Reviews/Comptes rendus
BOOKS REVIEWED
Roy J. Adams, Gordon Betcherman and Beth Bilson
Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, No Jobs: Tough Choices for
Canadian Labour Law reviewed by Jane Friesen 92
Alice H. Amsden, Jacek Kochanowicz and Lance
Taylor The Market Meets Its Match – Restructuring the Economies of Eastern Europe reviewed by
Konrad W. Studnicki-Gizbert 98
Peter Aucoin The New Public Management: Canada
in Comparative Perspective reviewed by Stanley
Winer 110
John N.H. Britton (ed.) Canada and the Global
Economy: The Geography of Structural and Technological Change reviewed by G.T. Bloomfield 109
Elizabeth Brubaker Property Rights and the
Defence of Nature reviewed by Dan Usher 84
Manon Cornellier The Bloc reviewed by Herman
Bakvis 97
Roy Culpeper and Andrew Clark High Stakes and
Low Incomes: Canada and the Development Banks
reviewed by André Martens 100
Ronald J. Daniels (ed.) Ontario Hydro at the Millennium: Has Monopoly’s Moment Passed?
reviewed by Robert D. Cairns 107
Laurent Dobuzinskis, Michael Howlett and David
Laycock (eds.) Policy Studies in Canada: The State
of the Art reviewed by Peter W.B. Phillips 105
Keith Fitzgerald The Face of the Nation: Immigration, The State, and the National Identity reviewed
by Don J. DeVoretz 106
Reviews/Comptes rendus
83
C.E.S. Franks, J.E. Hodgetts, O.P. Dwivedi, Doug
Williams, V. Seymour Wilson (eds.) Canada’s
Century Governance in a Maturing Society – Essays
in Honour of John Meisel compte rendu par Guy
Lachapelle 87
Robert E. Goodin Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy reviewed by Charles Jones 92
Stephen R.G. Jones The Persistence of Unemployment: Hysteresis in Canadian Labour Markets
reviewed by Pierre Fortin 104
Neil Nevitte The Decline of Deference: Canadian
Value Change in Cross-National Perspective
reviewed by Harry H. Hiller 102
Giancarlo Pola, George France and Rosella
Levaggi (eds.) Developments in Local Government
Finance: Theory and Policy reviewed by Douglas
Auld 112
Anthony A. Peacock (ed.) Rethinking the Constitution: Perspectives on Canadian Constitutional Reform, Interpretation, and Theory reviewed by Alan
Cairns 96
Richard Stubbs and Geoffrey R.D. Underhill
(eds.) Political Economy and the Changing Global
Order reviewed by Kenneth Woodside 108
Gene Swimmer (ed.) How Ottawa Spends 199697: Life Under the Knife reviewed by Malcolm
Grieve 91
Gary Teeple Globalization and the Decline of Social Reform reviewed by Peter Eglin 95
Dan Usher The Uneasy Case for Equalization Payments reviewed by Harry Kitchen 94
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
84 Reviews/Comptes rendus
Property Rights and the Defence of Nature
by Elizabeth Brubaker. Toronto: Earthscan Publications Ltd., 1995.
This is a high-spirited, well-written and informative book on the law as the protector of the environment, a book to be recommended to students in environmental studies and law and economics, a book
made more interesting, challenging and useful because
its prescriptions are, in my opinion, largely wrong.
The flavour of the book is evident in its main
headings: “the golden age of property rights,” “the
erosion of common law property rights,” “common
law failings” and “nature’s case for restoring strong
property rights.” The book is a little treasure house
of instructive law cases and public decisions, some
admirable, some dreadful. The worst of all, in my
opinion, is Canada’s Nuclear Liability Act (discussed in Chapter 6, “The Defence of Statutory
Authority”) limiting liability of manufacturers and
suppliers of atomic power to a total of $75 million
in the event of a nuclear accident, even if the accident is caused by willfulness or wrongdoing. Less
potentially catastrophic but no less indefensible is
Ontario’s recent encouragement of deforestation as
described in Chapter 10, “The Taxman’s Axe.”
There are two heroes and two villains. The heroes are the great principle of the common law that
(for those who remember their high school Latin)
sic utere tuo, ut alienum non laedas, or (for the rest
of us) “use your own property so as not to harm
another,” and the judges who are guided by that principle in deciding who is entitled to what. The villains are the principle of pro bono publico and the
government, seen as at best incompetent and at worst
downright evil, that adheres to its conception of the
public good to thwart nature and justice. Elizabeth
Brubaker comes down foursquare with the judgement in Stephens v. Richmond Hill (1955, discussed
on p. 85) that it “is not for the judiciary to permit
the doctrine of utilitarianism to be used as a makeweight in the scales of justice.” I see the book as
supporting five key propositions:
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
•
that there is often a good case for the privatization of the commons,
•
that nature can sometimes be defended through
compensation for the taking of property,
•
that private rights to pristine nature be subject
to “property rules” rather than “liability rules”1
so that the remedy for the violation of nature is
an injunction on the violator to desist rather than
compensation to the victim after the fact,
•
that people have a right to nature as it was before the intervention of mankind, and
•
that the defence of nature is to be entrusted to
the courts, not the government.
I have reservations, some minor, some serious, about
each of these propositions. That “there is often a
good case for the privatization of the commons” is
a proposition with which few economists nowadays
would disagree, but there is no prescription about
which commons should be privatized and no recognition that, as practised, privatization may be in violation of the common law. Why the West Coast fishery but not the entire ocean or, for that matter, the
air? This is not in my opinion an unanswerable question, but it is not discussed. Nor is it recognized that
privatization is a reassignment by the muchmaligned “government” of rights “from time immemorial” from one lot of people to another. It is a
decree that henceforth my right to fish when I please
on certain rivers is terminated, and that, “in the public
interest,” the government has reassigned those rights
to certain people who may be chosen by lot, by auction or by race; and whose property the right to fish
will henceforth become. I can accept this, but there is
some question as to whether Brubaker ought to do so.
That “nature can sometime be defended by compensation for the taking of property” is also broadlyspeaking correct in my opinion, but the main justification for compensation is not to protect nature at
all, and compensation can sometimes be perverse
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
Reviews/Comptes rendus
in its effect upon the environment. The main justification for compensation is to protect citizens against
victimization by the government of the day and,
consequently, to maintain the support for democratic
government among citizens who might otherwise
fear expropriation at the hands of a hostile majority. A right not to be a victim of pollution might be
protected along the way. But an entrenched right to
pollute might also be protected. I produce and sell a
substance which is harmless to users and, in doing so,
emit into the air a by-product which has hitherto been
supposed to be harmless as well, but is now discovered to be dangerous. Can my production be stopped
by the government or its agencies in the common
good (as some uses of asbestos have been stopped),
or have I a property right protected by the courts?
This question leads immediately to Brubaker’s
third proposition. The standard remedy for the taking of private property by the government is compensation, not injunction. The courts do not say to a
city planning to build a school on the land where
my house now stands that the land may only be acquired if I am prepared to sell and at a price I am
prepared to accept. The court empowers the city to
acquire the land at “a fair market price,” whether or
not I want to sell at that price. The reason is to prevent hold-ups, to stop the owner of the last
unacquired property in the path of a road from holding out for the entire value of the road to all potential users. Similarly, if everybody had a right to the
enjoyment of pristine nature and if courts were to
secure that right by injunction, then the right to pure
water of an aristocratic owner of a fishing lodge
downstream would take precedence over the cost of
sewage disposal to millions of city folks upstream,2
and the owner of the lodge could hold up the city
for far more than his fishing rights could ever be
worth. We might have to close down Toronto altogether. Useful as it would be to Environment Probe,
the injunction is the wrong remedy for the alleviation of pollution or the defence of nature.
The fourth proposition is just mistaken. Sic utere
tuo, ut alienum non laedas is an ideal, never a com-
85
plete reality. The reality is that there is little I can
do with my property (with things designated by the
law as mine) that does not affect my neighbour to
some extent and it is a large part of the business of
government, especially municipal government, to
determine what I can do with my property and what
I cannot. May I grow yellow roses even though my
neighbour detests them? May I convert my house
into a store? What about a blacksmith shop, the subject of some interesting litigation? The right to dump
sewage in Lake Ontario may or may not belong to
the people of Toronto. Some rights can be acquired
by ancient use, others may be conditional on, for
example, how nearby properties are utilized. Strands
in the bundle we call property rights may be added
or subtracted by municipal regulation. The boundary between rights that may be extinguished by legislation and rights that may not be extinguished
except with just compensation is the subject of much
dispute among lawyers and economists.3 At present,
courts typically enforce rights as they find them on
the understanding that the legislature may move the
boundary posts between rights from time to time.
Brubaker would reassign the guardianship of the
boundaries from the legislature to the courts.
Rights belong to people, not nature. The government specifies the content of those rights. Among
our rights are the right to impose certain externalities on others. Virtually all legislation entails a
change in the boundaries of rights, with legislation
about tax schedules as the obvious example. We need
not fear the imminent closing of the city of Toronto
because the people of Toronto have acquired the
right to pollute Lake Ontario to some extent. If we
are to control the pollution on the St. Lawrence at
all, it will be because governments — weighing costs
and benefits to residents of Toronto, to other users
of Lake Ontario, and to the entire population of the
world insofar as it is affected by pollution in Toronto — impose some degree of control in the common interest.
