Making Health Policy by Andy Alaszewski, Patrick Brown - 9780745641737

Making Health PolicyA Critical Introduction\nAuthor(s): Andy Alaszewski, Patrick Brown\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Polity Press\nISBN-13: 9780745641737, 978-0745641737\nSynopsis\nThis 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. \n 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 prag.