribute monies for identified programmes through the appropriate channels.Footnote ⁶⁸ At the time of Turner’s donation, though, there was a lack of clarity about how much control and influence the United Nations Foundation would have in setting the United Nations’ agenda. Under the United Nations Charter, private funds can only be used to support programmes and activities approved by the General Assembly. If, however, the United Nations Foundation said that it would only fund certain projects, this could influence the General Assembly’s decision-making calculus and give Turner a large degree of influence over the organisation’s agenda. It also raised questions about whether the use of private philanthropic funds to substitute for government membership dues in arrears would further discourage states from upholding their financial obligations to the United Nations.Footnote ⁶⁹

Philanthropy and global health

The global health space is illustrative of the role of philanthropy within contemporary international affairs for three reasons. First, because of the long history of philanthropy in cross-border health issues, it is the area in which there exists the longest track record for analysis. Second, the prominent role of philanthropic actors in global health has made this a key area of debate within the scholarly community. Third, there have been a variety of initiatives in global health that have actively sought to create forums for state and philanthropic actors to collaborate or at least communicate on a regular basis.

Between 1990 and 2015, the range of actors involved in global health aid has widened dramatically, and much of that change comes from the increased involvement of philanthropic organisations. In 1990, nearly 90 per cent of all development assistance for health (DAH) came through bilateral channels, United Nations agencies, or regional development banks. Private foundations and NGOs played only an insignificant role.Footnote ⁷⁰ Over the next quarter century, private philanthropic organisations gradually scaled up their involvement. Since 2000, at least 20 per cent of DAH has come from philanthropic organisations or non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In 2008 alone, 39 per cent of all funding from US-based philanthropies went to health issues.Footnote ⁷¹ The Wellcome Trust, based in the United Kingdom, is one the world’s leading funders of health research with grants of more than $900 million in 2013.Footnote ⁷² Other leading global health philanthropic donors include the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.Footnote ⁷³

The most prominent philanthropic actor in global health, though, is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. With an endowment of $40.3 billion as of 31 December 2016 and having provided $41.3 billion in grants since its inception, BMGF is the world’s wealthiest philanthropic organisation.Footnote ⁷⁴ In 2014 alone, BMGF provided $1.14 billion in grants through its Global Health programme, with additional global health-related funding for issues such as polio eradication, family planning, and vaccine delivery coming through its Global Development programme. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) estimates BMGF’s total development assistance for health in 2014 at $1.62 billion. That would make BMGF the sixth-largest donor for global health in 2014, exceeding most states.Footnote ⁷⁵ Since its inception, BMGF has provided more than $15 billion through its Global Health programme, making it an increasingly relevant player in global health politics. In addition to BMGF, other US-based philanthropic organisations contributed an additional $385 million in 2014, slightly more than the global health aid provided by the Australian government in that year.Footnote ⁷⁶

BMGF’s involvement in global health began in the 1990s. In 1994, Gates established the William H. Gates Foundation with an endowment of $106 million and run by his father on a volunteer basis. Initially, it focused on issues in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The connection to global health emerged, according to BMGF, when Bill Gates read an article in The New York Times about the health consequences of the lack of access to clean water in developing countries. Gates was so moved by this article that he passed it along to his father with a note that read, ‘Dad, maybe we can do something about this.’Footnote ⁷⁷ This spurred the William H. Gates Foundation into taking action on global health. In 1999, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation came into existence through a merger of three different philanthropies started by Bill Gates during the 1990s. By the end of that year, BMGF had an endowment of $17.1 billion, and global health was one of BMGF’s core funding areas. The organisation received a huge financial boost in 2006 when Warren Buffett, then the world’s wealthiest person, announced that he would give BMGF 10 million Class B shares of Berkshire Hathaway spread out over a number of years. With an estimated value of the shares of $30 billion, Buffett’s donation doubled the endowment of what was already the world’s wealthiest philanthropy. In addition, Buffett’s donation included a stipulation that the annual amount BMGF received through his donations had to be used to increase the organisation’s annual grantmaking and not simply sit in the bank.Footnote ⁷⁸ With BMGF receiving between $1.25 billion and $2.15 billion from Buffett annually, this mandated the organisation to expand its philanthropic activity in global health significantly.

