Journal Papers
The role of the councillor and the work of meeting
This paper picks up a theme from the recent literature on the councillor, that of time spent in meeting, and suggests that if we are to understand the role of the councillor we must understand the work the meeting does. The discussion is based in a series of...
Meeting, talk and text: policy and politics in practice
Our prevailing accounts of the policy process are challenged by studies of practice as well as by practitioners themselves. This paper sets out an alternative, grounded in politics and sociology and informed by recent work in related disciplines. Drawing on the...
Teaching politics after the practice turn
The ‘practice turn’ and its associated ontology, epistemology and methodology are now well established in political research. In this article, we identify and explore a corollary pedagogy. After outlining the principal components of practice theory, we compare case-...
Care, policy, knowledge: translating between worlds
served as postscript to Vicky Singleton, Claire Waterton and Natalie Gill’s new Sociological Review Monograph on Care and Policy Practices…
Reciprocal instrumentalism: Scotland, WHO Europe, and mental health
This paper explores the relationship between the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Europe (WHO Europe) and Scotland in the context of mental health
Making knowledge for international policy: WHO Europe and mental health policy, 1970-2008
It is widely agreed that the effectiveness of the World Health Organization (WHO) as a policy body derives chiefly from its reputation as a source of authoritative knowledge. However, little has been done to show just how WHO mobilises knowledge for policy purposes.
For a (self-)critical comparison
This paper reflects on the design and organization of cross-national comparative research in social and public policy, based in our own experience of leading and taking part in projects of this kind.
Stakeholder consultation and social mobilization: framing Scottish mental health policy
Public and stakeholder consultation is increasingly important in the policy process, both in the UK and elsewhere. Social scientists have considered consultation primarily in terms of how it relates to decision-making – either as a means of involving a wider constituency of actors in the decision-making process, or as a means of legitimizing the decisions taken by policymakers.
Reverb policy making in wave form
A new paper in Environment and Planning A explores how we might think of policy as something that moves
The practice of policy making
Editorial introduction to the special issue of Evidence and Policy 7 (2) The Practice of Policy Making. Source: Evidence and Policy 7 (2) 125-133 link SaveSave
Documents, practices and policy
What are the practices of policy making? In this paper, we seek to identify and understand them by attending to one of the principal artifacts – the document – through which they are organised.
Implementing recovery: an analysis of the key technologies in Scotland
Background: Over the past ten years the promotion of recovery has become a stated aim of mental health policies within a number of English speaking countries, including Scotland. Implementation of a recovery approach involves a significant reorientation of mental health services and practices, which often poses significant challenges for reformers.
Analysing policy transfer: perspectives for operational research
Policy transfer occurs regularly. In essence, a strategy developed elsewhere is taken up and applied in another policy context. Yet what precisely is policy transfer and, more importantly, under what conditions does it occur? This paper describes policy transfer and addresses three main questions, exploring what perspectives of policy transfer might contribute to operational research (OR) efforts.
Les transformations du système de santé mentale: l’exemple de l’Ecosse
System transformation in mental health is of immediate concern across countries throughout Europe and beyond. In this paper we describe a paradigm shift in Scottish policy from the control of psychiatric disorder to mental health governance and explore the means by which it has been supported and sustained
Health care systems and the problem of classification
Classification is integral to comparison. The aim of this paper is to reflect on the nature, purpose and limits of classification in comparative health policy.
What is translation?
What is ‘translation’, and how might it help us think differently about knowledge transfer and exchange? The purpose of this article is to set out, for policy makers and practitioners, the theoretical and conceptual resources that translation holds and seems to represent.
A National Health Service, by comparison
The National Health Service (NHS) has always been compared to other things, to other organizations and systems both at home and abroad. This paper explores those comparisons, beginning with the origins of national public health care in Lloyd George’s study of German social insurance, and ending with Gordon Brown’s claims for the NHS as ‘the best insurance policy in the world’.
Global health and the problem of governance
Source: Harvard Health Policy Review 9 (1) 26-34 link SaveSave
Learning by meeting
It has become something of a truism that organisational and political environments are internationalised, and that policy making is informed at least in part by increased understanding of what takes place in parallel domains and jurisdictions.
Organizing mental health in Scotland
This paper reports the first phase of a research project on mental health policy in Scotland that investigates the way knowledge is mobilised in the policy process.
Epistemological bricolage: how practitioners make sense of learning
How do policy makers come to know what they know? How do they think of learning? And how does that inform what they do? In this qualitative, empirical study, public health officials variously display scientific, institutional, and more socially situated epistemological strategies or rationalities.
The work the document does. Research, policy and equity in health
At the center of the politics of health equity, in many countries and circumstances, stands a signal report of research. This article is concerned with what might be described as the architecture of such documents, including how they are produced and organized and the relationships they demonstrate with others that parallel, precede, and succeed them.
Comparative perspectives and policy learning in the world of health care
The main point of this article is to explore the methodological questions raised by weaknesses in international comparative work in the field of health policy. The core question is how competent learning from one nation to another can take place.
Making sense of health politics through cross-national comparison: Odin Anderson’s seminal essay
Source: Journal of Health Services Research and Policy 8 (3) 180-182 link SaveSave
The health care state in the information age
The computerization of the medical record has important implications for the governance of health care, and the importance of health care means that changes wrought there are indicative of changes in government as a whole.
Learning from devolution: UK policy since 1999
Source: British Journal of Health Care Management 8 (12) 462-466 link SaveSave SaveSave SaveSave
Reforming health care in Europe
Source: West European Politics 23 (2) 35-58 link
Recursive politics: prevention, modernity and social systems
The aim of this paper is to connect the recent interest in prevention to recent developments in social theory. It begins by recovering some of prevention’s essential features from the realm of common sense, showing that what is taken to be the common sense of prevention is emblematic of modernity.
Competition in context: the politics of health care reform in Europe
The purpose of this paper is to provide a basis for exploring the relationship between competition and quality in health care by delineating the different institutional economic and political contexts in which pro-competitive reform was conceived and carried out in different European countries
Pathways through care: the experience of psychiatric patients
The aim of this project was to identify the pathway through psychiatric care beyond the point of first admission.
User perspectives on psychiatric services: a report of a qualitative survey
Source: Journal of the Association for Quality in Health Care 3 (2) 65-72
Discharged into the community: the experience of psychiatric patients
Source: Social Services Research 1995 (1) 27-35 link
Prevention and government: health policy making in the United Kingdom and Germany
The gap between rhetoric and reality in health policy making for disease prevention services is well recognized.
Prevention in health policy in the Federal Republic of Germany
The comparative study of what tend to be regarded as marginal questions of health policy, such as prevention, is developing slowly.
Governing the voluntary sector response to AIDS: a comparative study of the UK and Germany
The impact of AIDS on Western polities serves as a useful indicator both of social values and of political and organisational relationships.