In fact, the judges say precisely that. As quoted
in Brubaker, the judge in Stephens v. Richmond Hill
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
86 Reviews/Comptes rendus
(1955, cited on p. 85) goes on to say that “It is the
duty of the State (and of statesmen) to seek the greatest good for the greatest number ... It is for the government to protect the general by wise and benevolent enactment. It is for me, or so I think, to interpret the law, determine the rights of the individual
and to invoke the remedy required for their
enforcement.”
be subsumed under the heading of property rights
to be enforced by the courts. That is implicit in the
rhetoric of this book and if it is not what Brubaker
means, she should have said so explicitly.
The common law never stood alone. In the nineteenth century, it coexisted with the rules of equity
and was always subordinate to the legislature in that
rules of the common law could always be overturned
by legislative action. The common law would
otherwise have been intolerable. In the midnineteenth century, it granted husbands complete and
absolute authority over the property of their wives,
a rule overturned by legislation in the latter half of
the century. Earlier on, the law had sanctioned judicial torture, horrendous punishments and the burning of witches. Brubaker celebrates the common law
as a whole on the strength of bits of the fabric that
she wishes were still in place today.
Recommendations and suggestions are scattered
throughout the book, but there is no concluding
chapter where Brubaker’s program of reform is set
out in its entirety. That is unfortunate because, as it
stands, the book is open to a maximalist or
minimalist interpretation. The maximalist interpretation is the advocacy of the complete displacement
of the legislature by the courts in the belief that the
environment is best protected by judicial injunction
with no guidance outside the accumulated wisdom
of the common law, a beautiful thesis for classroom
discussion but a recipe, in my opinion, for chaos.
The minimalist interpretation is that there is more
room for privatization as a defence of nature, a quite
defensible proposition that is weakened considerably by the absence of discussion about when the
“legal” solution is likely to be preferable to taxation and when not.
From the discussion of the taxation of forests in
Chapter 10, it is difficult to tell whether the author
is opposing all taxation upon owners of forests who
use their resources nicely, or is advocating an income tax rather than a wealth tax because the latter
induces owners to cut prematurely. 4 From
Brubaker’s discussion of taxation and from her less
than complementary remarks about “government”
as the protector of the environment, one might infer
that she has no room for either in her ideal regulatory program. One might infer that the privatization
of the West Coast fishery is the appropriate model
for the entire defence of nature. The sale and use of
asbestos, the emission of toxic chemicals from automobiles and factories, the degradation of the ozone
layer of the atmosphere, the preservation of
biodiversity and the entire range of commonlyrecognized externalities of modern life would no
longer be regulated or taxed by agencies of government acting in accordance with their misguided conceptions of the public good. All such matters would
The fifth proposition is an instance of a dangerous vice, the writing off of democracy as the basis
for public decision making. Of course, you do not
oppose democracy per se. You oppose government.
“Thus governments have given polluters a prize defence” (p. 96). “Governments soon discovered a new
reason to raze their forests” (p. 140). “Governments
use carrots as well as sticks to pressure owners to
deforest their land” (p. 160). “Governments have
shown that they are not up to the task of preventing
resource degradation” (p. 161). “Governments have
also destroyed resources they don’t own” (p. 161).
All topped off with an apt quotation from Ronald
Coase (p. 106). This would be music to the ears of a
reactionary economist like me if it were in aid of a
greater reliance on the market, and, to some extent,
it is. But the primary focus of the argument is elsewhere. The primary focus is to redirect what is
essentially public decision making from the legislature to the courts. Government per se cannot be
trusted, but government can be trusted to appoint
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
Reviews/Comptes rendus
judges who, through the principles of the common
law, will get environmental policy right. Never mind
that the judges are appointed by those very legislators we have come to mistrust, that many of judges
served their apprenticeship as lawyers for the very
polluters against whom injunctions must now be
served,5 that the common law has always been subordinate to legislation, that the traditional content
of the rights of property may need to be modified
from time to time and that, by its very nature, the
judiciary is ill-suited to draw a balance of competing interest or to recognize the public good. We have
faith in our judges and in the efficacy of the common law as a defence of nature. Elizabeth Brubaker
is by no means alone in her disenchantment with
the normal processes of democracy. I am especially
sensitive to that disenchantment because I see it as
a great failing in many scholars whose work I
otherwise admire and because I believe there is in
the end no shortcut through the courts, no alternative to ordinary politics, if we are to get the environment right and if any semblance of a good society is to be preserved.
I return to where I began. This is a lively and
useful book. Most readers will probably disagree
with much of it, and, in articulating their disagreement, will clarify their own opinions. The book
raises important questions about the role of the
courts in the protection of nature, questions of what
the courts should do and what they should desist
from doing.
NOTES
1
The distinction was introduced in G. Calabresi and A.D.
Melamed, “Property Rules, Liability Rules and Inalienability: One view of the Cathedral,” Harvard Law Review
(1972): 1089-128.
2
“[P]ublic works must be so executed as not to interfere
with private rights of individuals.” Attorney General v.
Birmingham (cited on p. 282).
3
See, especially, J. Sax, “Takings and the Police Power,”
Yale Law Journal (1964):36-76; and F. Michelman, “Property, Utility and Fairness: Comments on the Ethical
87
Foundations of ‘Just Compensation’,” Harvard law Review (1967):1165-258.
4
Suppose a forest yields either $100 if cut entirely now
or $11 forever if cut selectively each year, and suppose
the interest rate is 10 percent. The efficient procedure is
to cut selectively forever. Under an income tax, that is
what the owner is inclined to do, for his gross present
value is $100 if he cuts the forest entirely now or $110 if
he cuts selectively forever, and his net present values are
95 percent of these. But with a wealth tax of, say, 3 percent of the gross present value, he would cut the entire
forest immediately. His net present value would be $97 if
he cuts the entire forest now, but only $80 ($(11-3)/(0.1))
if he cuts selectively. The same argument could be made
against all property taxation if there were a way to realize the flow of benefits of housing all at once.
5
See J.A.G. Griffith, The Politics of the Judiciary, 3d ed.
(Huntington, NY: Fontana Paperbacks, 1985). One who
is inclined to place his faith in the courts as the protectors of the environment should consider JDR-MacDonald
Inc v. Canada (Attorney General), 1994, in which we are
informed by the Supreme Court of Canada that “no direct evidence of a scientific nature showed a causal link
between advertising bans and decrease in tobacco consumption” and that “the prohibition of advertising ... violated the right to free expression.”
D AN U SHER , Department of Economics, Queen’s
University
Canada’s Century Governance in a Maturing
Society - Essays in Honour of John Meisel
sous la direction de C.E.S. Franks, J.E. Hodgetts,
O.P. Dwivedi, Doug Williams, V. Seymour Wilson.
Montreal et Kingston, McGill-Queen’s University
Press, 1995. Pp. Viii, 369. $49.95.
Comme son titre l’indique, cet ouvrage veut
souligner la contribution exceptionnelle de John
Meisel à la science politique canadienne et
québécoise. Il demeure pour plusieurs d’entre nous
l’un des premiers commentateurs et observateurs
assidus de la vie politique québécoise, un symbole
de la dualité canadienne, un homme d’une très
grande générosité. Léon Dion décrit fort bien la
personne: “La constitution, le fédéralisme canadien
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
88 Reviews/Comptes rendus
ou l’indépendance du Québec, il (John Meisel) les
juge en dernière analyse à travers le prisme des
valeurs de liberté, d’égalité, de justice, de compassion et d’amour qui le guident dans tout ce qu’il vit
et entreprend et qu’il ne cesse d’approfondir dans
les dimensions multiples et secrètes qu’elles
revêtent” (110). Fidèle à lui-même, John Meisel
maintiendra le cap tout au long de sa carrière flanqué
d’un esprit humaniste et d’une intégrité intellectuelle
à toute épreuve.
La longue route de John Meisel débute alors qu’il
est l’un des directeurs de la recherche pour la Commission royale sur le bilinguisme et le biculturalisme
(Commission Laurendeau-Dunton). Peter M. Leslie
souligne d’ailleurs comment John Meisel, qui
estimait que l’harmonie entre francophone et
anglophone devait être au centre des discussions sur
le fédéralisme canadien, fut profondément
bouleversé par une remarque d’André Laurendeau
qui lui dit: ce qui est important ce n’est pas
l’harmonie mais l’égalité des chances, “equality of
opportunity” (342). Cet échange aura un effet canon
sur la pensée de John Meisel et modifiera sa conception de la démocratie, du rôle de l’État, des partis
politiques et des citoyens, thèmes que cet ouvrage
aborde coup sur coup.
Cinq thématiques guident le dialogue entre les
collaborateurs de cet ouvrage et John Meisel: la
gouverne politique, les relations Canada-Québec, en
particulier les politiques linguistiques et le
multiculturalisme, le rôle des partis politiques, la
fonction de régulation de l’État et l’influence des
médias et des communications comme outil de
façonnement de nos esprits autant que sur le rôle
social des politologues.
À travers son parcours, entre l’enseignement de
la science politique et ses diverses fonctions
publiques, en particulier celle au C.R.T.C. au début
des années quatre-vingt, John Meisel a toujours
gardé un oeil attentif sur les maux de la société
canadienne et proposé des solutions qui, si elles
avaient été retenues, auraient sans doute permises
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
de régler plusieurs difficultés. C’est dans cet état
d’esprit qu’il faut lire ce livre, en se demandant comment il se fait que les divers problèmes politiques
et sociaux évoqués ne sont toujours pas résolus à
l’aube du 21ème siècle. Toutes les solutions sont là,
il s’agit de savoir pourquoi elles n’ont pas été mises
en oeuvre et pourquoi les instances politiques et
bureaucratiques fédérales résistent aux changements
proposés.
