Social Policy, Social Welfare and Scandal: How British Public Policy is Made, Ian Butler and Mark Drakeford, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2003, pp. xi + 244, ISBN 0 333 74762 3,  47.50 (hbk)

2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-289
Author(s):  
D. Ward
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Welfare

scholarly journals Southern social world-regionalisms: The place of health in nine African regional economic communities

2020 ◽  
pp. 146801812096185
Author(s):  
Nicola Yeates ◽  
Rebecca Surender
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Regional Cooperation ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
World Health ◽  
Regional Health ◽  
Regional Economic

This article presents key results from a comparative qualitative Social Policy study of nine African regional economic communities’ (RECs) regional health policies. The article asks to what extent has health been incorporated into RECs’ public policy functions and actions, and what similarities and differences are evident among the RECs. Utilising a World Health Organization (WHO) framework for conceptualising health systems, the research evidence routes the article’s arguments towards the following principal conclusions. First, the health sector is a key component of the public policy functions of most of the RECs. In these RECs, innovations in health sector organisation are notable; there is considerable regulatory, organisational, resourcing and programmatic diversity among the RECs alongside under-resourcing and fragmentation within each of them. Second, there are indications of important tangible benefits of regional cooperation and coordination in health, and growing interest by international donors in regional mechanisms through which to disburse health and -related Official Development Assistance (ODA). Third, content analysis of RECs’ regional health strategies suggests fairly minimal strategic ambitions as well as significant limitations of current approaches to advancing effective and progressive health reform. The lack of emphasis on universal health care and reliance on piecemeal donor funding are out of step with approaches and recommendations increasingly emphasising health systems development, sector-wide approaches (SWAPs) and primary health care as the bedrock of health services expansion. Overall, the health component of RECs’ development priorities is consistent with an instrumentalist social policy approach. The development of a more comprehensive sustainable world-regional health policy is unlikely to come from the African Continental Free-Trade Area, which lacks requisite social and health clauses to underpin ‘positive’ forms of regional integration.

Public Spending and Social Policy: The United Kingdom 1950–1977

1980 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Gould ◽  
Barbara Roweth
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Public Expenditure ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
International Study ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Welfare Spending ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Individual

ABSTRACTThis article, in which we examine developments in public expenditure on social policy in relation to total public spending in the United Kingdom (UK) in the period after the Second World War, is part of a larger international study on developments in social welfare spending on which we are currently engaged.In Section 1 we briefly sketch in the theoretical background to the study of public expenditure growth in general and social welfare spending in particular. We shall not in this article attempt to evaluate the validity of the competing hypotheses – this exercise is in hand as part of the international study, and we shall report the findings at a later date. Section 2 examines the growth of public expenditure in the UK at the aggregate level. In Section 3 we analyse public expenditure at the individual programme level and in Section 4 we summarize the conclusions.

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