This article reviews and evaluates recent comparative social science scholarship on healthcare systems. We focus on four of the strongest themes in current research: (a) the development of typologies of healthcare systems, (b) assessment of convergence among healthcare systems, (c) problematization of the shifting boundaries of healthcare systems, and (d) the relationship between healthcare systems and social inequalities. Our discussion seeks to highlight the central debates that animate current scholarship and identify unresolved questions and new opportunities for research. We also identify five currents in contemporary sociology that have not been incorporated as deeply as they might into research on healthcare systems. These five missed turns include emphases on social relations, culture, postnational theory, institutions, and causal mechanisms. We conclude by highlighting some key challenges for comparative research on healthcare systems.
The existence of social inequalities in health is well established. One strand of research focuses on inequalities in health within a single country. A separate and newer strand of research focuses on the relationship between inequality and average population health across countries. Despite the theorization of (presumably variable) social conditions as "fundamental causes" of disease and health, the cross-national literature has focused on average, aggregate population health as the central outcome. Controversies currently surround macro-structural determinants of overall population health, such as income inequality. We advance and redirect these debates by conceptualizing inequalities in health as cross-national variables that are sensitive to social conditions. Using data from 48 World Values Survey countries, representing 74% of the world's population, we examine cross-national variation in inequalities in health. The results reveal substantial variation in health inequalities according to income, education, sex, and migrant status. While higher socioeconomic position is associated with better self-rated health around the globe, the size of the association varies across institutional context and across dimensions of stratification. There is some evidence that education and income are more strongly associated with self-rated health than sex or migrant status.
Das CSES Module 5 (2016-2021) legt den Schwerpunkt auf "the politics of populism", also auf Populismus. Es erforscht länderübergreifend den Zusammenhang zwischen dem Aufstieg von populistischen Parteien und der Verteilung von "populistischen" Einstellungen innerhalb der Bevölkerung. Hauptziel des Moduls ist es, die Auffassungen der BürgerInnen von politischen Eliten, gesellschaftlichen "Out-Groups" und nationaler Identität sowie die sich hieraus ergebenden Implikationen für repräsentative Demokratien zu analysieren. Die Daten erlauben es Forschenden somit, die Variation im Wettbewerb politischer Eliten und "populistischer" Einstellungen über Demokratien hinweg mit einzubeziehen, und zu untersuchen, wie solche Wahrnehmungen das Wahlverhalten von BürgerInnen beeinflussen.