[[Question]] Why are [[global health policy]] making difficult? Global policy problems are ‘wicked’ because they are very difficult, sometimes impossible, to solve for many reasons: first, **incomplete or contradictory knowledge creating uncertainty**; second, the number of countries, communities and other interests involved with quite disparate values; third, **the multiple arenas for deliberation**; and fourth, **the interconnected nature of many global issues with other problems** (Geuijen et al., 2017; Head, 2013). International policy coordination to deliver collective action and implement a set of genuine global responses is often slow and incomplete, while effectiveness is often riven by non-compliance. Global health itself is a wicked problem because it does not respect national borders. Take COVID-19 as an example. Or the worldwide rise of [[Non-Communicable Disease (NCD)]] because of industrialised food production, with high fat, sugar or preservative content contributing to diabetes and obesity (Heasman and Lang, 2015). Then we see SDGs shaping the international focus. National deference to ‘**international best practice**’ or the policy pronouncements and procedures of leading transnational actors in global governance also tie the fate of one country or community to those of others elsewhere in the world. ==In this milieu, various types of experts, policy consultants and scientific advisers seek not only to provide evidence to support global policy development but also to consolidate their power in global policy making.== [[Insights]] [[transnational expert networks (TENs)]] Epistocracies may well be emerging. The concept of epistocracy is usually associated with giving more educated and expert constituents greater voting power, or even limiting votes only to the educated. This conflates the concept with electoral contests. Epistocracy has wider meaning as ‘knowledge-based rule’ or ‘rule by knowers’ (Klocksiem, 2019). It is a form of power that entails giving the more educated or expert actors greater judgement in decision-making processes (Holst, 2012; Reiss, 2019). Epistocracy is a useful concept to capture knowledge-based decision-making as well as knowledge networking between states and in transnational policy communities. [[global health policy]] Global policy incorporates both governmentally steered processes of ‘international public policy’, better known today as ‘trans-governmentalism’, and ‘transnational policy processes’ where there is a greater degree of authoritative steering from non-state actors [[global health policy]] Global policy's three interconnected revolutions are, One, diversification of goals to pursue beyond national communities and local economies, eg, financing global public goods. Second, new domains of public action above and beyond nation-state prompted an increase in the number and diversity of policy actors. Third, related to number second one, the emergence of transnational policy institutions to deliver, finance, or monitor regional and global public goods (GPGs). Policy making that supersedes the nation-state is undergoing three interconnected revolutions. First, policy making is witnessing a diversification of the goals it is expected to pursue by going beyond traditional objectives of supporting national communities and local economies. Policy making is now adjoined to additional tasks of financing, or otherwise supporting and delivering ‘global public goods’ (GPGs) (Kaul, 2019). Second, new domains of public action above and beyond the nation-state – in part created by rapid advances in information technology that have eased the flow of communication alongside far faster and cheaper means of travel – have prompted an increase in the number and diversity of policy actors. Official actors – governments and international organisations – have become partners in global policy with private actors in the corporate world and civil society. Third, the instruments used by this expanding array of actors to achieve a broader range of policy objectives have themselves mushroomed with the emergence of transnational policy institutions, innovative regulatory structures and global networks created to deliver, finance or monitor regional and global GPGs. These circumstances also generate a governance conundrum by fuelling the fragmentation of global policy into many different ‘sectors’, a dynamic also known as ‘differentiation’ (Sending, 2019). Even though the global community is converging, pushbacks happened here and there, such as Trump and Duterte. Yet, ==the impetus towards global policy making, and the rise of transnational policy communities, is not inevitable==. The political will and ‘appetite’ for international collaboration and multilateralism that was evident at the turn of the millennium is today in short supply. In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, and the populist-nationalist politics and policies of leaders such as Bolsonaro in Brazil, Órban in Hungary, Duterte in the Philippines and Trump in the USA, the ‘appetite’ for ‘global policies’ has abated. Instead, global policy is often dismissed and denigrated as being designed by those portrayed as unaccountable transnational elites who are disconnected from national communities. Even so, global problems persist and proliferate. While collective action and policy responses to these problems are deficient, this makes it all the more pressing to better conceptualise ‘global policy’.