Saturday, March 15, 2014
Congressional A (Omni Shoreham)
Explaining policy change has been one of the major concerns of the health care politics and policy development literature. This paper aims to explain the specific dynamics of large scale reforms introduced within the framework of the Health Transformation Program in Turkey. Particularly, it focuses on the exceptional political will of the Justice and Development Party (JDP)’s leaders which, the paper argues, opened up a window of opportunity for a large-scale policy change. The paper builds on recent ideational perspectives that help explain “why” political actors in Turkey would focus on health care reform, given that there are a number of issues waiting to be addressed in the policy agenda. The paper argues that aspirations and fears of the JDP, alongside the peculiar characteristics of the institutional context, have shaped its priorities and determination to carry out the reform. This analysis of the policy agenda also extends to an examination of policy actors’ attempts to frame problems and solutions. Such a broader analysis aims to deepen our understanding of the content of the reform initiative as well as the construction of the need to reform. The JDP leaders emphasized continuity with the health policies proposed in the 1990s. They used impressive rhetorical strategies, diverse political paradigms, symbols and myths to justify the JDP’s problem definition. Thus, as call for papers indicate, historical models, dismissed ideologies or other pieces of the past are being resurrected in the current policy debates in Turkey.
