Even in Western industrialized countries which have for several decades spent around 5 per cent of their Gross National Product on health care, interest in planning for health is recent. In countries like the United States, with what is sometimes described as a pluralist system, this is scarcely surprising. When the United States is described more bluntly, as it was for example by Walter Reuther, the incompatibility of planning with the general pattern of delivery is clear: ‘What we have, in fact, is a disorganized, disjointed, antiquated, obsolete, non-system of health care.’ But even in the United Kingdom with the framework for planning provided by the National Health Service, observers have been struck by the failure to develop an adequate planning mechanism in twenty years. This view has not been confined to foreign observers nor to British commentators outside the medical establishment.

Within this Book Review the publisher and price of the book were incorrect. The publisher is The Netherlands Institute for Social Research and the price is $84.90. The publisher apologies for any inconvenience caused.

The purpose of this essay is to examine aspects of educational policy-making at the local level in the USA. I shall present some empirical evidence to support the claims that local control by citizens is an illusion rather than a reality and that the professional educators have a large measure of discretion in determining the organization of education in their local communities. The evidence is adduced from an intensive study of the budgetary process in four school districts and in essence shows that the size of the community is not a causative factor in determining the nature of control; nor is the form of government – namely town or city – found to have any appreciable effect upon the extent of citizen participation or control.

For more than 50 years the United States and Canada maintained illegal-drug policies that followed the same course: a long period of punitive prohibition followed by moderation and an emphasis on drug abuse as a public health problem. Then in the 1980s, the USA reverted to a punitive model while Canada increased its commitment to a health-based approach. Why this divergence after following the same path for so long? In this paper I argue that one factor was Canada's adoption of national health insurance, which guaranteed universal access to health care, including addiction treatment. As the country's most popular policy it was protected against budget cuts during a period of welfare-state retrenchment in the 1980s. In the USA, on the other hand, public health insurance was limited to the elderly and the poor, and addiction treatment services were isolated and stigmatized. Thus the public health side of drug policy was poorly positioned to resist welfare cutbacks and ascendant criminal-justice interests. The experiences of the USA and Canada have implications for policy reformers and for the study of how institutional interests cross policy domains.

It is proposed in this article to integrate housewives into tax and benefit systems, in their own right, on the basis of what can be considered as ‘work’ in their case: housekeeping for a husband. The implications as regards the assessment of working time and earnings are examined, as well as the consequences from the point of view of liability to income tax and National Insurance contributions. The basis proposed would serve to recognise personal rights to social benefits to replace rights that are derived from a husband.

The author reviews a number of objections raised by the proposal. She considers that what is at stake is the selective protection of some men's domestic comforts, the status of housekeeping as an occupation and womens' freedom of occupational choice. A section is devoted to family responsibilities because they are often confused with housekeeping. In spite of the weight of habit and vested interest, the author thinks that it is possible to make progress while preserving the individual rights of older generations of women.

This article sets out to explore the ways in which social policy is catered for, at university level, in various European countries. It starts with a review of the ‘Sigriswil (1972 and 1973) Colloquia’ papers on ‘The Study of Social Policy: Teaching and Research’. Having weighed up the evidence – or lack of evidence – emanating from these get-togethers, the article then goes on to explore university social policy teaching – and the extent to which this may or may not constitute a coherent specialist programme – in selected West German, French, Swedish and Swiss (Geneva) university arrangements. Concluding comments on this evidence highlight several key aspects of debate so far as present and probable trends in social policy and administration education at university level in Britain are concerned.