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Using content analysis of more than 100 newspaper articles for each of the cases, the paper shows that regulatory policies do not face any easier messaging options than price-based policies. The role of crises in policy processes is manifold: Among other things, they can create new problems, provide windows of opportunity to solve existing problems, and change actor constellations in existing policy subsystems. The similar framing of different policy instruments leads to challenges for future linkages between policy designs and framing strategies. Like environmental policy, health policy is increasingly seeking to incorporate scientific research into public communication. [Extracted from the article]

The paper compares the politics of e‐health policy with a particular focus on the implementation of e‐health records (e‐HRs) in two SHI countries: Austria and Germany. Although these countries share many similarities in terms of political and health care regime, they differ widely with respect to health care digitalization. Thus, the question arises which configuration of factors has facilitated health system digitalization in Austria while being potentially absent in Germany. As a research strategy, we use the Advocacy Coalition Framework to identify the respective actor coalitions for and against the advancement of e‐HRs and analyze how their formation, their resources, and strategies are related to country‐specific governance structures. We find that differences in the beliefs of patient representatives; variations in the institutional access for physician associations; and, finally, differing internal dynamics within the pro e‐HRs main coalition do account for differences in health care digitalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines policy outputs associated with the 2004 Bhutan antitobacco law, including 2009 amendments, to determine if the law is congruent with punctuated equilibrium or social policy realism theories of policy change. There was no direct and sudden tobacco policy output change in Bhutan due to a shock to the policy system contrary to what punctuated equilibrium theory would predict. Rather, policy change was sweeping but nonpunctuated. This paper reconfirms prior findings of social policy realism theory that various and complex policy output patterns occur due to a mixture of contingent and complex factors. Under social policy realism, a complex interplay of factors drive policy with the state, corporate actors, and interest groups, and the market often playing a primary role. These complex policy outputs have a direct impact on society and the natural environment reflected in government policy output actions or inactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]