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Policy making and agenda setting often are analyzed either in terms of how policy problems are defined, or in terms of the structural setting producing stability or opportunities for change. Building on different fields of scholarly work, this paper aims at an integration of structural and substantive elements in studying agenda setting. We analyze how particular frames of immigrant issues emerge in the interaction between policy makers and experts within this immigrant policy domain. By comparing this key element of agenda setting in the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom, we show how different types of interaction produce different substantive policy frames. If immigrant integration is shaped primarily as a policy issue in broader political arenas and the media, a different frame emerges than when venues such as advisory bodies, think tanks and bureaucracies with limited access and less public exposure are involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the adoption of intermunicipalities within ten years in Mali, France and the Comoros. Intermunicipalities are transferred from France through original cooperations between diasporas and local authorities. The translocal notion is a relevant way to compare territories with similar institutional frameworks but contrasted practices. A comprehensive approach based on comparative monographs and biographies analyzes how transfer agents operate simultaneously in French and African territories. The article shows new objectives and local agents at work in local-to-local transfers of policies. Opportunistic policy transfers are the result of strategic coalitions between transnational diasporas and local authorities with momentarily converging objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative policy analysis sometimes relies on the use of metrics to foster policy learning. We compare health care for patients at the end of life (EOL) in the US and France. The analysis aims to enable policy makers in both nations to reexamine their own health systems in light of how their counterparts are responding to common concerns about the intensity, quality and cost of EOL care. We find that a higher percentage of French decedents 65 years and over, are hospitalized, yet they spend fewer days in intensive care units (ICUs) than their counterparts for whom data are available (Medicare beneficiaries) in the US. In addition, decedents in the US consult with a higher number of different physicians than their French counterparts. We also compare patterns of hospital use for decedents in EOL care among academic medical centers (AMCs) in the US and France. We find greater variation among French AMCs than among their counterparts in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policymakers in the US and France are struggling to improve coordination among hospitals and other health care providers. A comparison of hospital readmission rates, and the factors that may explain them, can provide important insights about the French and US health care systems. In addition, it illustrates a methodological approach to comparative research: how an empirical inquiry along a single indicator can reveal broader issues about system-wide differences across health care systems and policy. Using data from three French regions, the article extends a previous national-level comparison indicating that rates of hospital readmission for the population aged 65+ are lower in France than in the US. In addition, we extend the range of variables available in the national comparison by drawing on neighborhood-level income data available from a previous study of access to primary care among three French regions. Within France, the odds of surgical hospital readmission are significantly lower in private for-profit hospitals compared with public hospitals. Patients who live in lower income neighborhoods are also more likely to be readmitted for medical and surgical conditions than are patients living in higher income neighborhoods, but this income effect is weaker than in the US. The article concludes with a discussion of how these findings reflect broader system-wide differences between the US and French health systems and the ways in which policymakers attempt to coordinate hospitals and community-based services. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study moves beyond current perspectives of European Union implementation research to paint a comprehensive picture of the fine-tuning of domestic regulations beyond compliance. It compares the hitherto unexplored veterinary drug regulations of four member states, France, Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom, with those of the non-member Switzerland. It links causal mechanisms back to three differing theoretical assumptions about European integration. These theories are confronted using congruence analysis in a comparative case study design. Evidence is found for historical institutionalism and for the domestic politics hypothesis. The assumption of a neo-functionalist development of regulations is only weakly supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to investigate the extent of institutionalization of Data Protection Authorities and the evolution of the regulative policy style by comparing the implementation of the European Data Protection Directive 46/1995/CE in two European countries, France and Italy. The analytical framework of the empirical research is based on the institutionalization theory and on the policy style framework (section one). Section two analyses the origins and the transformation of the French data protection authorities (CNIL). Section three focuses on the birth and the transformation of the Italian authority (the Garante). Section four compares the quantitative and qualitative evolution of the regulative activities of the two institutions. Section five analyses the transformations of the data protection regulative policy style by referring to the crucial role played by the leadership of the Data Protection Authorities in two different national contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates different modes of public policy in health care and their impact on health care financing and health service provision. In order to investigate the relationship between health expenditure and health service provision, we construct an “index of health care providers”. The empirical analysis of expenditure and this index demonstrates that there is only a weak correspondence between the level of total health expenditure and the number of health service providers in OECD countries. Different modes of health policy can help to explain why some countries are more successful in translating monetary inputs into health care personnel than other countries. Our results indicate that policies which favor self-regulation by non-governmental actors (as in Germany) lead in general to high levels of health care providers at above OECD average health expenditure. Policies which favor direct state control (as in the United Kingdom), on the other hand, are characterized by lower levels of health care providers and below average health expenditure. Policies which favor market elements are more difficult to categorize. However, it is noteworthy that especially countries that give market mechanisms higher priority than other countries (as the United States) offer below average numbers of health care providers at comparatively high total health care costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article concentrates on a single theoretical model, the Bismarckian social health insurance system, and examines its functioning in the two major cases of application, France and Germany. The comparative results demonstrate that the “same” institutional model can differ substantially. They reveal the weakness of classification principles that ignore the differences in the system of actors and in the political context. The first section provides an account of basic similarities and differences between the two cases. The second section shows how the national architecture shapes reform trajectories in cost containment, emphasizing finance, access, and the implication of the medical profession. The third section concentrates on the key element of the model, the management capacity of social health insurance that sharply differentiates the two cases. The fourth section interprets the comparative results. It argues that both systems are hybrid, and that hybridization should be considered as a normal and unavoidable process. Finally, it characterizes the German case as “renewed social risk management”, and the French case as “liberal universalism”. The latter concept, although seen as contradictory in welfare state theory, not only explains the French system; it may also provide a perspective for theorizing new types of public/private arrangement developing in advanced healthcare systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]