This book explains the causal pathways, the mechanisms and the politics that define the quantity and quality of policy learning. A rich collection of case studies structured around a strong conceptual architecture, the volume comprises fresh, original, empirical evidence for a large number of countries, sectors and multi-level governance settings including the European Commission, the European Union, and individual countries across Europe, Australia, Canada and Brazil. The theoretically diverse chapters address both the presence of learning and its pathologies, deploying state-of-the-art methods, including process tracing, diffusion models, and fuzzy-set techniques.

This book explains the causal pathways, the mechanisms and the politics that define the quantity and quality of policy learning. A rich collection of case studies structured around a strong conceptual architecture, the volume comprises fresh, original, empirical evidence for a large number of countries, sectors and multi-level governance settings including the European Commission, the European Union, and individual countries across Europe, Australia, Canada and Brazil. The theoretically diverse chapters address both the presence of learning and its pathologies, deploying state-of-the-art methods, including process tracing, diffusion models, and fuzzy-set techniques.

The book analyses how policies to prevent diseases are related to policies aiming to cure illnesses. It does this by conducting a comparative historical analysis of Australia, Germany, Switzerland, the UK, and the US. It also demonstrates how the politicization of the medical profession contributes to the success of preventative health policy. The book argues that two factors lead to a close relationship of curative and preventative elements in health policies and institutions: a strong national government that possesses a wide range of control over subnational levels of government, and whether professional organizations (especially the medical profession) perceive preventative and non-medical health policy as important and campaign for it politically. The book provides a historical and comparative narrative to substantiate this claim empirically.