TOPIC: “Public policy should accommodate rationality with politics” Discuss critically, using one or more examples from the health field.
Please ensure that you use the following material outlined below for reference. Do not use any other source besides these.

you may care to consider some of the following questions:
? What do you understand by "policy" and "politics"?
? What are the purposes of a political system?
? To what extent is it desirable to balance competing interests and values in public policy?
? What do you understand by the concept of “rationality”?
? Should there be a dichotomy between rationality and politics?

Gardner, H. and Barraclough, S. (2008). Health policy as a process. In: Barraclough S. and Gardner H. (eds) (2008) Analysing health policy: a problem-oriented approach. Sydney: Churchill Livingstone Elsevier:15-27 T

Black, N. (2001). Evidence based policy: Proceed with care. British
Medical Journal 323(7307): 275-278
Scheel, I. B., K. B. Hagen and Oxman A.(2003). The unbearable lightness
of healthcare policy making: a description of a process aimed at giving it some weight. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 57 : 483-487

A useful discussion of different ways of understanding ‘rationality’ is to be found in: Lin, V. (2003) Competing Rationalities: Evidence-Based Health Policy? In Lin, V. and Gibson, B. (eds) Evidence-based Health Policy: Problems and Possibilities. South Melbourne, Oxford University Press: 3-17