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Christian Democracy as an ideology and as a political movement has been ascendant in Western European states for half a century, forming the governing party or a major part of the governing coalition of parties in many of them over numerous decades up to the present. Yet the study of Christian Democracy, its general ideology and general programmatic elements across Western Europe, has been singularly lacking. Centrist establishment parties and economic programmes seem not to have the same appeal to academic investigators as the more exciting and ideologically demarcated ones. Also the future seems bleak for some Christian Democratic parties in Western Europe. The focuses are on the general ideology of the movement and the shared programmatic commonalities among the parties. Advances a consideration of the future for CD parties in the short term and the problems confronting Christian Democracy in the future. Also assesses the role and prospects for Christian Democracy in the European Union, particularly as they relate to the European People’s Party (EPP) in the European Parliament.

Throughout their histories the Evangelical and Catholic communities have been traditional opponents. Seldom have they agreed, and never have they joined to work as one within the US society and polity. However, beginning in the early 1990s some small, self‐identifying élites from each religious community sought out in the other visible persons of similar ideological and moral commitment. Advances the context of that dialogue between these micro‐élites, proposes the application of classical élite theory to explain the dialogue better. Generates a seven‐postulate hypothesis to answer the question posed by the context and the application of élite theory: can self‐selected micro‐élites maintain their alliance and accommodation for a significant period of time? Given that these are integrative and pattern maintenance élites (not the more usual ruling and adaptive ones) the application of élite theory offers an unconventional understanding of alliance building, as well as an uncommon insight into religious co‐operation and political accommodation by micro‐élites in contemporary US politics.

Key findings from recent and relevant studies on patient safety and clinical handoffs are summarized and analyzed. After briefly reviewing process management and accounting control theory, the aim of this paper is to discuss how these latter two disciplines can be combined to further improve patient safety in handoffs.

A literature review on studies of patient safety, clinical processes and clinical handoffs was conducted in leading medical, quality, and information systems journals.

This paper issues a call for research using a trans‐disciplinary methodology to shed new light on information quality issues in clinical handoff processes, which in turn should improve patient safety.

The literature review employed systematic, heuristic, iterative and practical criteria for identifying and selecting papers, trading off completeness for multi‐disciplinarity. No prior empirical patient safety studies combined process management and accounting control theory.

The above‐noted trans‐disciplinary analytic approach may help medical professionals develop more effective handoff processes, checklists, standard operating procedures (SOPs), clinical pathways, and supporting software, and audit and continuously monitor their implementation.

This paper responds to recent calls for trans‐disciplinary research on healthcare quality improvement. The literature review is valuable for understanding clinical handoff problems and solutions from multiple perspectives. The proposed combination of two theories – accounting control theory and business process management – is novel and useful for describing, improving and monitoring handoff processes in the broader context of clinical processes, using a common terminology for information quality traits.