The Gates Foundation's Rise to Power : Private Authority in Global Politics

In recent decades, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has established itself as one of the most powerful forces in international life, with wide spreading influence across global health, education, development, and a range of political and social concerns. The Gates Foundation’s Rise to Power is the first book to take us inside the walls of this notoriously sealed organization. Using extensive fieldwork inside and around the foundation, this organizational sociology of one of the most influential players in international development will be of interest to scholars and students of development, philanthropy, and organizational sociology.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has established itself as one of the most powerful private forces in global politics, shaping the trajectories of international policy-making. Driven by fierce confidence and immense expectations about its ability to change the world through its normative and material power, the foundation advances an agenda of social and economic change through technological innovation. And it does so while forming part of a movement that refocuses efforts towards private influence on, and delivery of, societal progress.

The Gates Foundation’s Rise to Power is an urgent exploration of one of the world’s most influential but also notoriously sealed organizations. As the first book to take us inside the walls of the foundation, it tells a story of dramatic organizational change, of diverging interests and influences, and of choices with consequences beyond the expected. Based on extensive fieldwork inside and around the foundation, the book explores how the foundation has established itself as a major political power, how it exercises this power, but also how it has been deeply shaped by the strong norms, ideas, organizations, and expectations from the field of global development. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of global development, international relations, philanthropy and organizational theory.