Geoffrey R. Weller

The Push for Reprivatization of Health Care Services in Canada, Britain, and the United States

Progress towards the equity objective in health has been seriously threatened in recent years by attempts to halt or reverse the direction of postwar policy and reprivatize the health care systems of Canada, Britain, and the United States. This article examines the individuals and groups who advocate reprivatization, analyzes the major concepts involved, and discusses the possible causes of the push for reprivatization. A detailed examination of policy outputs and their likely consequences leads to the conclusion that the push for reprivatization will exacerbate the problems, and that governments would be better advised to pursue policies that would restructure and redesign the supply side of their health systems.

Assessing Canadian Intelligence Literature: 1980 - 2000

For a relatively small country that does not have a very large intelligence establishment, Canada has produced quite a sizeable literature on such matters. Produced mainly in the past twenty years, it essentially dates from the period when revelations began that the Security Services of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had been involved in illegal activities. The resulting scandal produced a Royal Commission of Inquiry, the McDonald Commission, and the establishment of review institutions. While Igor Gouzenkos disclosures of Soviet involvement had drawn some public and academic attention to espionage matters in Canada in the late 1940s, the Security Service controversies of the late sixties and seventies marked the real beginning of a spate of publications in the field.

From "pressure group politics" to "medical-industrial complex:" the development of approaches to the politics of health.

This paper analyzes the development of the study of the politics of the health. In doing so it explores the connection between the changing conceptions of the politics of health and actual changes in the health systems of the western world. Three stages are identified in the development of health care systems. These are labelled the eras of benign neglect, health insurance and government regulation. It is then noted that three basic approaches to the politics of health have been taken over the years. These are labelled the group, modified group and holistic approaches. The article then argues that these three approaches tend to reflect the basic assumption explicit and implicit in the three stages of the development of the actual health systems of Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. After critically commenting upon the value of each of the approaches, the paper notes that very few political scientists have used anything other than a rather narrow group approach to analyze the politics of health and therefore have failed to explain the dynamism of health care field. Then a few explanations for this unhappy state of affairs are ventured and the conclusion states a case for eclecticsm in the study of the politics of health.

The impact of a new university in a developing region: the case of the University of Northern British Columbia

This article analyses the impact of a new university, the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC), on a developing region. The educational, population, social, cultural, and economic effects of the coming of UNBC are assessed. The article compares the expected impacts with the actual, or likely, impacts. In doing so it makes comparisons with the impact of other universities previously built in other parts of the circumpolar north. The article concludes by arguing that impact of UNBC will not be as great as it might have been largely because it is not seen as part of a general regional development plan, but also because of a starting size that is too small in terms of programme range, a government focus on access issues, and intra-regional rivalry.

Political Scrutiny and Control of Scandinavia's Security and Intelligence Services

The Scandinavian nations are generally regarded as having some of the oldest and most solidly entrenched democratic political systems on earth. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland have earned an enviable reputation as open societies in which citizens have an almost unparalleled right of redress if they suffer injustice at the hands of the public administration. Thus, recent discoveries that some of the Scandinavian security and intelligence agencies have undertaken illegal operations, sometimes over many years, came as a shock, both in Scandinavia and in the rest of the world. More shocking were revelations that these were not the actions of overzealous or rogue agencies but those of agencies acting on governmental instructions. Further, the ministerial, parliamentary, and judicial control devices intended to prevent such abuses failed to work properly in many instances. These matters have led to some concern about the ability of the Scandinavian democracies to exercise proper control over government agencies, or indeed over the governments themselves, and to wonder just how democracies in general can successfully blend the desire for political freedom and the need to protect it by secret means.1

The Internal Modernization of Western Intelligence Agencies

Immense changes in the nature of the Western intelligence agencies have taken place since the Cold War ended. The agencies have refocused onto new targets; large-scale internal changes have occurred; and the services have been integrated more closely with the general policymaking process. Analyzed here are some of the changes that have affected the internal workings of the civilian intelligence agencies of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

Health Policy under Conservative Governments in Canada

In Canada, the rise of Conservative governments seems to have coincided with a decline in the number of political scientists analysing health care policy. There never were very many political scientists who published in the health policy field, despite its size and importance, but now there are even fewer. Far more attention is accorded the field these days by economists and sociologists. In fact most of the political scientists in Canada left in the field are members of the Canadian Health Economics Research Association (CHERA). It may be for this reason that the difference between the rhetoric and the reality of the recent wave of Conservative governments has not been clearly delineated.

The Determinants of Canadian Health Policy

Because health policy is the result of a tremendous variety of shifting forces, it is necessary to be eclectic in the approach used to study it. Analyzing the Canadian case in this broad perspective reveals that the influence of ideological and institutional forces, and principal actors is more important than most commentators believe, and that the dynamism in health policy formulation has resulted in a great deal of internal conflict as well as politicization and provincialization.