Le premier grand thème de ce livre est celui de
la gouverne politique. Trois auteurs, Richard
Simeon, Alan C. Cairns et C.E.S. Franks posent la
question suivante: Comment faire en sorte que les
institutions politiques puissent répondre aux
demandes et aux besoins des citoyens? Richard
Simeon note que le pouvoir au Canada est de plus
en plus concentré entre les mains du premier
ministre, plutôt qu’au sein des partis politiques, du
parlement ou du cabinet (32). L’une des
conséquences immédiates de ce phénomène est
qu’en terme de loyauté, le gouvernement fédéral a
de moins en moins la confiance des citoyens, ceuxci ayant le sentiment qu’Ottawa a de moins en moins
d’écoute à leur endroit (35). De plus, la globalisation
des marchés fait subir une pression supplémentaire
aux sociétés en facilitant la naissance de nouveaux
conflits, l’État fédéral étant de moins en moins capable d’assurer le maintien de ses politiques
redistributives, les facteurs internationaux nivellant
les demandes. La question du Québec, ou plutôt
l’incapacité du gouvernement fédéral à donner une
réponse claire aux aspirations des québécois par la
reconnaissance de la dualité canadienne et de
l’existence du peuple québécois, constitue un autre
exemple parmi d’autres.
À ce propos, le texte d’Alan C. Cairns permet de
comprendre l’évolution du fédéralisme canadien et
comment l’histoire, certains clichés et certaines visions nostalgiques constituent souvent des éléments
contraignants, rendant impossible la création de
nouveaux modes de gestion. Reprenant le
commentaire de Pierre E. Trudeau qui écrivait en
1968: “English-speaking Canadians have long
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
Reviews/Comptes rendus
behaved in national politics as though they believed
that democracy was not for French Canadians,”
Cairns souligne que la réaction normale du Québec
fut de se sentir assiéger par un Canada anglais qui
considéraient les québécois tout au plus comme une
minorité ethnique. Il note d’ailleurs que deux visions s’opposent: l’une centralisatrice à la
Macdonald au Canada, l’autre dualiste à la Duplessis
au Québec.
C.E.S. Franks estime lui aussi que la difficulté
provient essentiellement de la dominance de
l’exécutif, tant à Ottawa qu’à Québec, ce qui
provoque régulièrement des crises de légitimité. Les
premiers ministres des provinces ont d’ailleurs trop
tendance, selon lui, à amplifier les mésententes entre
le fédéral et les provinces, afin de nourrir la loyauté
de leurs électeurs. Francks propose d’ailleurs de
créer, comme le chapitre 23 de l’Accord de
Charlottetown le suggérait, un “Conseil de la
fédération” qui verrait à replacer les demandes des
citoyens à l’avant-scène des débats.
Pour ce qui est du second thème, celui des relations binationales et culturelles, Léon Dion, Gérard
Bergeron, William P. Irvine, Jean Laponce et V.
Seymour Wilson soulignent tous l’ambivalence
canadienne et l’incapacité du gouvernement fédéral
de proposer des solutions cohérentes répondant aux
véritables aspirations des citoyens. On sent
cependant, une certaine morosité des auteurs, chacun
cherchant des solutions respectueuses du cadre binational canadien. Léon Dion le premier, son texte
ayant été écrit en 1989, soit avant les échecs
successifs de Meech et Charlottetown, témoigne de
son impatience devant des solutions qui tardent. Le
titre de son chapitre est révélateur de ses intentions:
“Propos désabusés d’un fédéraliste fatigué.”
S’inspirant de John Meisel qui écrivait en 1978 “J’ai
le goût du Québec, But I Like Canada,” Léon Dion
lui affirme: “le Canada est mon pays, mais le Québec
est ma patrie” (88). Il écrit que s’il avait à choisir
entre le Québec et le Canada, il n’hésiterait pas: “je
choisirais le Québec, déjà ma patrie, comme pays”
(88). Et pourtant, lors du référendum de 1995, Léon
89
Dion a choisi le Canada en votant NON même s’il
avait voté OUI en 1980 “pour éveiller le Canada
anglais à l’urgence de s’attaquer enfin sérieusement
à une réforme véritable du fédéralisme” (91). Léon
Dion a donc opté en 1995 pour la solution Meisel!
Gérard Bergeron et William P. Irvine présentent
de leur côté des points de vue opposés. Si le premier, dans la lignée des travaux du professeur
Meisel, insiste sur la spécificité de la société
québécoise et l’importance pour tout gouvernement
d’obtenir l’appui des citoyens, le second prêche pour
une gouverne politique plus centralisée. Irvine
affirme que le mouvement nationaliste québécois est
essentiellement guidé par ses élites et qu’il ne reflète
nullement l’opinion des citoyens puisqu’il y a, selon
lui, une forte convergence d’opinion entre Québécois
et Canadiens sur les principaux enjeux politiques.
Toutefois, sa démonstration empirique demeure peu
convaincante soutenant qu’il est difficile de mesurer
l’opinion publique: “public opinion on public policy
is inconsistent and unstable — a poor guide to what
should be done” (139). L’argumentaire demeure
hésitant et contradictoire puisque tout en
reconnaissant les valeurs démocratiques de la
décentralisation administrative, Irvine maintient son
allégeance au fédéralisme exécutif. C’est la vision
élitiste du Canada qui refait surface comme si les
citoyens ne pouvaient savoir ce qui est bon pour eux.
Jean Laponce reprend quant à lui le débat autour
d’un thème qui a toujours passionné John Meisel:
le bilinguisme ou la recherche d’un équilibre social
et communautaire stable entre francophone et
anglophone au Canada. Laponce affirme que les
deux principaux groupes linguistiques au Canada
jouent un rôle spécifique et bien défini, les deux
communautés étant dans une situation de diglossie.
C’est pourquoi il favorise une gestion territoriale
de la langue afin de minimiser les conflits tout en
offrant au Québec le plein contrôle de sa politique
culturelle. Sa proposition est claire: donner au
Québec le droit exclusif de légiférer en matière
linguistique, pouvoir qui serait également accordé
à toutes les autres provinces, et ce dans la lignée
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
90 Reviews/Comptes rendus
des recommandations de la Commission PépinRobarts (162). Quant à V. Seymour Wilson, il
souligne toutes les ambiguïtés du multiculturalisme
au Canada et il y voit une tribalisation de la société
canadienne. À son avis, le choix du gouvernement
du Québec de parler davantage de pluralisme
culturel que de multiculturalisme est heureux
puisque la question du Québec n’est pas une question ethnique mais bien une de race (180).
Le troisième thème est celui de la place des partis
politiques et des élections comme élément
structurant de l’évolution des sociétés. R.K. Carty
cherche en premier lieu à vérifier si l’hypothèse
d’une ère d’alternance entre gouvernements
minoritaire et majoritaire, formulée par John Meisel
en 1963, s’était avérée exacte. Carty démontre que
cette hypothèse est confirmée pour la période 19651979. D’autre part, la seconde hypothèse de John
Meisel, soit que les partis politiques canadiens sont
incapables d’agir comme des agents de cohésion
sociale, d’arbitrer les intérêts régionaux et de classes
pour devenir des partis plus idéologiques, démontre
bien qu’il n’existe pas au Canada une culture
politique commune. Quant à Vincent Lemieux, il
soutient que John Meisel accorde trop d’importance
à l’espace partisan et qu’il faudrait sans doute
resituer les partis politiques dans leurs relations avec
les gouvernements et la société, les travaux de John
Meisel offrant à ce chapitre plusieurs pistes utiles.
Jane Jenson explique que le modèle politique
dominant au Canada est essentiellement élitiste et
que les chercheurs n’ont pas assez insisté sur la pratique de la démocratie, ce qui expliquerait pourquoi
on craint souvent de donner plus de responsabilités
aux citoyens. Un exemple intéressant à ce sujet est
celui de la Commission royale sur la réforme
électorale et le financement des partis (Commission
Lortie) qui n’a pas réussi, malgré bien des efforts, à
faire accepter par les élites politiques du Canada
anglais la nécessité de réformer le système partisan, plus particulièrement les règles de financement
des partis. Dans le même sens, Hugh G. Thorburn
mentionne qu’un système de représentation
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
proportionnelle et la création de fondations liées aux
partis politiques constitueraient des changements
institutionnels nécessaires.
Le quatrième thème est celui de la réglementation. Richard Schultz, Liora Salter et O.P.
Dwivedi soulignent, chacun à leur manière, que John
Meisel avait bien prédit, en avril 1982, que l’idée
de déréglementation qui emballait les américains
allait bientôt se répandre au Canada. Quant au
dernier thème de l’ouvrage, celui de la culture et du
rôle des sciences sociales dans le développement des
connaissances, il s’inscrit lui aussi nettement dans
une réflexion tant sur l’utilité des recherches des
politologues que de leur influence sur les
gouvernements. James I. Gow souligne l’importance
de l’intuition et de la création comme outil pour faire
contre poids aux approches empiristes dominantes.