BMGF portrays itself as a partner for governments, providing resources and funds that governments cannot. Gates notes that the global economic recession has placed greater strain on national budgets, making it more difficult for traditional donor states to maintain their foreign aid budgets. Into this gap, he notes, foundations like his can enter.Footnote ⁷⁹ Ingfei Chen notes, though, that BMGF has restrictions on what types of global health activities it will fund. In particular, BMGF takes a biomedical approach and focuses its funds on research and development of treatment for infectious diseases. It offers little support for health care infrastructure, since it sees that as a primary responsibility of government.Footnote ⁸⁰

Through its prodigious spending, BMGF has had an important effect on the global health agenda in three key ways. First, its willingness to devote significant resources to global health issues has called attention to serious health challenges. Putting substantial money towards an issue grabs international attention and helps shape the global debate. Second, by providing funds for research and treatment on neglected diseases, it has called greater attention to diseases other than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. While HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria remain significantly underfunded, their relative prominence on the global health agenda has drowned out attention to other diseases that are less prominent but cause greater morbidity and mortality.Footnote ⁸¹ BMGF possesses the largesse that it can direct attention towards some of these other issues. Finally, its emphasis on developing new pharmaceutical treatments and using new technologies has elevated the biomedical paradigm within global health. This does not mean that there is no attention paid to the social factors that give rise to global health issues today, but BMGF’s wealth and emphases allow research on new drugs and vaccines to gain greater prominence within debates.

The intersection of global politics and global health is also bringing new actors into the fray. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative began in December 2015 by Mark Zuckerberg (the founder of Facebook) and Priscilla Chan (a paediatrician) with an initial pledge to give or sell up to $1 billion in Facebook shares for each of the next three years. Ultimately, the couple announced that they intend to give away 99 per cent of their Facebook shares over their lifetimes to fund the initiative.Footnote ⁸² Based on the value of Facebook stock at the time of the foundation’s announcement, Chan and Zuckerberg will put more than $40 billion towards their foundation.Footnote ⁸³ While it is too early to know their funding priorities, Chan and Zuckerberg mentioned health as one possible area. In 2014, the couple donated $25 million to the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to combat Ebola in West Africa.Footnote ⁸⁴ If the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative does direct some portion of its funding towards global health, IHME suggests that its contributions could help further alter the global health funding landscape.Footnote ⁸⁵ Interestingly, Chan and Zuckerberg have decided to structure their new initiative as a limited liability corporation rather than a tax-exempt foundation. This means that the couple will not receive the tax benefits that would accompany donating their shares to a foundation, but they argue that it will give them greater ‘flexibility to execute our mission more effectively’.Footnote ⁸⁶ At the same time, by creating a limited liability corporation rather than a foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is not subject to public disclosure laws and thus able to obscure its sources of funding and grant decisions from public scrutiny.Footnote ⁸⁷

Legitimacy, authority, and philanthropy

Philanthropic actors and their involvement in global health governance have provoked strong (and typically negative) reactions within the academic literature. At their core, most of these objections focus on questions of legitimacy and authority. Legitimacy refers to the basis on which the rule of actors ‘is consented to and mutually agreed with the ruled’,Footnote ⁸⁸ while authority is distinguished from self-interest to describe situations in which an actor accepts the rule of another actor or body as legitimate.Footnote ⁸⁹ Because private actors like philanthropic foundations operate outside of traditional systems of accountability and oversight within international politics, they can operate with a high degree of influence while the public has little ability to provide a check on their operations.

The consequences of the rise of non-state actors in contemporary global governance inspire fierce debate. Strange sees such private authority as a new, independent, and impersonal power centre that increasingly overwhelms the power and authority of sovereign states.Footnote ⁹⁰ Louis W. Pauly describes this process as weakening states, though he argues that states seek to mask the extent of their power’s decline.Footnote ⁹¹ Patrizia Nanz and Jens Steffek identify a common objection to the rise of non-state actors in global governance; namely, that it promotes a democratic deficit. The legitimacy of non-state actors does not derive from a mandate from the masses, so their growing strength within global governance is symptomatic of a growing divide between the rulemakers and the ruled.Footnote ⁹² Others see the change as more benign. Sending and Neumann challenge the state-in-decline narrative. The rise of non-state actors is not a transfer of power away from the state, but rather a change in the logic and rationality of government and one in which states are actively complicit.Footnote ⁹³ Douglas Webb argues that non-state actors can fill gaps in services and authority that states either cannot or will not address,Footnote ⁹⁴ and Matthew J. Hirschland finds that private business and multinational corporations may be particularly well placed to address these gaps.Footnote ⁹⁵

