Self-Interest Patterns in Health Policy Elevating Cancer Control on the Governmental Agenda∗

This paper explores the ways in which adopting national health policy initiatives might appeal to the interest patterns of political leaders. It first introduces a theoretical framework that bridges the concepts of office-keeping and office-seeking to blame avoidance and credit claiming, starting from the assumption that elected officials are systematically interested in the former and therefore conform to the latter. It then applies this framework to four national cancer control programmes. ∗For presentation at the Policy Research Group, University of Edinburgh, 11 February 2008. †Visitor, Science Studies Unit, University of Edinburgh; [email protected]. 1 ha ls hs -0 02 50 29 6, v er si on 1 11 F eb 2 00 8 Author manuscript, published in "Policy Research Group, Edinburgh : United Kingdom (2008)"