Review of Exploring Health Policy Development in Europe

Abstract

The author reviews the WHO-EURO report Exploring Health Policy Development in Europe, critically analyzing its content and showing the technocratic nature of the report's discourse, which lacks any grasp or understanding of the political context in which health policies are developed and reproduced in the European region. In a supposedly apolitical way, the report attributes changes in health policy primarily to economic, technological, and demographic events, without referring to the enormously important political events in Europe that mediate these health policy changes. Also, the uncritical nature of the report—which simply reproduces the “conventional wisdom” in the policy circles of most international health agencies and reflects the fact that most of its contributors are employees of their national governments—gives it a public relations tone that limits its usefulness and relevance for most health and social policy analysts.