À son avis, le plus important pour un chercheur est
d’être capable de pouvoir faire osciller sa pensée
entre des modes rationnels et créatifs, de faire
travailler les deux hémisphères du cerveau. John
Meisel représente l’un des rares chercheurs qui soit
capable d’opérer ce transfert.
Dans le même sens, Edwin R. Black souligne
comment les nouvelles technologies de la communication risquent de modifier profondément les
mécanismes de la pensée humaine et la vie politique.
Quant à Peter M. Leslie, il mentionne en bout de
piste comment John Meisel a toujours estimé que
les recherches américaines avaient et ont toujours
une trop grande influence sur les politologues du
Canada anglais sans compter que ceux-ci ont
souvent négligé de participer aux débats publics,
préférant laisser aux politiciens le monopole de
l’action politique.
En somme, cet ouvrage nous permet à la fois de
décoder certains mécanismes des relations de
pouvoir au sein des sociétés canadienne et
québécoise mais surtout de bien saisir quels sont les
problèmes qui devront être résolus pour faire face
aux différents défis, en particulier celui des relations
Canada-Québec. Comme le titre du livre l’indique,
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Reviews/Comptes rendus
le Canada est un pays en transition, en évolution,
en émergence; il restera à savoir qui acceptera d’être
au rendez-vous. Mais la chose la plus essentielle de
cet ouvrage, c’est qu’il nous permet de lever le voile
sur la carrière et les réflexions d’un des politologues
les plus appréciés au Canada et au Québec, d’un
politologue qui fut au rendez-vous de tous les débats
de la société canadienne.
GUY LACHAPELLE, Département de science politique,
Université Concordia
How Ottawa Spends 1996-97: Life Under the
Knife
edited by Gene Swimmer. Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1996. Pp. viii, 478.
A new running title for the Carleton series might be
“How Ottawa Spends Less.” The need will surely
persist to analyze the sea-change of downsizing the
federal government, although this collection covers
many of the more prominent government programs
including HRDS, Public Works, Defence, and Treasury Board itself. (The book returns to an earlier format of reviewing government operations on a departmental basis.) Perhaps next year’s edition will
include chapters on trimming expenditures in Foreign Affairs, Natural Resources, and Health?
Many readers will appreciate a chronology of the
federal deficit reduction program as well as coverage of the variety of ways and degrees of success
with which departments have responded and adapted
to the directives to make cuts to their programs and
personnel. In addition to pursuing the theme of retrenchment, several chapters offer original research
into the operations of major departments: Lindquist,
for example, examines the organizational structure
and operational reforms to the Treasury Board and
questions whether the cuts imposed on its own
operations may render it less effective as one of the
key players in the Program Review process (p. 207).
The new editor of the series, Gene Swimmer, provides a useful background to Program Review and
91
a commentary on the three Liberal budgets to date.
A theme in his overview, echoed in several chapters, is that while “subsidiarity” of government to
private initiatives offered the promise of a change
in governance, Program Review has instead stressed
efficiency and affordability above all. Nevertheless,
this book does not broach policy alternatives: Swimmer notes almost laconically that the corporate sector “has succeeded in convincing government that
control of the deficit must be achieved through
spending cuts rather than tax increases” (p. 33). This
avoids criticism from those such as the Canadian
Centre for Policy Alternatives who claim that measures such as increased corporate tax or taxation on financial transactions have not been seriously considered, let alone adopted by the Liberal administration.
The contributors to this book are, as usual, among
the leading analysts of Canadian public policy. All
adhere to the theme of tracing the impact of Program Review. Doern explains the program cuts in
Industry Canada while Toner accounts for the surprising resilience of Environment Canada’s budget.
Bakvis makes concise work of the lengthy and politically convoluted process of subordinating
Axworthy’s Social Security Review to the broader
Program Review, which in turn was obstructed by
the sensitivity of UI reform. Maslove takes just 16
pages to discuss the Canada Health and Social Transfer and only highlights the key issues of
downloading the federal deficit, but raises an interesting proposal to make the CHST a conditional
revenue-sharing scheme, so as to preserve some federal leverage in an increasingly decentralized political economy (p. 297).
Going beyond departmental specifics, the theme
of deficit reduction is pursued to some interesting
conclusions in Lee and Hobb’s chapter on the process and politics of trimming the public service.
Cardozo’s chapter on the reduction in support for
public advocacy groups is a valuable reminder that
downsizing has implications for governance and for
the political economy which transcend the particularities of pain in the civil service.
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
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92 Reviews/Comptes rendus
The seventeenth edition of How Ottawa Spends
should achieve its goal of generating informed debate about agendas and priorities in the era of deficit reduction. We need companion volumes on how
the provincial governments have been forced or have
elected to pursue deficit and debt reduction objectives with apparently similar underlying assumptions.
MALCOLM G RIEVE, Department of Political Science,
Acadia University
Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, No Jobs: Tough Choices
for Canadian Labour Law
by Roy J. Adams, Gordon Betcherman and Beth
Bilson. Toronto: C.D. Howe Institute, 1995. Pp. vii,
198. $14.95.
This volume includes three essays addressing different areas of labour law. The particular issues of
concern to each author differ, but all three share the
conviction that more extensive labour law can and
should be used to shape labour-market opportunities and outcomes.
In the first piece, Roy Adams advocates fostering a more cooperative relationship between management and organized labour in Canada. He draws
on evidence from the experiences of other countries
to support this position, and searches for lessons on
how to achieve such a change in Canada’s industrial relations system. Unfortunately, he does not
provide a very satisfactory bridge between the rather
lengthy historical summaries and the relatively brief
lessons he gleans from them, leaving the reader
wishing for further elaboration of his reasoning in
order to put his conclusions on a firmer footing.
Much of this elaboration is available elsewhere in
Adams’ writings.
Gordon Betcherman begins with a brief but useful summary of Canada’s current labour-market
woes: high rates of unemployment, rising earnings
inequality, increasing economic insecurity, low levels of private sector training and a deteriorating
labour market for youth. These outcomes, he argues,
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
would be ameliorated by policies that encourage
firms to choose internal labour-market structures
that foster greater worker-firm attachment. The relationship between labour-market policies, the internal labour-market structures chosen by firms, and
labour-market outcomes is an important piece of the
labour-market policy puzzle that warrants greater
attention than it has received. In spite of its simplicity, Betcherman’s framework provides a useful
and interesting basis for further consideration of the
way policy affects economic insecurity through its
influence on firms’ adjustment strategies.
Beth Bilson provides a carefully reasoned and
articulate argument in favour of using the law to
achieve greater equity in the Canadian workplace.
Her most difficult challenge lies in confronting two
powerful and pervasive economic contentions: that
equity policies are unnecessary in market economies
because markets are indifferent to gender and race,
and that the current economic environment renders
further regulation of firms prohibitively expensive.
Although she may not persuade many economists,
she makes her case with care and breathes some
much-needed life into the position that we must take
a broader view than is afforded by simple economic
models when considering equity legislation in the
workplace. Bilson provides a clear statement of what
that broader view should incorporate and situates
her position nicely in a legal and historical context.
The volume concludes with interesting commentaries by John O’Grady, who provides a perspective
from organized labour and Roger Phillips, who
writes from the perspective of a free market advocate.
J ANE F RIESEN , Department of Economics, Simon
Fraser University
Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy
by Robert E. Goodin. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1995. Pp. xii, 352.
Over the past few decades, Robert Goodin has established himself as one of the foremost defenders
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of utilitarianism in political philosophy, and, in addition, he has published numerous books and articles dealing with specific public policy issues (nuclear disarmament, incomes policy, smoking, the
policy implications of environmental degradation,
and more). In Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy, Goodin gathers together 17 previously published articles on assorted topics, adding a new piece
in which he defends his distinctive approach to
thinking about politics in general and public policy
in particular.
What is the gist of Goodin’s theoretical position?
In short, he defends a variant of utilitarianism, the
view that the moral rightness of actions or institutions is determined by consequences, and that consequences themselves are judged by the extent to
which they promote happiness for everyone affected.
Goodin concedes that utilitarianism is unsatisfactory as a moral guide for individual conduct, but
insists that we nonetheless have very good reasons
to accept utilitarianism as our guide to public policy
making: it is as a public philosophy that utilitarianism finds its natural home. For instance, utilitarianism has been criticized for being excessively impersonal, for denying that we are justified in believing that we have strong personal commitments and
local attachments. After all, it tells us simply to
maximize happiness, counting each for one and no
one for more than one. While this might constitute
a strong objection to utilitarianism as an individual
moral guide, it tells in favour of the theory when we
consider the public sphere: “public servants must
not play favourites” (p. 9). Goodin’s argument,
played out in Chapters 1 and 4, goes to the heart of
the ethical issues at stake and addresses most of the
standard objections to utilitarianism as a moral
theory. Most importantly, he identifies and attempts
to answer the (very different) charges that (i) utilitarianism is too demanding, and that (ii) it is too
permissive, since it fails to rule out any act — such
as punishing the innocent — before considering the
consequences of that act. Some critics will remain
unconvinced by Goodin’s replies, but one must
admit that both the difficulties and strengths of this
93
approach to political theorizing are clarified
enormously.
Readers of this journal will be most interested in
part four, entitled “Shaping Public Policies,” in
which Goodin addresses three large themes: the role
and importance of preferences in public policy formation, some arguments for social security, and several important areas of international ethics (patriotism, nuclear weapons, and the environmental crisis). The essays address specific issues, but it is instructive to see them as exemplifying Goodin’s “public” utilitarianism: it must be said that the book constitutes the working out of a coherent moral and
political outlook.
