Reconfiguring the relation between primary and secondary healthcare through policy instruments

In Chapter 7, Araujo, La Rocca and Hoholm examine the role of public policy interventions in reconfiguring the relationship between primary and secondary care sectors and the means through which these interventions take place. Drawing from the “governmentality” school of thought (e.g. Miller and Rose 1990) the focus of this chapter is on how these interventions mobilize different forms of expertise in an attempt to both reconfigure agencies as well as the relations these agencies enter into. The authors suggest that the ability of policy instruments to work depends on the ability of the subjects of government to use the spaces of discretion afforded by their incompleteness, to embed them in existing practices without creating much disruption.