Policy Change and the Politics of Obesity in Germany and the United States of America

Abstract

What drives policy change and innovation when food policy meets health promotion and prevention? My dissertation studies contemporary and historical policy change in the context of obesity-related food and public health policies in Germany and the United States from 1990 to the present. It frames the question in the context of existing literature on policy entrepreneurship and theories of policy change, and it builds on them to develop a typology of policy change based on the entrepreneurs’ motives and levels of issue salience and better understand the role of partisanship and public health institutions in driving policy change. To illustrate the typology’s application and analyze the role of partisanship and institutions, I use a multi-method approach involving internet search data, original observational and experimental survey data, archival research of legislation and health records, and process tracing via elite interviews of various governmental and non-governmental actors. The dissertation serves to improve understanding of the mechanisms at play in bringing about policy change generally, and specifically with regard to low salience issues like obesity.