A conceptual framework for studying the role of global health partnerships (GHPs) in determining policy practices on access to medication is presented. Although GHPs are of a practical nature, they are implicitly theory informed. The narratives used by GHP partners in relating to access to medication have theoretical origins. Building on the theoretical literature on models and the notion of embodied knowledge found in science and technology studies, GHPs are conceptualized as models that mediate between theory and practice. The proposed (...) framework can be used to investigate the role of theory in the creation of GHP models and how the models shape global and national policy practices. A social constructivist approach is suggested as a suitable method for empirical analysis. (shrink)

This article provides a broad overview of the interplay among cognition, belief systems and institutions, fleshing out a position best characterized as 'cognitive institutionalism'. We argue that a deeper understanding of institutions, emergence, their working properties and their effect on economic performance should start with the analysis of cognitive processes. Exploring the nature of individual and collective learning the article suggests that the issue is not whether agents are perfectly or boundedly rational, but rather how human beings actually reason and (...) choose. We also show how a full treatment of the phenomenon of path dependence should look like; there is a path dependence at the cognitive level, at the institutional level and at the economic level and there are links among them. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue that simulation is the activity of inferring future states. I argue that simulations instantiate models and that models are complexes of representations, so the inference in question makes use of the relations between the representations in a simulation's associated model. It follows that simulations should not be properly considered to be models in general, despite it being the case that they are commonly treated, or referred to, as being models, or even models (...) of a special type, namely dynamic models. Further consequences of this position are also discussed. (shrink)