Governance in Public Health: towards an analytical framework

This paper argues that the governance analytical framework (GAF) is a methodology having strong potential for investigation in social policy, particularly in the case of public health. It defines the concept of governance in a pragmatic way as being the processes of interactions between the actors involved in a public affair leading to decision-making or to formulating social norms. It is postulated that any society has governance processes and, unlike other approaches, that these can be observed and be analysed from a non-normative perspective. A methodology for analysing governance processes based on five main analytical units is presented here: problems/stakes, actors, norms, processes and nodal points. These logically articulated analytical units make up a coherent methodology aimed at being used as a tool for social policy research.