THE INEXORABLE RISE IN THE UK NHS DRUGS BILL: RECENT POLICIES, FUTURE PROSPECTS

The UK National Health Service drugs bill has been the subject of controversy since the inception of the nhs . This article identifies the growth in the drugs bill and explores some of the factors driving the bill upward. The conclusions of this article are: that the drugs bill will continue to remain high on the political agenda; the government has only a limited amount of control on the drugs bill; various policies may counteract rather than complement each other; some of the policies may actually increase the drugs bill; however, many of the effects of the policies are unknown and there has been no rigorous assessment of the effects of any of the policies since 1948; and finally there is no robust evidence to suggest the drugs bill either does or does not represent good value for money.     

Globalization and the transformation of the national political space: Six European countries compared

Abstract.  This article starts from the assumption that the current process of globalization or denationalization leads to the formation of a new structural conflict in Western European countries, opposing those who benefit from this process against those who tend to lose in the course of the events. The structural opposition between globalization 'winners' and 'losers' is expected to constitute potentials for political mobilization within national political contexts, the mobilization of which is expected to give rise to two intimately related dynamics: the transformation of the basic structure of the national political space and the strategic repositioning of the political parties within the transforming space. The article presents several hypotheses with regard to these two dynamics and tests them empirically on the basis of new data concerning the supply side of electoral politics from six Western European countries (Austria, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland). The results indicate that in all the countries, the new cleavage has become embedded into existing two-dimensional national political spaces, that the meaning of the original dimensions has been transformed, and that the configuration of the main parties has become triangular even in a country like France.