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Beveridge or Bismarck? choosing the Nordic model in British healthcare policy 1997-2015

Research Output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding Chapter Peer-review

Open access

Abstract

Historical and social science literature has a long tradition of interest in the Nordic model and its permutations and developments. This chapter will make two straightforward and related claims. First, that ideas about the Nordic model circulated in British political circles in the period 1997 to 2010 in the field of healthcare, and second, that this Nordic model was a departure from the ‘traditional’ social democratic conception of Norden, instead of relying heavily on New Public Management ideas. It will substantiate this claim using a policy diffusion model to analyse think-tank reports, political speeches, and articles from the popular and business press. I will claim that a dual process of policy learning was taking place in the 2000s with a group of broadly social democratic think tanks and media figures engaging with Nordic countries on the one hand and a group of free-market think tanks, journalists and the Conservative Party looking to Central European examples, especially Germany, on the other hand. Labour’s use of the Nordic model should, therefore, be seen as a means to defend taxation-funded healthcare against policymakers arguing for the adoption of a social insurance system. What Labour policymakers created was, in historical terms, a distinctive and quite British conception of the Nordic model which emphasised marketising and privatising aspects of Nordic reform trajectories that were consistent with Labour’s policy platform for the NHS.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding Chapter Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 209-229

Publication milestones

  • Published - 19/10/2021

Publication status

Published - 19/10/2021

Place of publication

London

Publisher

Routledge, United States, United Kingdom

ISBN (Print)

9780367742775

ISBN (Electronic)

9781003156925

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/625403

Host publication title

The Making and Circulation of Nodic Models, Ideas and Images

Host publication editors

  • Haldor Byrkjeflot
  • Lars Mjøset
  • Mads Mordhorst
  • Klaus Petersen

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