Journal Papers

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.

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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.

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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.

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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’.

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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.

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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.

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