The Paradox of Policy Diversity in a Unitary State: Community Care in Britain

Studies of policy‐making and management in health and related fields have generally been confined to England even when professing to embrace Britain or the United Kingdom. The assumption of a unitary state in which the policy lead is given by Westminster/Whitehall is shown to be grossly misleading in the case of community care policy. Considerable variations exist not only in policy means but also in policy ends. The paper demonstrates the limitations of studying health and personal social services adopting a unitary state perspective. It argues for more intra‐Britain comparative work aimed at evaluating the costs and benefits of service variations in different policy fields.