As an example of Goodin’s argumentative strategy, consider Chapter 14, “Basic Income,” in which
he defends an unconditional, universal basic income
on the grounds that such a strategy makes fewer presumptions than its condition-based alternatives, and
is therefore better able to achieve the goal of benefiting those in need of help. Current means-tested
family benefits necessarily make assumptions about
social life, and such assumptions are often based on
inaccurate sociological claims or on empirical
claims rendered false by changing social circumstances. (Consider pension schemes that assume full
employment, or social security policies that presuppose stable families within which wealth is shared
equitably.) A basic income policy is bound to be
minimally presumptuous, thereby averting the
injustices produced under alternative schemes. In
response to the obvious objection that a basic income benefits undeserving individuals — the lazy
able-bodied — Goodin the utilitarian appeals to the
relevance of the actual numbers involved: “the harm
done by deserving cases being denied benefit by
errors that accompany a more discriminating policy
are ... worse than is that done by undeserving cases
being granted benefits by a less discriminating
policy” (p. 241).
The book is worth reading both for its general
defence of “public” utilitarianism and for its often
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94 Reviews/Comptes rendus
unexpected arguments for specific policy recommendations.
CHARLES JONES, Department of Philosophy, University College Cork and London School of Economics and Political Science
The Uneasy Case for Equalization Payments
by Dan Usher. Vancouver: The Fraser Institute, 1995.
Pp. viii, 163.
This book is sectioned into five parts. Part one describes the Canadian program of equalization payments. Parts two, three, and four address the three
E’s of the equalization formula — equality, efficiency and equity. Part five suggests ways in which
the equalization program could be reformed.
While there is a general impression amongst most
policymakers that equalization payments in Canada
have narrowed the distribution of income (inequality), led to increases in national income (efficiency)
and improved equity, Professor Usher offers some
compelling arguments that seriously challenge these
impressions. He argues that the effects of the equalization program are mixed, that there are opposing
tendencies and that commonly asserted propositions
about the virtues of equalization payments are unproven. In particular, he makes extensive use of
arithmetic examples to demonstrate that income
transfers from rich provinces to poor provinces may
not lead to a transfer of income from rich to poor
people. This may be nothing more than a transfer of
income from one group of rich people to another
group of rich people with very small and incidental
benefits for the poor. Further, he notes that the benefits to poor people are likely to be substantially
less than if federal equalization payments were targeted directly at the alleviation of poverty.
As well, his meticulous and detailed examination
of the potential impact of equalization payments on
the allocation of labour and other factors of production across provinces, the social cost of taxation,
the amount and composition of public expenditures,
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
insurance against province-wide misfortune and
administration costs seriously question whether this
program has increased the level of national income.
He suggests that, at best, the evidence is speculative and inconclusive. It may have led to efficiency
improvements or it may not. We simply don’t know!
Similarly, his analysis questions whether equalization payments have led to overall improvements
in equity. It may have, but it may not have. His hunch
is that it has not!
Perhaps the most interesting part of this book is
the author’s proposed reforms. He argues that any
reform of equalization payment cannot be considered in a vacuum. Amongst other things, it must be
linked with other policies and programs and may
depend on whether Quebec remains part of Canada.
With this in mind, he examines five possible changes
to the equalization program. First, replacing the
current formula which is based on a shortfall in the
average tax base with a macro formula based on a
shortfall in gross domestic product would, in the
author’s view, more likely funnel money to poor
provinces and would leave provinces with far less
opportunity to influence their equalization revenues
through their ability to adjust their tax rates. Second, equalization payments should be financed by
taxing rich provinces directly rather than from the
general revenues of the federal government. Third,
a province should only be eligible for equalization
if its average income is substantially less than the
Canadian average.
His fourth and fifth reforms represent his preferred options and are much more dramatic and potentially interesting. One of them is for a Canada
without Quebec. Here, the federal government
would assume all ownership of natural resources and
accept all responsibility for income distributional
programs including health, education, and social
welfare. There would be no role for provinces and
hence no role for equalization. Local governments
would be responsible for local services and the federal government for those services of a more national
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
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interest. On the other hand, for a Canada that includes Quebec, the author makes a stronger case for
equalization payments although at a level less than
currently exists. This rests on the premise that there
would be a decentralized federation with provincial
jurisdiction over natural resources and a good deal
of income redistribution.
Professor Usher’s careful, critical, and insightful examination of Canada’s federal-provincial
equalization scheme is a “must read” for any student of equalization programs or any policymaker
involved in intergovernmental transfers. His neverending and meticulous (some might even say tedious, at times) use of arithmetic examples to illustrate potential inequalities, inefficiencies, and inequities in the existing system sheds considerable light
on the potential for problems and the necessity for
seriously considering possible reforms. This is not
to suggest that his reforms should be adopted; indeed, there are others. What cannot be underscored,
however, is the importance of engaging in a detailed
and comprehensive examination of the $10 billion
program.
HARRY K ITCHEN, Department of Economics, Trent
University
Globalization and the Decline of Social Reform
by Gary Teeple. Toronto: Garamond Press, 1995.
Pp.ix, 189. $18.95.
We live in a transitional time between the nationally based Keynesian welfare state and the emerging self-generating system of the global economy.
As a new phase in the development of capitalism
the global economy makes national economies, national sovereignty, indeed the nation state, and
thereby the possibility of reforming capitalism
through social democracy obsolete. Global sovereignty of a form of economic organization — a ruling class of transnational corporate and financial
actors — without a corresponding global political
authority threatens the world with a new tyranny.
Such is Teeple’s thesis. It is argued with impressive
95
cogency and authority, and with some urgency. As a
work in political economy by a sociologist, it is
extraordinarily well documented with relevant technical literature in economics and political science.
A colleague has used it as a text in a fourth-year
seminar on Economic Sociology, and I also intend
to use it in a similar seminar on the ethics of sociological inquiry in a “globalized” world.
The book’s six chapters accomplish three tasks.
These are (i) an analytic description of the relationship between capitalism and social democracy in the
1945-70s “interregnum” of advanced Fordist or
welfare capitalism known as the Keynesian Welfare
State, (ii) an analytic description of the same relationship in post-Fordist or global capitalism since
the mid-1970s, including an excellent delineation
and deconstruction of the neoliberal policy package that is the ideological counterpart of the material changes in social relations constituting globalization, and (iii) a concluding summary plus outlining of the political dilemmas and possibilities posed
by globalization for those seeking a world fit for
human beings to live in.
Why is the welfare state declining? It was always
a “grand compromise” between national capitals and
their working classes, designed to offset the worst
effects of capitalism and as a bulwark against socialism, and made possible by postwar prosperity
and capital’s need for the state in a period of recovery. Though it raised workers’ standard of living, it
never seriously reduced economic inequality. Indeed
Teeple argues there was a net transfer from workers
to the corporate sector (recall Chomsky’s “military
Keynesianism” in the US) via the tax system. With
the coming of the global economy of “denationalized capital” brought on by well-known technological changes, the huge growth in international trade
and investment and concomitant globalization of
financial markets, capital no longer needs the compromise. It can find labour and profits anywhere and
forces nations to compete for its largesse. Global
financial markets become the final arbiter of national
economic policies. The familiar downward spiral of
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96 Reviews/Comptes rendus
national economic growth, average rates of profit,
corporate taxation, real wages, government revenue,
and the corresponding growth of public debt and
deficits, structural unemployment, superexploitation, notably of women and children, and general
economic inequality set in.
control over the ideological and political systems
remains a monopoly of the powers that be” (p. 149),
and (ii) that “it has been more the poverty of opposition leadership than the will of the people that has
prevented this resistance from developing” (p. 150).
More than ever, it’s up to you and me.
At the same time neoliberal policies are advanced
and gradually adopted throughout the world. And
what an agenda it is. Founded on the principle of
the “primacy of private property rights” it comprises:
the market as panacea (translation: corporate concentration and corporate welfare and minimal corporate competition plus opening of non-market
property to capital); free economic zones as a model
for the global economy; deregulation of national
economies; privatization of public corporations;
“popular capitalism;” lowering of the corporate
share of taxation; reduction of national debt;
downsizing of government; restructuring of local
government; dismantling of the welfare state; promotion of charities; circumscription of civil liberties, human rights, trade union powers and democracy itself; and the expansion of the “crime control
industry” (Nils Christie) to deal with the consequences. Designed to justify and advance the trends
in place, neoliberal policies are used to beat down
the last bastions of non-private property — from
state property in the former second world to communal property in the former third world to public
property in the (former?) first world — and open
them up to corporate capitalist exploitation. Social
democracy, wedded to the increasingly obsolete
nation state and a trade union movement in crisis,
becomes indistinguishable in power from its opponents. The welfare state disappears. Spectacular
profits ensue.
PETER EGLIN, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Wilfrid Laurier University
Resistance is everywhere, but lacking organization and often latent. I agree with Teeple (i) that
“[b]oth the resistance and the alternatives face enormous odds as long as, first, the current system continues to provide a tolerable material existence for
the majority [but outside the “first” world, and increasingly within it, it fails to do this] and, second,
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
Rethinking the Constitution: Perspectives on
Canadian Constitutional Reform,
Interpretation, and Theory
edited by Anthony A. Peacock. Don Mills: Oxford
University Press, 1996. Pp. xxix, 286. $26.95.
