Politics and Governance of Health and Social Care is a research group bringing together scholars in public administration, public management, and public policy who are engaged with the health and social care sector as well as with related policy domains that increasingly intersect with it.

The group explores current trends and ongoing reforms from both a political and an implementation perspective, with a focus on how new policies, services, governance arrangements, and organizational solutions are reshaping the field. Key areas of interest include the challenges of digitalization, workforce shortages, population ageing and its implications for citizens and workers, the development of public–private partnerships, and the management of “polycrises” such as the crisis of trust in welfare institutions.

By drawing on cross-sectoral insights, the group seeks to understand how dynamics in adjacent fields—such as education, housing, labor markets, migration, or technology—interact with and influence health and social care. This perspective enables the study group to capture the complexity of contemporary welfare systems and to identify innovative approaches that cut across traditional policy boundaries, fostering more resilient, inclusive, and adaptive models of governance.

We welcome both single-country case studies and comparative analyses across countries and sectors, with a particular focus on how health and social care services are designed and delivered, and on the ways governance models and professionals interact within different service configurations.