Giuseppe De Arcangelis, holder of the 2025-2026 AMSE/Iméra Chair – A world in crisis, is organising a closed seminar on vaccine diplomacy and putting the COVID-19 experience into perspective within an interdisciplinary framework.
Photo credit: Hakan Nural on Unsplash
Vaccine diplomacy reinforces a trend towards geopolitical fragmentation.
The empirical assessment conducted by Giuseppe De Arcangelis evaluates whether COVID-19 vaccine advance purchase agreements (APAs) signed between late 2020 and mid-2021 reshaped recipient countries’ geopolitical alignment.
The dataset covers more than 220 confirmed APAs across 19 vaccine producers and 77 purchasing entities, with origin-country assignments adjusted for licensed production arrangements. U.S. and U.K. companies captured the largest volume of vaccine courses, while Chinese and Russian producers supplied smaller allocations to a broader and more geographically dispersed set of buyers. Although China and Russia accounted for roughly one-third of the total number of agreements, they represented less than one-tenth of the vaccine courses. This pattern suggests that their vaccine diplomacy operated on an extensive margin, providing access to countries that received fewer Western supplies.
The analysis also documents that vaccine diplomacy added to an existing trend of geopolitical fragmentation. In the early pandemic period, high-income Western countries competed to secure multiple times their population needs, while Chinese and Russian suppliers engaged in outreach to a more diverse range of partners. These divergent allocation patterns reinforced differences in international order rather than unifying global responses.
The study highlights vaccine diplomacy as a new geoeconomic channel of influence. By treating access to critical health supplies as a source of leverage, vaccine providers could alter the payoff structure of recipient states and affect their international alignment. The findings underline the importance of examining health interventions not only for their medical impact but also for their international-political consequences.
The COVID-19 experience in an interdisciplinary context
The intense activity of China and Russia in signing advance purchase agreements for antiCOVID courses has raised the question whether this was a way to extend their soft power via a sort of “Vaccine Diplomacy”. On the other end, Western countries competed to secure multiple times their population needs. This evidence carries implications for future health emergencies. When scarce medical goods are embedded in geopolitical competition, aid and procurement decisions can become instruments of influence rather than purely public health responses.
This closed seminar brings together economists, historians, immunologists and political scientists to discuss these results and share their disciplinary points of view.
This programme is preliminary. It may change between now and June 12th, 2026.
- 10-10.15am: coffee reception
- 10.15-10.30: Introduction of participants
- 10:30-11:30: Geopolitics via Vaccine Diplomacy: Some Evidence from COVID-19 by Giuseppe De Arcangelis and Alessia Lo Turco.
- 11.30am-11.45am: coffee break
- 11.45-12pm: Questions for an interdisciplinary debate and multifacet contributions
- 12-12.30pm: A historical perspective on pandemics and their geopolitical consequences by Thomas Glesener.
- 12.30-2pm: lunch break
- 2-2.30pm: Vaccine and public health and geopolitics by Benoît Pouget.
- 2.30-3pm: Vaccine types, their efficacy and technological challenges by Xavier de Lamballerie (to be confirmed)
- 3-3.45pm: The economist point of view on vaccine diplomacy during the COVID19 pandemic by Fabio Mariani.
- 3.45-4pm: coffee break
- 4-4.45pm: Discussions.
- 4.45-5pm: Conclusions and future development.
Giuseppe De Arcangelis is professor of International Economics at Sapienza University of Rome in the Department of Social Sciences and Economics, and is holder of the 2025-2026 Imera/AMSE Chair “A World in Crisis”
Thomas Glesener is Associate Professor (Maître de Conférences) in Modern History at Aix Marseille Université and member of the TELEMMe laboratory. He is currently on research-leave at Iméra within the Mediterranean programme.
Alessia Lo Turco is professor of Economics at Università Politecnica delle Marche in the Department of Economics and Social Sciences. Her interests are: international trade, FDI and migration.
Fabio Mariani is professor of Economics at the Université Catholique de Louvain and member of IRES/LIDAM. His main research fields are: economic growth and development, family economics and international migration.
Benoît Pouget is Associate Professor (Maître de Conférences) in Contemporary History at Sciences Po Aix. He is also Associate member at the faculty of history, Oxford University (OCHSMT), Associate Researcher at the Maison Française d’Oxford, and Chercheur Associé at the Centre de la Méditerranée Moderne et Contemporaine (Université Côte d’Azur).
Xavier de Lamballerie is Inserm manager of the National Reference Centre for arboviruses and a member of the Emerging Viruses Unit.
Practical information
- Date: Friday 12 June 2026 from 10am to 5pm
- Venue: Maison Neuve conference room, Iméra, 2 place Leverrier 13004 Marseille
- This event takes place behind closed doors.
Coming to Iméra
- Pedestrian access: meet at the gate at 2 place Leverrier, 13004 Marseille.
- PRM access: entrance viaAllée Jean-Louis Pons, 13004 Marseille.
