Health care policies in Central and Eastern European countries and european integration: Competing approaches

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, Siyaset Bilimi ve Kamu Yönetimi Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2009

Öğrenci: SAFİNAZ GÜZEL

Danışman: OSMAN GALİP YALMAN

Özet:

The objective of this thesis is to examine the nature of health care system change in the Czech Republic and Hungary after the collapse of communism. In order to do so, the thesis focuses mainly on Europeanization and New Institutionalism as competing approaches in explaining domestic changes in Central and Eastern European Countries. While doing so, first this study tries to explore whether Europeanization is one of the main determinants in the transition process of the health care systems of the Czech Republic and Hungary and discusses the EU-level policies, laws and regulations related to the health care sector. Second, the study looks through the historical legacy and path dependency theories as branches of the New Institutionalist approaches to investigate the transition of the health care systems of case countries. The review of the related literature and empirical case studies exhibit that the transformation process of the health care systems of the Czech Republic and Hungary were possibly affected by many factors and it would be misleading to attribute all consequences to only one determinant. In this respect, the main argument is that the Europeanization effect is weak compared to the New Institutionalism approach in explaining the transition process of health care systems of Hungary and the Czech Republic; however, there are strong opportunities for EU institutions to shape the future contours v of health care systems and public health programs in Hungary and the Czech Republic.