Within the global health realm specifically, questions have arisen over whether philanthropies and non-state actors can possess legitimacy and authority. Cathal Doyle and Preeti Patel note that the increasing prominence of civil society organisations in putting global health initiatives into practice has not led to a concomitant investigation of how or whether such groups possess some degree of legitimacy to act. ‘But without such legitimacy, what justification is there for including them in decision-making that affects the health of millions of people?’Footnote ⁹⁶ Rather than making a specific argument one way or the other about the legitimacy of private actors, they note that the claims in support or opposition have thus far largely avoided rigorous scrutiny. Julio Frenk and Suerie Moon highlight that global health governance finds itself facing a ‘new reality of pluralism’ in terms of the array of actors, but that there remains the problem of the lack of accountability mechanisms for non-state actors.Footnote ⁹⁷ Chelsea Clinton and Devi Sridhar describe how WHO’s authority and independence is undermined by its increasing reliance on philanthropic and corporate funding.Footnote ⁹⁸

Because of its size and public prominence, BMGF is central to these questions of legitimacy and authority for philanthropic organisations acting in global politics. Examining BMGF’s legitimacy is of great importance because the organisation occupies a position of authority due to its wealth, shapes the context of various global health initiatives through its creation and dissemination of relevant knowledge, and uses a personalised basis for claiming authority for its operations and activities. BMGF, Sophie Harman posits, largely bases its authority to act on charismatic and self-legitimation grounds largely abstracted from public deliberation. By relying on this reified self-legitimation, BMGF’s activity within global health governance ‘reproduces elite structures of power in global health governance and buys conformity and consent to the rules’.Footnote ⁹⁹ More importantly, ‘To suggest that anything Bill Gates does is legitimate because he is Bill Gates indicates that actors in global health governance can be legitimate as long as they are wealthy public figures irrespective of their engagement with the people they work with and upon whom their policies affect.’Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Instead of hiding behind its private status, Harman argues that BMGF – and the wider realm of philanthropies working on global health issues – need criticism and public contestation in order to give voice to those effected by the various global health interventions. Without such a process and the accountability that accompanies it, philanthropy in global health governance threatens to become yet another tool of hegemonic power and domination. BMGF may possess a genuine interest in doing good for the world, but there is too little independent oversight ‘to ensure that this desire is translated into the right and most cost-effective set of approaches, strategies, and investments for improving the health of the poor’.Footnote ¹⁰¹

The shift in organisational structures for philanthropy also raises questions about legitimacy and authority. In many countries, philanthropic foundations are subject to certain disclosure requirements in order to receive their tax-exempt statuses, and they must give away a certain percentage of their funding in grants annually. While these measures do not mean that the foundations are fully transparent about their financial decisions, it does mean that there is a certain exchange – the government allows them to reduce or eliminate the taxes they would otherwise pay into the treasury in exchange for verifying that they are engaging in acts that would ostensibly benefit the public good. In recent years, both Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Pierre Omidyar of eBay have created for-profit limited liability corporations as their philanthropic vehicles. Not only does this shift shield them from certain disclosure requirements, but it also limits the public’s ability to assess whether their seeming acts of philanthropy in fact comply with the law. McGoey and Darren Thiel note that American philanthropic law mandates that ‘private fortunes should not be used to subvert government policies enacted by public officials who have a democratic mandate to act on behalf of a general public’.Footnote ¹⁰² By changing the legal structures to distribute funding, these new philanthropic actors undermine this legal principle and call their legitimacy and authority further into question.

These questions of the legitimacy and authority of non-state actors like philanthropic foundations within the global health space are serious and will continue to cloud the involvement of such groups. At the same time, the situation may not be completely bleak. Steven Bernstein challenges the idea of employing pre-existing frameworks for assessing legitimacy and authority within international society. Legitimacy and authority should be rooted within historically contingent practices, values, and goals and develop out of the interactions that occur within a given society.Footnote ¹⁰³ As a result, new modes and sites of governance will necessarily need to accommodate a wider range of actors as they play larger roles. From this perspective, philanthropic organisations are not buying their way into legitimacy so much as they are representative of the evolution of international cooperation on global health matters. Frenk and Moon point out that global health governance has a history of encouraging and welcoming innovative approaches to governance challenges.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ For instance, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria and the GAVI Alliance have both given various types of non-state actors voting powers on their boards along with national governments.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Karsten Ronit and Volker Schneider note that the World Health Organization has encouraged and welcomed private regulatory mechanisms throughout its history in situations where public regulations is not possible or feasible.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ While not denying the power dynamics that an incredibly wealthy organisation like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation may possess, Partzsch and Fuchs posit that non-state actors can gain a measure of authority by cultivating the public’s trust through demonstrating results.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ It is also worth noting that traditional state-based approaches to global health governance do not necessarily live up to the standards of legitimacy and authority. Intergovernmental organisations are renowned for their own democratic deficits.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ The United States provides the Global Fund with one third of its annual budget for grants, but it ‘is not a passive or quiet investor’.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Furthermore, the states that provide voluntary funds to WHO distort and undermine the organisation’s ability to independently determine its budget and fiscal priorities.Footnote ¹¹⁰

