Napoleonic Tradition Research Articles

Is Service Quality a Driver of the Regulatory Welfare State? Policies for Health Services in Germany and France

The article analyzes the design and development of health services in Germany and France—two countries with similar welfare states but with striking differences in their national regulatory styles. Using these comparative cases, I show how the interplay of long-term institutional factors and short-term political factors shaped the establishment and development of these regulatory welfare states’ (RWS) social services. Specifically, I argue that the discovery of service quality in the 1990s had the potential to accelerate RWS development. In Germany, characterized by a corporatist state tradition and a cooperative regulatory style, the political debate on quality (either as a parameter of competition or as a concept for the professional consolidation of service production) had a greater influence on the design of the national quality regulation system (goals, instruments, processes, institutions) than in France, which is characterized by a state-centered Napoleonic tradition and a directive regulatory style.

Do Social Values and Institutional Context Shape the Use of Economic Evaluation in Reimbursement Decisions? An Empirical Analysis

ObjectivesTo investigate whether the use of economic evaluation (EE) in healthcare decision making is influenced by the social values and institutional context in a given country. MethodsWe developed and tested a conceptual framework for the 36 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The countries were divided into two groups based on the extent of their use of EE in drug reimbursement. The key social values were efficiency, equity, and personal responsibility, measured in an international survey. Countries were classified based on their institutional context in terms of their general welfare paradigm/type of healthcare system and the administrative tradition to which they belong. We performed correlation tests and ran path analysis regression models to test our hypotheses. ResultsEE high users included significantly more Beveridge-type systems (50% vs 31%) and fewer Bismarck-type (15% vs 56%). Napoleonic tradition countries seemed to reject personal responsibility in health (r = -0.511, P = .009), whereas Germanic tradition countries embraced it (r = 0.572, P = .003); Anglo-American tradition countries exhibited a significant association with efficiency (r = 0.444, P = .026), whereas Scandinavian tradition countries appeared to reject it as a criterion for rationing in healthcare (r = -0.454, P = .023). No significant direct association was found between social values and use of EE. ConclusionOur exploratory analysis suggests that institutional context and, indirectly, social values may play a role in shaping the use of EE in healthcare decision making. Because of the differences among countries in terms of institutional context, which may in part be influenced by social values, it is unlikely that there will ever be a single, harmonious approach to the use of EE.

The Comparative Historical Analysis of Public Management Policy Cycles in France, Italy, and Spain: Symposium Introduction

In recent studies of public management reform in France, Italy, and Spain inspired by historical institutionalism, the Napoleonic tradition is cast as a causal factor whose overwhelming strength explains how these countries' reforms proceed and finish. This symposium pursues the same research interest in the politics of public management reform and goal of understanding how reforms begin, proceed, and finish in these countries. However, the features of this research project include (1) a focus on instances of public management policymaking, (2) original research on public management reform episodes in each country, and (3) explanatory research arguments that place causation within events. Based on a comparison of explanatory research arguments developed in each case study, the symposium's conclusion extends earlier institutional processualist accounts of causal tendencies of public management policymaking and offers a critique of the historical institutionalist studies mentioned earlier.

Reform without doctrine: public management in France

PurposeThis paper aims to give an overview of the public management process in France and tries to explain why it is specific as compared to other countries.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based upon a sociological and comparative methodology. It reports the empirical findings of a European survey.FindingsManagement reforms in France are fragmented and do not fit in a general doctrine or a new philosophy of the state. The French managerial reform style is due to the domestication of management tools by Napoleonic structures. Nevertheless, management innovations are used in order to draw new frontiers within public administration between what is the centre and what is the periphery.Research limitations/implicationsThe methodology as well as the findings of the paper could be used for a more systematic comparative work in order to understand why and how public management tools fit in national political as well as professional traditions. There is scope for connecting public management research with broader historical and sociological studies of public administration.Originality/valueThe paper shows that both political values and work practices have to be taken into account in order to understand why public sector management reforms are easier in some countries even within the Napoleonic tradition.

Descentralização e federalismo: a política de saúde em novo contexto - lições do caso brasileiro

O artigo analisa os processos de descentralização e desconcentração, aliados à nova emergência do federalismo, como fenômenos mundiais e tendências marcantes na reestruturação do Estado centralizado e unitário, erguido sob a tradição napoleônica; no caso brasileiro, em particular, identifica os períodos e problemas surgidos no processo de descentralização e na reconfiguração do pacto federativo, a partir dos anos 80, e avalia as implicações desta nova ordem nas reformas recentes da política de saúde. Por fim, apresenta os condicionantes e limites da descentralização setorial da saúde, evidenciando os riscos aos quais está submetida, considerando os aspectos contextuais desfavoráveis, caracterizados por conflitos de ordem federativa e pela herança de desigualdades socioeconômicas.

FRENCH ATTITUDES TO EMPIRE AND THE ALGERIAN WAR

THIS ARTICLE has two aims, one general and one specific. The first is to throw some more light on French attitudes to Empire, and the second is to examine the proposition that it was the peculiar 'consensus' of such attitudes that more than anything else was responsible for the traumas of decolonization in the 1950s in Indo-China, Morocco, Tunisia but above all in Algeria. French attitudes to Empire during the IIIrd Republic (1871-1940) have been analysed in some detail by Brunschwig, Girardet and Ageron who have presented a clear picture of a strong and disproportionally powerful 'Parti Colonial' exploiting French self-doubts, economic anxieties and the Napoleonic tradition of the 'civilising mission' to create a mood of chauvinistic expansionism which was the dynamic force behind the creation of the French Empire in Africa and Asia. However, the attitudes of the 'Parti Colonial' were by no means representative of the whole of France, leaving some Frenchmen indignant and an even greater number indifferent.' Vichy France, the mauvaise conscience of the twentieth century French experience, has only recently started seriously to emerge from the polite cloud of humbug that denied that it existed at all except as a background to the Resistance. Thus whilst much is known about the role played by the colonies as the only concrete reality of 'Free France' much less is known about the colonies as an expression of Vichy France.2 That the humiliation of 1940 cast a long shadow over the IVth Republic (1946-58) and that the colonies, now constituted as the Union frangaise offered a chink of light in an otherwise sombre view of France's position in the world is difficult to doubt. Yet by 1960 almost all the colonies were either independent or well on their way to becoming so. What then was the nature of the colonial commitment of these years? It was above all the Algerian question that put France's commitment to her colonies to the test. Although severely shaken by the war in Indo-China and the troubles in Morocco and Tunisia, faith in the need to maintain 'Algerie frangaise' was widely shared in 1954. Algeria, after all was the jewel of France's empire. Invaded by the French in 1830, by 1954 its population included over a million settlers of European origin and represented France's