Influence through Affluence? Conceptualizing Private Foundations as Agents of Change.

A decade after it was established the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has evolved into a well-known figure in international development cooperation, especially in global health. Similar to the Rockefeller Foundation which was actively involved in shaping health as an international policy field in the first half of the 20th century, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is looked upon as an "influential" actor in global health today. The examples of the Rockefeller and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invite to look into how the two philanthropic foundations could become political actors and "agents of change". Therefore the paper concentrates on the question of what makes an actor "influential". The answer to that question usually starts with power. Power as empirical phenomenon always rests on a range of resources, both material and immaterial. But "power over" is not equivalent to "power to". Consequently, the paper focuses on how to conceptualize the translation of power into influence, i.e. into an (observable) outcome or impact. The historical comparison of two instances of institutional innovation in international/global health governance, which are attributed to the influence of the Rockefeller and Gates Foundation, allows us to determine various factors which may contribute to creating influential policy actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]