The Ideas and Implementation of Public Health Policies: The Norwegian Case

In Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the municipal and regional administrative levels are in charge of implementing public health policies and measures on behalf of the state. In fact, both in Denmark (Waldorff, 2010; Vrangbæk and Sørensen, 2013) and in Norway (Report to the Storting no. 47, 2008–2009; Rommetveit et al., 2014; Torjesen and Vabo, 2014), recent reforms have emphasized the role of the municipalities in carrying out public health policies. In this chapter, we investigate the challenges of managing organizational change processes, in order to create changes in practices within the field of public health in the case of Norway. We study the relationship between changes in national policies and legislation and implementation at the municipal level. Our main question concerns how national public health policies are put into local practice. To answer this, we need to (1) investigate which ideas about the government of public health are articulated in national policies, (2) study how these policies are received and acted upon locally and (3) explain local choices regarding public health practices. Furthermore, in this chapter we present a theoretical framework focusing on major ideas on public health management and on the relation between ideas and practice in a neo-institutional perspective. This is followed by a brief presentation of the material and methods, as well as an explanation on how the empirical data are analysed. Then the analysis of the empirical data is presented, concluding the chapter with a discussion.