The ideal minister of health
- Andrija Stampar School of Public Health, Rockefellerova 4, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
- Correspondence to: Dr S Oreskovic; soreskov{at}andrija.snz.hr
Should be performed and managed on stewardship, loyalty, authority, and efficiency
In his effort to escape from the individualising and particularising approach of German historicism,1 Max Weber developed a key conceptual tool, the notion of the ideal type. An ideal type is an analytical construct that serves the investigator as a measuring rod to ascertain similarities as well as deviations in concrete cases. What are the similarities and deviations from “ideal type of health minister” among ministers of health around the globe? And what would be an ideal minister of health in the 21st century? Perhaps the minister should be validated against the following objectives: stewardship, loyalty, authority, efficiency.
The question is to whom the “ideal” minister of health should direct his stewardship? “Stewardship is about vision, intelligence, and influence” is probably the most strategic sentence of the WHO World Health Report 2000.2 If the minister of health would like to act as a …