The problem to which this volume is a response is
that “no longer is the [Canadian] constitution considered to reflect a permanent order or as maintaining fixed constitutional forms. Rather it is a register of social pressures that must change and adapt
to changing circumstances ... The challenge to democracies is to respect constitutional forms”
(pp. xii-xiii). The symbol and prime agent of our
constitutional malaise is the Charter. That malaise is
underlined in the recurring references to our lack of
a unifying national idea, the absence of a common
myth, that we have no sense of why we exist, and
that we have failed to constitute ourselves as a people — in brief, the absence of legitimacy, the very
failing the Charter was to redress.
The appearance of this volume confirms and consolidates what shrewd observers had already detected, that the Charter’s honeymoon period is over,
and that a minority but growing critique of the Charter has a significant academic base. Charter criticisms, including its alleged contribution to our constitutional stalemate, are a healthy sign that the debate we didn’t have in 1980-82 when the Charter’s
opponents were vanquished is now taking place.
The criticisms are the standard ones — that
policy-making power has inappropriately passed to
the courts; that judges are poor legislators; that rights
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Reviews/Comptes rendus
are destructive of community; that selfish Charter
Canadians frustrate the possibility of constitutional
reform; that the Charter has become a policy instrument wielded by interest groups (Watson, p. 89 —
the Court Party of Morton and Knopff, ch. 4) to
expand state intervention; that the law schools with
their trendy hostility to “liberal constitutionalism”
are the intellectual villains generating the ideologies that have set us adrift (Martin, ch. 13); and more
generally that we are asking too much of the constitution (Manfredi, ch. 3).
Canadians who think that we took a wrong turn
in 1982 when the Constitution Act, including the
Charter, came into effect, and who in particular see
the Charter as an unwelcome departure from the
time-honoured principle of parliamentary supremacy
will be delighted at this book’s appearance. Those
who feel more generally that our quarter-century of
constitutional introspection has almost destroyed us,
and who sense a weakening of our moral fibre, even
a sickness of the Canadian soul will nod appropriately at many of the (often purple) passages.
Before succumbing to the book’s overall message, however, they should reflect on the one essay
that disturbs the general tenor of the volume. In
“Trudeau’s Moral Vision,” H.D. Forbes applauds
Trudeau’s courage and vision manifested in his
policy triumvirate of bilingualism, multiculturalism,
and the Charter — by which he “called upon Canadians to embark on a noble experiment for the sake
of increasing mankind’s political knowledge”
(p. 34).
The book is divided into three parts — Constitutional Reform (three articles), Constitutional Interpretation (seven articles), and Constitutional Theory
(three articles). However, in spite of its title, the
“Quebec problem” receives scant attention; and in
spite of its apparent breadth, the main focus of the
book is on the Charter.
Rethinking the Constitution will upset many of
the “chattering classes” who are its targets. They
97
should remember that, for scholars, our critics are
our best friends.
A LAN C AIRNS , School of Policy Studies, Queen’s
University
The Bloc
by Manon Cornellier. Toronto: James Lorimer &
Co., 1995. Pp. xi, 180. $19.95.
The success of the Bloc Québécois and the Reform
Party in the 1993 Canadian election can be seen as
significant on several grounds, including consideration of issues such as the perverse effects of our firstpast-the-post electoral system and the possible end
of the traditional parties on the left and right. Most
crucially, however, the success of Reform and the
Bloc represents a significant escalation in the clash
between Quebec and the rest of Canada over Quebec’s position in, and possible exit from, the Canadian federation. The Bloc’s raison d’etre, of course,
is to promote the breakup of the country, although
Reform’s claim to want to save the country is to a
considerable degree belied by its hardline position
on provincial equality. Any work, therefore, that
examines the paradoxical role played by one of the
two new protagonists, the Bloc, the political party
that is at one and the same time Her Majesty’s Loyal
Opposition and an important instrument of the
sovereignist movement in Quebec, is especially
welcome. How that role is played, the centrality of
leadership, the nature of the Bloc’s electoral support, and the long-term viability of a party based on
the premise of a single albeit very broad issue are
all areas that warrant scrutiny.
In these respect The Bloc, by Manon Cornellier,
parliamentary correspondent with Canadian Press,
will likely disappoint a number of political scientists and others. It lacks the kind of analysis of the
Bloc’s electoral base that voting behaviour specialists, for example, might expect in a book seeking to
explain the origins and success of the new party.
Furthermore, no effort is made to place the Bloc in
the context of linguistic or nationalist parties in other
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
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98 Reviews/Comptes rendus
settings, Belgium, for example, where similar developments have occurred. Nor is there much theorizing about party and party system change. Nonetheless, there is much that is valuable in the book,
and anyone seeking to understand the party’s present
dilemma and future fate will find reading it worthwhile.
Written before the October 1995 referendum and
Bouchard’s departure for Quebec City, Cornellier
is remarkably prescient. She notes how precariously
dependent the party has been on Bouchard’s profile
and leadership, and how in good part Bouchard’s
and the general movement’s success resided in his
capacity to present and put Quebec’s case to English Canada, using Parliament as the stage. She discusses the possibility of the party coming unstuck
through defections and early retirements should the
referendum fail and describes the individual contrasts within the party. In many respects ideological
differences between Bloc MPs on economic issues,
for example, are much greater than those found
within the large catch-all Liberal Party. The book
also provides a useful corrective to the notion that
the Bloc is simply the federal wing of the Parti
Québécois (PQ). While officials in both parties essentially “came from the same mold” (p. 76) and
while, according to polling data, the views of
supporters are very similar, the Bloc has been able
to attract new support. Thus, when the Bloc and the
PQ compared membership lists it was discovered
that 60 to 65 percent of Bloc members were not
members of the PQ (p. 78). In addition, the Bloc
provided Bouchard with an organizational power
base to challenge Jacques Parizeau over the issue
of soft versus hard nationalism.
In brief, although this relatively short book lacks
depth and detailed analysis, it provides useful
insights on the several issues germane to an understanding of the role of the Bloc and where it, and
the country as a whole, might be going.
HERMAN BAKVIS, Department of Political Science/
School of Public Administration, Dalhousie University
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
The Market Meets Its Match - Restructuring
the Economies of Eastern Europe
by Alice H. Amsden, Jacek Kochanowicz and Lance
Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1994. Pp. 250.
Contrary to the common illusion, economics is a
laboratory science — with numerous experiments
around the world — that should provide the basis
for understanding economic systems. The market reforms in Eastern Europe are an important recent
experiment, from which much can be learned.
In contrast with medical science, where the evaluation of experiments is conducted with utmost scepticism and where not only the results of a therapy
but also its side-effects are critically evaluated, the
assessment of economic experiments is often done
by those who have intellectual or ideological interests in drawing certain conclusions, quite often by
those who have been directly involved in policy reforms as advisors or advocates. Therefore, the book
by Amsden, Kochanowicz and Taylor should be regarded as an important event. The authors are sympathetic to the general objectives of market reforms,
have direct knowledge of the problems encountered,
yet are quite critical about the assessment of the
policies adopted. It should also be stressed that the
authors are not on the “fringes” of economic science, but respected scholars from leading academic
institutions (Amsden is professor at MIT, Taylor at
the New School for Social Research, and
Kochanowicz is professor at the University of Warsaw, with a number of very respectable publications)
and their book has been enthusiastically received
by Wassily Leontief, Robert Heilbroner, Janos
Kornai, and Lester Thurow.
A particularly interesting aspect of Eastern European economic reforms stems from the fact that
the reforms were, to a very large extent, guided by
Western economists and that the ideas of neoliberal
economics have been almost totally accepted by both
the policymakers and the intellectual establishment
of the countries concerned. In this important respect
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
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Eastern Europe differed very much from China,
where some inputs from the Western advisors were
adopted selectively. Because of the impact of the
current “mainstream” Western economics was so
great and so direct, the assessment of the results is
not only important for the understanding of Eastern
Europe but has a number of potential implications
for the evaluation of our prevailing theories of economic policy.
The main theme of criticism by Amsden et al.
can be summarized as follows.
Proposed and largely applied therapy was not
preceded by an adequate diagnosis of the situation.
In fact, little was known — and even less understood — of the actual working of the communist
system. To some extent this can be explained by the
fact that a critical review of the system was subdued by political censorship and thus appeared in a
very fragmentary manner. Nonetheless many important contributions did appear and should not have
been ignored. Even less excusable was the fact that
the Western advisors and national policymakers
tended to ignore industry and enterprise studies
which were commissioned during the early reform
phases. Amsden, who participated in a number of
such studies provides an ample and depressing evidence of such disregard for facts about the economies to be reformed.
There was a general feeling that a major problem of the enterprises in Eastern Europe was overstaffing and high labour costs. In fact, although labour was used ineffectively, total labour costs were
not excessive, because of relatively low wages (e.g.,
wage costs in Poland in 1990 were lower than in
India, Philippines, Kenya, and Egypt). Therefore,
the primary effect of the depression of real wages,
which was supposed to make Eastern European industries more competitive, was the rapid shrinking
of the domestic demand, which could not be compensated by increases in export earnings. Furthermore it was not realistic to expect that the reduction
of overstaffing in major state enterprises could be
99
compensated by an increase in activities in the
emerging private sector. The consequence of the
policy adopted was a major surge of unemployment,
with the subsequent increase of fiscal burden and
ad hoc subsidies.
