Making Health Policy: A Critical Introduction - Softcover

Alaszewski, Andy; Brown, Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745641741 ISBN 13: 9780745641744

Publisher: Polity, 2011

Synopsis

This new textbook opens up the policy-making process for students, uncovering how government decisions around health are really made. Starting from more traditional insights into how ministers and civil servants develop policy with limited knowledge and money, the book goes on to challenge the conception of policy as a rational process, revealing it to be something quite different.

Knee-jerk reactions to disasters, keeping voters satisfied, the powerful leverage of interest groups, and the skewing of debate through ideology and the media are each considered in turn. These processes render policy far from rational or at least require a much broader approach for considering policy ‘logic’, one that is open to different rationalities of values, norms and pragmatism. The book draws on historical and contemporary examples to highlight that though challenges to policy-makers may seem in some ways novel, in many senses key processes endure and indeed are rooted in historical contexts. Although the examples are drawn from UK health and social care, the book’s theory-driven approach is applicable across national contexts Ð especially for countries where uncertainty, risk and resource pressures create significant dilemmas for policy-makers.

The book’s multi-perspective, thematic approach will be especially relevant to students, as will the broad range of case study examples used. Making Health Policy will be essential reading for students of health policy, social policy, social work, and the sociology of medicine, health and illness.

About this title

About the Author

Andy Alaszewski is Professor of Health Policy at the University of Kent, Canterbury.

Patrick Brown is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam.

Edition details

• Publisher: Polity
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0745641741
• ISBN 13: 9780745641744
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208