The Governance of Antibiotics in Europe

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a leading cause of death around the world, with the highest burdens in low-resource settings, and is expected to grow exponentially to cause around 10 million deaths annually in 2050. It is defined by high degrees of complexity given its international, multisectoral, ‘one health’ and ‘creeping’ features, which creates significant challenges for good governance. In addition, only 0,5% of all AMR related research comes from the social sciences, which indicates that we know relatively little about the behavioral and institutional aspects of antibiotics. It is also typically referred to as a low-salient political issue. This talk will introduce three dimensions of European governance of antibiotics; first, how experts, typically top senior bureaucrats, create an ‘administrative action space’ when politicians fail to raise the issue; second, the networking dynamics among domestic bureaucracies to create collaborative governance; and thirdly, the role and function of the EU Commission to act as a third-party enforcer in solving the large-scale collective action dilemma of AMR.
Daniel Carelli is a PhD Candidate in political science at the University of Gothenburg. His dissertation investigates how administrative traditions and bureaucratic autonomy affect inter-bureaucratic collaboration around the issue of antimicrobial resistance in Europe.