Health Policy and Politics

Within the research on the politics of the welfare state, healthcare has received significantly less attention than other policy sectors, such as unemployment, pensions or education. As studies of health politics have rarely been the focus of political scientists, this research often fringed on the margins of the disciplinary agenda. This could be explained by the exclusion of healthcare from the Esping-Andersen's welfare state typologies, making health policy an element hard to fit into existing political explanations of the countries' specific policy paths or their variety. Political scientists have also often argued that healthcare is a valance issue, since both voters from the left and right side of political spectrum want the same - good quality medical care. Assuming that ideology does not matter for citizens' preferences over healthcare, this argument questioned the role of politics in the making of health policy altogether. Yet, the current crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has put to the fore the role of politics in healthcare policymaking. Governments' decisions made in the past defined the present healthcare systems, thus crucially shaping their capacities to respond to the present crisis. Policies of access to healthcare services, transformation of the hospital sector or development of e-Health, for example, have emerged as playing a key role in countries' management of the present crisis. Health solidarity and inequality issues have come to the forefront as governments attempt a delicate balance between public health and economic policy. Other policy issues with a strong political component, such as state capacity in enforcing public health measures, the role of experts in healthcare policymaking and the EU's competencies in public health have also figured in both public and academic discussions of the present crisis. On a more general level, researchers have suggested that democracies as a political regime type might be less capable of responding to public health crises than autocracies. The main aim of the section is to focus on some or all of these issues in order to instigate lively academic debate on the different dimensions of politics' impact on health policy, both in 'normal' times and in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The section invites scholars to submit panel and paper abstracts from a variety of disciplinary, geographical, and methodological backgrounds. We strive to build panels that take different perspectives on the issues outlined above.