Background: Community initiatives for renewable energy are emerging across Europe but with varying numbers, success rates and strategies. A literature overview identifies structural, strategic and biophysical conditions for community success. Our analysis focuses on institutional structure, as we describe the variety between the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, and place this within the institutional context of the policies, power structures and energy discourses of each country. Methods: We conducted a policy arrangements analysis with a series of semi-structured interviews, extensive content analysis of policy documents, media analysis and use of existing research, in a qualitative comparative analysis between the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. Results: We demonstrate that the (evolving) institutional configuration of the energy sector strongly influences the available space for community initiative development. Denmark has a traditionally civil society-friendly energy sector, although opportunities for communities have decreased following the scaling up of production facilities. The Netherlands knows a predominantly market-oriented institutional arrangement that leaves little space for communities, but the potential for community based energy is increasingly recognized. In Germany, the typically state-dominant Energiewende strategy creates a window of opportunity for community initiatives that fit within the state policy. Conclusions: We conclude that the institutional arrangement of the energy policy subsystem can both constrain or enable community energy projects. Decentralization appears to be one of the most important characteristics of the general institutional development and generally increases the institutional space for local (community) players. The alignment of discourses across government levels and actors is one of the important enabling features of an energy system, as it provides the stability and predictability of the system that enables communities to engage in renewable energy projects.

In this article we analyze the evolution of market-oriented health care reforms in the Netherlands. We argue that these reforms can be characterized as policy learning within and between competing policy programs. Policy learning denotes the process by which policy makers and stakeholders deliberately adjust the goals, rules, and techniques of a given policy in response to past experiences and new information. We discern three distinctive periods. During the first period (1988-1994), the prevailing corporatist and etatist policy programs were seriously challenged by the proponents of a new market-oriented program. But when it came to political decision making and implementation, the market-oriented program soon lost its impetus because it was technically too complex and could not provide short-term solutions to meet the urgent need for cost containment. During the second period (1994-2000), the etatist program regained its previously dominant position. In parallel to a strengthening of supply and price controls, however, the government also persevered in creating the technical and institutional preconditions for regulated competition. Moreover, public discontent over waiting lists and the call for more autonomy by individual providers and insurers strengthened the alliance in favor of regulated competition. This led to the revival of the market-oriented program in a 2001 reform plan. We conclude that the odds of these new post-2001 reforms succeeding are substantially higher than in the first period due to the technical and institutional adjustments that have taken place in the past decade.

Seventy six senior academics from 11 countries invite The BMJ’s editors to reconsider their policy of rejecting qualitative research on the grounds of low priority. They challenge the journal to develop a proactive, scholarly, and pluralist approach to research that aligns with its stated mission

If public health is the field that diagnoses and strives to cure social ills, then understanding political causes and cures for health problems should be an intrinsic part of the field. In this article, we argue that there is no support for the simple and common, implicit model of politics in which scientific evidence plus political will produces healthy policies. Efforts to improve the translation of evidence into policy such as knowledge transfer work only under certain circumstances. These circumstances are frequently political, and to be understood through systematic inquiry into basic features of the political economy such as institutions, partisanship and the organization of labour markets.

: Although choice may be seen as an end in itself, the papers included in this special issue of Health Economics, Policy and Law, examine choice policies in European systems of health care, which aim to be effective instruments for ameliorating the systemic pressures from the iron triangle of equity, efficiency, and cost. Three papers consider the nature of differences between and within countries following the Beveridge and Bismarck models of financing and organising the delivery of care, and how choices are changing within different systems. Within countries following the Beveridge model, current policies in England, Denmark and Sweden emphasise increasing patient choice of provider. Within countries following the Bismarck model, current policies in France and Germany seek to restrict choice of specialists by introducing 'soft' gatekeeping; and in the Netherlands there is a system of managed competition with choice of insurer that, in principle, allows insurers to contract selectively