National hospital development, 1948-2000: The WHO as an international propagator

This study investigates the role of hospitals in the interrelation between the World Health Organization (WHO) and Anglo-Saxon health initiatives prior to and during the New Public Management wave. The analysis is undertaken according to a discursive, governmentality framework. The results find that remarkable linkages exist between the WHO and Anglo-Saxon health initiatives; the WHO acts as a propagator, drawing Anglo-Saxon national health-reform initiatives into international guidelines of health-care set-ups mobilised through an increasing accounting discourse. Following their post-war nationalisation, hospitals have come to play a dominant role in the set-up of governmental health infrastructure, and are formed by political and legal reform initiatives mobilised through calculative practices.