Comparative Public Health: The Political Economy of Human Misery and Well-Being

The health of humanity varies enormously: by genetic endowment, environmental conditions, and access to health care; by age, gender, income level, and country.1 Some people live long healthy lives in peace and affluence; many others’ lives are briefer and burdened by major disabilities from disease or injury, and often the characterization “nasty, brutish, and short” is all too apt. Our central claim in this chapter is that politics plays an important role in influencing public health conditions, but unfortunately political scientists and other scholars have only conducted limited systematic research on the topic.2 As a result, the existing literature on the comparative cross-national analysis of the determinants of public health performance is largely based on the work of economists and public health experts in which political processes and conditions are understudied.3 We believe that political scientists can contribute substantially to a better understanding of why public health conditions vary in systematic ways across countries.