In general, the difficulties of transition were
vastly underestimated and projections made by the
new governments, as well as by international institutions, were grossly overoptimistic. One could have
excused lack of experience of the national governments, but the international experience related to
much milder economic reforms in Latin America
provided ample evidence of the depressions that
follow radical changes. On the other hand, the authors tend to be rather unfair regarding anti-inflation
policies in Eastern European countries and ignore
the existence of “inflationary overhang,” which particularly affected Poland and even more so Russia.
This “inflationary overhang” (which in Poland was
due to desperate price and wage policies of the collapsing government) had to be dealt with immediately and under conditions of disorganized administration, which meant that only crude measures
could be adopted (a later and more sophisticated
Russian monetary reform collapsed through the absence of adequate administration).
The authors devote a great deal of space to the
subject of industrial restructuring. Here, their criticism is well founded both theoretically and empirically. The accepted doctrine was that the opening
of the market, the strict adherence to the rules of
the price mechanism, and the privatization will create a viable, even if not optimal, industrial structure. This doctrine lacked any serious theoretical
basis and its application showed it to produce adverse results. For example, during the communist
regime, there existed a strict administrative boundary between industrial R&D and enterprises.
Whether the existence of autonomous R&D institutes made sense or not was a relatively minor institutional problem, as long as R&D and the enterprises
were under the same control; it definitely did not
make sense under the conditions of market economy.
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
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100 Reviews/Comptes rendus
However, instead of integrating R&D with the
enterprises, the old system was maintained, depriving the industries of its technological backup. This
proved to be easy to overcome in the case of “new
industries” (particularly electronics), but was fatal
for the old ones. Secondly, the success of the reforms
required filling the “investment gaps” as a part of
restructuring and quality improvement programs —
this was not done. Instead the accepted doctrine was
“to force the inefficient enterprises into bankruptcies”
— a strange policy, when one considers that in the
mature capitalist economies all sorts of “restructuring”
and “protection” devices are built into bankrupty laws
to prevent collapse of potentially viable enterprises
(the experience of Chrysler which was supported
until the K-models could be introduced should have
served as an example — but doctrine prevailed over
experience). Furthermore, under the pressure of international institutions and Western advisors, ministries dealing with industries were dismantled and
instead of a modernized “Ministry of Industry and
International Trade” a weak “Ministry of International Cooperation” was established in Poland.
The authors are correct in criticizing “privatization schemes” (other than the first wave of privatization, which made sense and was successful) as
well as the naive faith in foreign investments as the
engine of progress. Privatization in Eastern Europe,
without a developed stock market and in the absence
of domestic capital, was infinitely more difficult than
in the West and such difficulties were misunderstood. The problem was not only valuation of the
enterprises to be transferred, but also selection of
responsible owners. Also attracting foreign investors proved to be more difficult than anticipated.
Stories about inefficiency in the existing enterprises,
poor work habits, and bad management — illustrated
by horrific examples of obsolete production lines
(incidently, similar examples can be found in
Iacocca’s description of Chrysler), had a deterrent
effect on foreign investors. In fact, a serious inflow
of foreign investments occurred — first to the Czech
Republic, then to Hungary, and at present to Poland — after the first foreign investors found the
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
conditions there much better than described, which
provided encouragement for other firms to enter the
market. The story of foreign investments also contains interesting lessons: later successes have been
largely due to the establishment of credible democratic institutions and demonstrated ability to deal
with social and political problems of transition,
while the major obstacle proved to be lack of adequate administrative apparatus; thus pro-foreign
investment policies were nullified by administrative
chaos and lack of clear lines of responsibility. In
general, lack of attention to administrative, institutional, social and political factors was one of the
major failings of foreign advisors in developing a
transition strategy.
Obviously, the book by Amsden et al. is not the
final assessment of the Eastern European experiment; it also lacks analysis of the recoveries in 199496 and of the emergence of an efficient financial
administration in the Czech Republic and Poland.
Nonetheless it is one of the first serious critical attempts to test the validity of the prevailing doctrines
in real-life situations and as such it is definitely
worth reading, preferably in conjunction with other
studies on Chinese reforms and critical reviews of
restructuring in Third World countries.
KONRAD W. STUDNICKI-GIZBERT , Quebec
High Stakes and Low Incomes: Canada and the
Development Banks
by Roy Culpeper and Andrew Clark. Ottawa: The
North-South Institute, 1994. Pp. 109.
If you have always wanted to know what multilateral development banks (MDBs) are and what is in
them for Canada but never dared to ask, read this wellresearched little book whose authors are with the
North-South Institute, an Ottawa-based non-profit corporation that conducts policy-relevant research on relations between developing and developed countries.
MDBs are international public financial institutions whose primary function is to lend to developVOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
Reviews/Comptes rendus
ing member-country governments their capital being subscribed by both developed and developing
countries. The five MDBs which are under scrutiny
are the International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development (better known as the World Bank), the
African Development Bank, the Asian Development
Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and
the Caribbean Development Bank. Canada is a major shareholder in all of them and has a seat on the
board of executive directors of each one. Traditionally, the MDBs’ lending was for specific development projects, but since the early 1980s, an increasing portion has gone to support structural adjustment programs in exchange for policy reforms at
both the macro- and microeconomic levels. The
loans are funded by borrowing on the international
financial markets and are thus made at nonconcessional, that is, market, terms which disqualify
them as Official Development Assistance (ODA).
However, each of the MDBs has a “soft window”
which makes loans available on a concessional basis to its least-developed members. In this case, donor countries are directly responsible for providing
the resources that are to be lent, these contributions
being part of their ODA. Over the years, the five
MDBs have mobilized no less than 20 percent of
global net resource transfers to developing countries.
They also shaped, and in particular the World Bank,
what might be called the philosophy of development
assistance. As such, they can hardly be ignored.
The relatively strong involvement of Canada in
the MDBs’ funding, especially at the soft windows
of the African and Asian Banks, and activity can be
explained by the fact that the MDBs’ development
objectives were never all that different from those
of our country (originally the build-up of basic infrastructures and food security and, since then, poverty alleviation, environment preservation and policy
reforms), by the genuine concern of Canada in making the MDBs effective and responsible lending institutions and, last but not least, by the multiplier
effect on the Canadian economy of the contributions
made. For example, over the 1986-92 period, each
dollar contributed generated domestically 92 cents
101
through MDB contracts awarded to Canadian firms
(as opposed to 68 cents for Canadian aid in general).
Let it also be reminded that Canada’s contributions
are largely made by the issue of notes, and what is
considered as ODA, according to the accounting
conventions in use, is the amount issued and not the
amount encashed (which can take up to ten years).
As correctly pointed out by the authors: “because it
does not cost a budgetary penny to issue an MDB
note, one could argue there is a built-in bias in favour of the MDB channel when a country wishes to
quickly increase its ODA levels” and more so, of
course, in times of budget restraint.
Despite its involvement, the influence of Canada
at the MDBs, though not ineffective, has never been
overwhelming. For example, Canada was successful in 1988 at making environment protection a new
and major dimension in the analysis of World Bank
projects, but achieved little results at promoting
gender issues at the Asian Bank or improving management transparency at the African one.1 Moreover,
though Canadian firms have obtained a fair amount
of MDB contracts through international competitive
bidding — especially in the field of engineering —
and thanks to various trust funds held by Canada at
these institutions — mainly for consultancies on
project identification and preparation — other countries have generally been more aggressive in their
procurement lobbying as, for instance, Korea at the
African Development Bank (where it is represented
at the board of directors by ... Canada).
The authors attribute this limited Canadian influence mainly to the weak presence of Canadian
nationals on the MDBs’ staff and to a lack of accountability of MDB management towards their
shareholders, including Canada. Management, in
practice, has control over vital information, project
selection, and operations confining shareholders’
representatives, that is, the executive directors,
mainly to the discussion of general policy issues.
Accountability has not been greater towards the Canadian public. The report on MDBs’ annually
submitted to our House of Commons does not em-
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VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
102 Reviews/Comptes rendus
phasize key issues and is even blatantly incomplete.
The only MDB it reviews is the World Bank, the
four other banks being omitted, though information
exists on them but appears to be restricted for official use only. Finally, the Canadian executive directors rarely meet the Canadian public to explain what
MDBs do and try to achieve (when such meetings
took place in the past, they were generally limited
to the presentation of guidelines on MDBs’ procurement procedures to the Canadian business
community).
As a general conclusion, the authors share the
view of most bilateral donors that the MDBs, despite their shortcomings, remain effective vehicles
for development financing, “well positioned to take
on a growing proportion of overall aid flows, at the
expense of bilateral donors.” Not surprisingly, they
call for more MDB accountability and suggest that
Canada allies itself with the Nordic countries, the
Netherlands, and other “like-minded” donors in an
effort to press for such improvements.
In this reviewer’s mind, there subsist three questions: Is Canada willing to put additional money into
multilateral financing at a time when its government
seems to consider foreign aid more and more as an
instrument of its external and commercial policies,
the implementation of which is essentially bilateral
in nature? Given the present trend of government
decentralization observed all over the world, how
well prepared are the MDBs to go into lending not
only at the central government level of the borrowing countries, as it has mainly been the case until
now, but also at their subnational levels (provinces,
municipalities, etc.)? In view of the large programs
of public enterprise divestiture implemented in many
borrowing countries, the MDBs will have to lend
increasingly to the private sector. But, in that case,
what will make them basically different in the long
run from ordinary commercial banks with international ventures? Culpeper and Clark may want to
make, in a future up-dated edition of their very useful book, more room for discussion on these issues.
