Professor Tuohy will speak about her new book, Remaking Policy: Scale, Pace and Political Strategy in Health Care Reform (University of Toronto Press 2018). The book presents a new theoretical framework for addressing perennial questions about the drivers of policy change. It argues that the scale and pace of major policy change - change that alters the balance of power, the methods of control or the organizing principles of a policy arena – are fundamentally driven by political calculations at the centre of government, as political actors assess their ability to overcome vetoes not only in the present but also over time. The book develops this argument by drawing on ten cases of health policy change across seven decades (1945-2017) and four nations (the United States, Britain, the Netherlands and Canada). In her talk Prof. Tuohy will pay particular attention to the American cases, showing why the US is especially prone to “mosaic” bursts of simultaneous small-scale changes, and why both “big-bang” (large scale, fast paced) and “blueprint” (large scale, slow paced) strategies have proved elusive.
