ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on ways of analysing shifts in health policy, specifically those shifts of the late 1990s into the millennium, which draw on the free-market ideology developed within the neoliberal or market state. Power is central to analysing various facets of health policy and its implementation. The liberal–structural distinction has characterised much of the post-1960s debates about power. Discussion centres on the distinction between liberal pluralist and structural theories of power, and how these might be used analytically. Policy has a meaning in everyday language but is focused on here in the context of public policy—that is, policy made by the State or state agents in the public interest. Policy-making, implementation and evaluation are political processes, to be understood through the analysis of power and interests.
