## Abstract The exercise of power permeates global governance processes, making power a critical concept for understanding, explaining, and influencing the intersection of global governance and health. This article briefly presents and discusses three well-established conceptualizations of power—Dahl’s, Bourdieu’s, and Barnett and Duvall’s—from different disciplines, finding that each is important for understanding global governance but none is sufficient. The conceptualization of power itself needs to be expanded to include the multiple ways in which one actor can influence the thinking or actions of others. I further argue that global governance processes exhibit features of complex adaptive systems, the analysis of which requires taking into account multiple types of power. Building on established frameworks, the article then offers an expanded typology of eight kinds of power: physical, economic, structural, institutional, moral, discursive, expert, and network. The typology is derived from and illustrated by examples from global health, but may be applicable to global governance more broadly. Finally, one seemingly contradictory – and cautiously optimistic – conclusion emerges from this typology: multiple types of power can mutually reinforce tremendous power disparities in global health; but at the same time, such disparities are not necessarily absolute or immutable. Further research on the complex interaction of multiple types of power is needed for a better understanding of global governance and health. [[Robert Dahl argued that power is the ability to influence outcomes, to prevail in decision-making, to impose one's preferences, and even to dominate]] Dahl: power as coercion Bourdieu: power as capital Barnett and Duvall: power in global governance ## Sriram et al.: [[power in LMIC health policy and systems]] > Veena Sriram and colleagues conducted a thorough review of the state of the literature on power as it relates to health policy and systems of LMICs, and generally found it “lacking” and a “neglected area of work [1].” Discussing various conceptualizations of power, ==they identified six sources of power that arise in the broader social science literature: technical expertise, political power, bureaucratic power, financial power, networks and access, and personal attributes==. ![[CleanShot 2024-01-04 at [email protected]]] ![[CleanShot 2024-01-04 at [email protected]]] Thus, the third observation is that the typology highlights how actors often perceived as weak or powerless may be able to wield influence in ways not widely recognized [43]. One concrete example is the successful network of [[civil society organizations]] that campaigned for taking flexible approaches to global intellectual property rules on medicines patents in developing countries; at first, this effort was strongly opposed by the pharmaceutical industry and Northern governments, but it eventually succeeded in removing patents as a major barrier to widespread access to generic HIV medicines in LMICs.