In recent years, a research area has emerged within social determinants of health that examines the role of politics, expressed as political traditions ⁄ parties and welfare state characteristics, on population health. To better understand and synthesise this growing body of evidence, the present literature review, informed by a political economy of health and welfare regimes framework, located 73 empirical and comparative studies on politics and health, meeting our inclusion criteria in three databases: PubMed (1948-), Sociological Abstracts (1953, and ISI Web of Science (1900-). We identified two major research programmes, welfare regimes and democracy, and two emerging programmes, political tradition and globalisation. Primary findings include: (1) left and egalitarian political traditions on population health are the most salutary, consistent, and substantial; (2) the health impacts of advanced and liberal democracies are also positive and large; (3) welfare regime studies, primarily conducted among wealthy countries, find that social democratic regimes tend to fare best with absolute health outcomes yet consistently in terms of relative health inequalities; and (4) globalisation defined as dependency indicators such as trade, foreign investment, and national debt is negatively associated with population health. We end by discussing epistemological, theoretical, and methodological issues for consideration for future research.Keywords: population health, politics, political tradition, welfare state, democracy, globalisation IntroductionThis study aims to describe the emerging area of politically-oriented, empirical studies in the population health literature (Navarro and Shi 2001, Beckfield and Krieger 2009. In doing so, we explore the intersection where sociological theory and population health meet, and conduct a systematic literature review on how politics, often expressed as political traditions ⁄ parties and welfare state characteristics, shapes population health in a global context. The roots of such contemporary scholarship can be traced back to the mid-19th century with Friedrich Engels ' (1958[1845]) classic treatise The Condition of the Working Class in England. In that work, Engels developed the notion of the social production of disease and demonstrated that the politics of industrial capitalism resulted in premature mortality and unnecessary morbidity among the working class. Echoing this idea, Rudolph Virchow's investigation of a typhus outbreak in Upper Silesia in 1848 led him to famously conclude that 'disease is not something personal and special, but only a manifestation of life under (pathological) conditions … Medicine is a social science and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale ' (Virchow 1985' (Virchow [1948: 33). Engels' and Virchow's perspectives still hold significant influence; however, contemporary research on politics and health has largely advanced without careful consideration of the dynamic connection between theoretical and empirical levels of resea...

The recent global recession and concurrent rise in job loss makes unemployment insurance (UI) increasingly important to smooth patterns of consumption and keep households from experiencing extreme material poverty. In this paper, we undertake a realist review to produce a critical understanding of how and why UI policies impact on poverty and health in different welfare state contexts between 2000 and 2013. We relied on literature and expert interviews to generate an initial theory and set of propositions about how UI might alleviate poverty and mental distress. We then systematically located and synthesized peer-review studies to glean supportive or contradictory evidence for our initial propositions. Poverty and psychological distress, among unemployed and even the employed, are impacted by generosity of UI in terms of eligibility, duration and wage replacement levels. Though unemployment benefits are not intended to compensate fully for a loss of earnings, generous UI programs can moderate harmful consequences of unemployment.

Most population health researchers conceptualize social class as a set of attributes and material conditions of life of individuals. The empiricist tradition of ‘class as an individual attribute' equates class to an ‘observation', precluding the investigation of unobservable social mechanisms. Another consequence of this view of social class is that it cannot be conceptualized, measured, or intervened upon at the meso- or macro levels, being reduced to a personal attribute. Thus, population health disciplines marginalize rich traditions in Marxist theory whereby ‘class' is understood as a ‘hidden' social mechanism such as exploitation. Yet Neo-Marxist social class has been used over the last two decades in population health research as a way of understanding how health inequalities are produced. The Neo-Marxist approach views social class in terms of class relations that give persons control over productive assets and the labour power of others (property and managerial relations). We critically appraise the contribution of the Neo-Marxist approach during the last two decades and suggest realist amendments to understand class effects on the social determinants of health and health outcomes. We argue that when social class is viewed as a social causal mechanism it can inform social change to reduce health inequalities.

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