Immunizing Argentina. COVID-19 vaccines, coalitions and technoscientific promises

SANMARTIN CECILIA; BORTZ GABRIELA

Quito

Congreso; onferencia Anual Red de Economía Política de América Latina - REPAl 2023,; 2023

Red de Economía Política de América Latina

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the capacity of all States to ensure the health of their citizens. In developing countries, where the pandemic bursted in contexts of restricted resources and glaring inequalities, this challenge became even more critical. Particularly, Argentina adopted a dual strategy: (a) negotiations to import vaccines, from a semi-peripheral position in the geopolitics of vaccines; and (b) the design of policy instruments to transform scientific-technological capabilities (S&T) into health technologies. The latter were based on Argentina's trajectory in biomedical research and biotechnological development, and its contribution to public health and the national economy. In the pandemic scenario, vaccines acquired a strong political status: both as political technologies, embedding visions of the Nation, as well as a representative emblem of State capacities against COVID.This paper explores the political economy of the multiple artifacts identified as “COVID-19 vaccines'', the coalitions gathered around them (and that build their working), how these (artifacts and coalitions, as undissolvable units) became co-produced with Science, Technology and Innovation strategies, and the representations (roles, expectations, rights and obligations) of the State, the public S&T sector and the private sector. Particularly, we explore the complex interactions between politics and public policies for the provision, production, innovation and development of these vaccines, the repertoires of legitimacy for decision-making and the visions of citizenship and State mobilized around them.We argue that three distinct phases, materialized in three coalitions with their respective technological alternatives, were embodied in three “technoscientific promises” (addressed here as the "supply", "techno-productive" and "national science" promises). Technoscientific promises are understood as “collective solutions built by different groups of actors that incorporate the definition of future problems” (Joly, 2010). Each promise remains linked to different "COVID-19 vaccine" artifacts, and it is mobilized by different actors, interests, resources and legitimacy repertoire based on roles and expectations of the State, the private sector and S&T. This work resources to a qualitative design, based on (a) a systematic review of press coverage (published between March 2020 and August 2022); (b) in-depth interviews (national and international policy-makers, researchers, corporate executives). In disciplinarian terms, it triangulates theoretical inputs from the Science, Technology and Society studies (Jasanoff, 2004; Jasanoff and Kim, 2009; Thomas, 2008; Joly, 2010), and Political Economy (Newell, 2009; Glover and Newell, 2004; Delvenne et al, 2013; Birch, 2017).We argue that, while the public S&T and private biopharmaceutical sectors legitimized themselves by showing their social relevance in facing the pandemic crisis, the actions of the S&T sector and its expert authority conferred legitimacy on State policy. The sanitary emergency also prompted a more porous articulation and accumulation of the private sector linked to national science capacities. In addition, we identified new dynamics in the coalitions and in the design of public policies, in a mutual constitution between the diverse "COVID-19 vaccines" and different desirable visions of the State, the public and private sector and international alignment.