Spitalplanung Schweiz : Interkantonale Kooperation im Spannungsfeld von nationalen und föderalen Interessen

Abstract

This book brings together two current issues that are much debated in federal Switzerland: firstly, the politically salient issue of hospital planning that lies in the realm of substate competence in need of coordination, and secondly, the means available to the Swiss cantons to deal with such interdependent, horizontal cooperation. The author presents original data on intercantonal cooperation in hospital planning in the field of acute stationary care paying particular attention to informal types of cooperation. She distinguishes between three levels of cooperation: information exchange, coordination, and collaboration. This conceptual distinction allows for new insights into the cooperative behavior of cantons. She approaches her data firstly in a statistical analysis. Secondly, she conducts a case study using causal process tracing to analyse the motives and mechanisms in a specific hospital cooperation project between the cantons Luzern and Nidwalden (LUNIS). This political science analysis shows among other things that the cantons cooperate much more than expected and cooperation is particularly successful when clever strategies of the decision makers meet favourable circumstances. The central finding of the social network analysis (using Exponential Random Graph Models) is that size difference between cooperation partners has a level specific impact on the intensity of cooperation.