The debates over the legitimacy and authority of philanthropy and its interaction with traditional state-based actors within global health governance will require innovative approaches and willingness by all sides to address these questions in a substantive manner. Global health governance needs the funding that philanthropies provide. As that funding plays an increasingly large role, it is natural to expect that such actors will want to clarify their role or find ways to build productive collaborations with state actors.

We must also remember that legitimacy is not a static standard. As with other normative and behavioural expectations that exist within international society, our collective notions of what constitutes legitimacy and authority changes as the context changes. Practices among European states once considered entirely appropriate and legitimate no longer are because the contexts in which those previous understandings arose are no longer functional.Footnote ¹¹¹ Legitimacy is ultimately driven by a logic of appropriateness, and those ‘collective understandings of what is appropriate’ will change over time.Footnote ¹¹² Indeed, it is a strength of the international system and its robustness that such changes occur. Indeed, much of the conversation around legitimacy and accountability within the global governance literature – a field that is ostensibly interested in questioning the privileged role of the nation-state within international relations – ends up reifying the state and thus working against its own analytical interests.

Conclusion: the future of philanthropy in international relations

Philanthropy plays a unique and independent role within international relations. As such, it needs to be recognised by the discipline as an important force that intersects with larger questions about power, legitimacy, authority, and policymaking in the international realm. While earlier research has looked at specific philanthropic organisations and their influence, this article makes the call for International Relations to situate philanthropy in a more holistic sense and move beyond an exclusive focus on specific organisations. By examining its influence historically and contemporaneously, this article highlights the various ways in which philanthropy has exerted significant influence on the international system and the questions that philanthropy’s role raises.

The burgeoning role of philanthropy in global politics has attracted significant criticism for crowding out certain voices, the lack of public accountability, its reification of a neoliberal economic and political system that gives rise to systematic inequalities in the first place, and for imposing its preferred solutions on situations rather than accounting for local interests and needs. These are serious and substantial charges, and they point to the importance of giving independent analytical weight to philanthropic organisations operating within international society. Indeed, part of the reason that International Relations as a discipline needs to take philanthropy seriously as an important element for analysis stems directly from the criticisms levied against it. If groups like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust have such clout that they can alter the operations of intergovernmental organisations, alter the political agenda, and cause national governments to change their own policies and priorities, then it behooves the discipline to understand how and why this type of actor can exercise such outsized influence in the global sphere. If it is not actually the case that philanthropic foundations possess such power, then the charges laid against them by their critics are without merit. Various scholars have raised important questions about the role of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the contemporary era and the Rockefeller Foundation and its ilk in earlier eras, but they have done so by looking at the organisations themselves rather than placing those foundations within the broader context of International Relations. If their questions about legitimacy, authority, credibility, and expertise are genuine and deserve attention, then philanthropy as an institution needs to be understood as an important element within international society and one whose operations need to be addresses holistically and using the tools we already possess to understand power, influence, and sovereignty. Otherwise, the critiques being levied are lacking in theoretical heft or connections to the larger academic conversations on these topics.

The rise of philanthropy as a significant and independent force within International Relations is a direct reflection of the changing role of the state and the role of non-state actors. Rather than understanding the state and philanthropy as locked in a zero-sum battle for power, we can understand their roles relative to each other as part of a larger continuum. Philanthropy contributes to the development and maintenance of international society by filling niches not being served by the state rather than crowding out the state, but there are serious questions about whether philanthropy addresses those oversights in ways that are broadly beneficial to international society. This thus suggests that the role of philanthropic foundations in international society is unlikely to disappear or significantly decline unless and until states, intergovernmental organisations, and other more traditional actors take a more active role in addressing international political issues. At the same time, it implores us to carefully scrutinise how philanthropy exercises power, legitimacy, and authority and to consider what sort of oversight is necessary.