Inequalities in the use of cancer screening according to SEP are higher in countries without population-based cancer screening programmes. These results highlight the potential benefits of population-based screening programmes.

In recent years, a research area has emerged within social determinants of health that examines the role of politics, expressed as political traditions ⁄ parties and welfare state characteristics, on population health. To better understand and synthesise this growing body of evidence, the present literature review, informed by a political economy of health and welfare regimes framework, located 73 empirical and comparative studies on politics and health, meeting our inclusion criteria in three databases: PubMed (1948-), Sociological Abstracts (1953, and ISI Web of Science (1900-). We identified two major research programmes, welfare regimes and democracy, and two emerging programmes, political tradition and globalisation. Primary findings include: (1) left and egalitarian political traditions on population health are the most salutary, consistent, and substantial; (2) the health impacts of advanced and liberal democracies are also positive and large; (3) welfare regime studies, primarily conducted among wealthy countries, find that social democratic regimes tend to fare best with absolute health outcomes yet consistently in terms of relative health inequalities; and (4) globalisation defined as dependency indicators such as trade, foreign investment, and national debt is negatively associated with population health. We end by discussing epistemological, theoretical, and methodological issues for consideration for future research.Keywords: population health, politics, political tradition, welfare state, democracy, globalisation IntroductionThis study aims to describe the emerging area of politically-oriented, empirical studies in the population health literature (Navarro and Shi 2001, Beckfield and Krieger 2009. In doing so, we explore the intersection where sociological theory and population health meet, and conduct a systematic literature review on how politics, often expressed as political traditions ⁄ parties and welfare state characteristics, shapes population health in a global context. The roots of such contemporary scholarship can be traced back to the mid-19th century with Friedrich Engels ' (1958[1845]) classic treatise The Condition of the Working Class in England. In that work, Engels developed the notion of the social production of disease and demonstrated that the politics of industrial capitalism resulted in premature mortality and unnecessary morbidity among the working class. Echoing this idea, Rudolph Virchow's investigation of a typhus outbreak in Upper Silesia in 1848 led him to famously conclude that 'disease is not something personal and special, but only a manifestation of life under (pathological) conditions … Medicine is a social science and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale ' (Virchow 1985' (Virchow [1948: 33). Engels' and Virchow's perspectives still hold significant influence; however, contemporary research on politics and health has largely advanced without careful consideration of the dynamic connection between theoretical and empirical levels of resea...