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
NOTE
1
The book was written, to our knowledge, before
the appointment to the presidency of the
African Development Bank of Mr. Omar Kabbaj, a
Moroccan national. Mr. Kabbaj has since undertaken
the rather perilous task of making the bank, which
had largely become a haven for various rent-seekers,
a more operational and responsible institution.
A N D R É M A RT E N S , Centre de recherche et
développement en économique et Département de
sciences économiques, Université de Montréal
The Decline of Deference: Canadian Value
Change in Cross-National Perspective
by Neil Nevitte. Peterborough: Broadview Press,
1996. Pp.xx, 369. $26.95.
This is an important book. It asks big-picture questions about what is happening in Canadian society
and indeed in the Western world. It overwhelms the
reader with enormous pools of survey data and manipulates variables to tease out multiple explanations
in sophisticated analyses. It is amazing in its breadth
ranging from substantial discussions of family and
workplace to religion and polity. But the book is
also provocative. It prompts the reader to raise questions about the adequacy of particular survey measures and the interpretation of comparative data. It
breaks new ground with a thesis that both challenges
and supplements existing knowledge. In sum, The
Decline of Deference cannot be ignored and will be
a benchmark referent for a long time.
The data for the book comes from the 1981 European Values System Survey and the 1990 World
Values Survey largely coordinated by Ronald
Englehart of the University of Michigan. Consequently, 44 countries are represented in the database, though Nevitte restricts his discussion to the
12 advanced industrial states of Western Europe
(France, West Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Spain), the British Isles (Britain, Ireland, and Northern Ireland), and North America
(Canada and the United States). The survey
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
Reviews/Comptes rendus
questions are listed at the back of the book, but there
is no discussion in the book itself on methodological issues — particularly, as they relate to the measures adopted or their interpretations. The reader is
referred to other writers in this regard and the data
is taken at face value. It is important to make this
point because, as Nevitte himself points out in the
last chapter, national context is indeed a significant
factor, and a nation-specific explanation is particularly important when the results suggest a convergence between different national entities.
The first chapter makes the case that the 1980s
was a particularly volatile decade in Canada as evidenced by the debate on constitutional issues and
free trade but also including other issues such as
the de-alignment of the party system, the vitality of
environmental issues, the women’s movement, and
multicultural concerns. While Nevitte acknowledges
that most of these issues were unresolved by the end
of the decade, he argues that the 1980s was a decade of significant value change. It is indeed debatable whether the 1980s was any more stormy than
any other decade (e.g., what about the 1960s?) for,
at this point, there is no baseline data to prove that
value change is unique to any particular decade.
What Nevitte does have is data to demonstrate that
responses differed in 1990 and 1981, and he chooses
to refer to these as a value shift. In actuality, he is
measuring opinion and behaviour which is then
wrapped together and labelled “values” — a slippery and often controversial concept which has divided social scientists for many years. Consequently,
the thesis of this book will likely be debated for some
time because it marshals evidence to argue that a
fundamental shift has occurred or is occurring. Providing Canadian and cross-national empirical evidence of this change in itself makes this book a landmark. What is less developed and virtually ignored
is how or why other countries have experienced these
value shifts. In other words, is there anything
uniquely Canadian about this decade of turmoil (as
he refers to it) or is it a global process that just happens to be more advanced in the nations under
review?
103
In evaluating this value shift, Nevitte begins with
the political domain where he finds ample evidence
of partisan de-alignment, declining levels of voter
turnout, declining confidence in governmental institutions and yet paradoxically greater interest in
politics, and the emergence of non-traditional forms
of political participation (e.g., petitions, demonstrations, new movements, etc.). In the economic domain, Nevitte finds increasing support for
meritocratic principles, shifts to self-actualization
in employment rather than the old work ethic, and
greater demand for employee participation in decision making. In issues of morality, he sifts evidence
showing weakening authority of traditional
churches, greater moral permissiveness, higher levels of tolerance, and greater egalitarianism in spousal
and parent-child relations. In spite of the variations,
Nevitte finds that the direction of this shift is the same
in all 12 countries and that background variables such
as age and education level are the most powerful predictors. In other words, the younger and better educated the respondent, the more likely this value change
becomes evident. Inglehart’s distinction between materialism (preoccupation with material security) and
post-materialism (preoccupation with belonging, selfesteem, and quality of life issues) is also highly correlated with this value shift where post-materialism represents the world view of the younger generation.
Most central to Nevitte’s argument is the provocative idea that the value shift which he describes is
not merely a matter of lifecycle, but that this is a
generationally driven permanent change. He argues
that values like ideologies are generationally driven
and that this shift has enormous implications. Does
this mean that our societies are doomed to increasing turmoil and instability he asks? Or, how do we
restore faith in governments, institutions, and leaders? Nevitte finds hope in the increased interest and
more knowledgeable capacity of citizens to deal with
these things — albeit in a less authoritarian or topdown manner than in the past.
Three general arguments are proposed to explain
his perceptions of the value shift. He finds little
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
104 Reviews/Comptes rendus
evidence of support for the continentalist American
influence argument or for the impact of New Canadians on changing Canadian values. Instead, he finds
more evidence to support the late industrialism argument whereby structural shifts (e.g., workforce
changes, education levels) which are concurrent in
all of the 12 countries produce similar value transformations. Yet Nevitte is very careful in the concluding chapter to avoid simplistic or deterministic
explanations, and acknowledges the importance of
structural differences warning that the issue of values leading or values reflecting structural change
remains an unresolved issue.
So what is the primary contribution of the book?
From a Canadian perspective, Nevitte argues that
this value shift challenges the entrenched image promoted by the variants of the counter-revolution thesis that Canadians are passive, conservative, orderdriven, and elite directed, often encapsulated in the
word deference. While Nevitte would not go as far
as Peter Newman who describes the shift as from
“deference to defiance,” he does argue that deference no longer characterizes Canadians because of
the new empowerment of individual citizens. The
only problem is that the shift is not unique to Canadians and also characterizes the populations of other
advanced industrial states.
Does this convergence suggest that there is nothing unique about Canadian values? Nevitte provides
ample evidence on a wide range of items that there
is both convergence and divergence on specific matters. In fact, the book is a significant comprehensive contribution to the debate with S.M. Lipset on
Canadian-American differences. In contrast to
Lipset, Nevitte provides data to show that Canadians are not more deferential to authority than Americans and that indeed Canadians are among the most
protest-oriented of all advanced industrial states. Or,
instead of Lipset’s thesis of American exceptionalism, Nevitte finds evidence of North American
exceptionalism in support of meritocratic principles
in economic value orientations in comparison to
Western Europe. The thesis, however, still leaves the
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
reader with questions about what all of this means
about the distinctive features of Canadian society.
Perhaps Nevitte’s work convinces us of the complexity of any answer.
There is really something for everyone in this
book. If you are interested in free trade, nationalism, work habits, religion, family, politics, ecology
— there are data on all of these topics, and more
data is available for secondary analysis. Nevitte has
made a major contribution to Canadian scholarship
through the provision of the database, and his
insights will undoubtedly stimulate discussion and
debate for years to come. In fact, he has invited us
to do so.
HARRY H. HILLER, Department of Sociology, University of Calgary
The Persistence of Unemployment: Hysteresis
in Canadian Labour Markets
by Stephen R.G. Jones. Montreal and Kingston:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995. Pp.xii, 170.
$42.95.
This book by Stephen Jones is a useful contribution
to our understanding of unemployment, particularly
unemployment in Canada. It is a study of how persistently unemployment can be affected by even temporary shocks — an oil price rise or a sudden slowing of the money supply — that hit the economy
from time to time. In the limited case of hysteresis
or path dependence, the temporary shock can have
a permanent effect on the equilibrium, or natural,
unemployment rate where the economy eventually
tends to stabilize.
Jones begins by surveying the leading theories
of unemployment persistence and hysteresis. These
provide reasons why equilibrium unemployment
might be affected by the past history of actual unemployment. Among the reasons are various bargaining theories, underinvestment in physical capital, workers’ loss of skills in prolonged recessions,
workers’ discouragement, employers’ biases against
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
Reviews/Comptes rendus
the long-term unemployed, and distortionary effects
of unemployment insurance programs. Jones also
looks at theories of matching, search behaviour or
other mechanisms behind macroeconomic coordination that can generate multiple economic equilibria,
some of which could be high-unemployment equilibria.
Two chapters are then devoted to reviewing the
existing international and Canadian evidence on
hysteresis in labour markets. Methodologies alternate between univariate or multivariate studies, and
microeconomic or macroeconomic studies. Jones
finds the international evidence “at best mixed,” and
the Canadian evidence “conflicting and patchy.”
The remainder of the book presents a more detailed and new appraisal of the evidence on hysteresis in Canadian labour markets. He agrees with
Bank of Canada researchers that hysteresis is “emphatically not supported” by macroeconomic evidence and that the only Canadian study presenting
such empirical support is marred by a total lack of
robustness.
105
porary costs and permanent benefits of disinflation,
and to address the problem of unemployment persistence in the range of very low rates of inflation
we have begun to experience in the 1990s.
P I E R R E F O RT I N , Département d’économique,
Université du Québec à Montréal
Policy Studies in Canada: The State of the Art
edited by Laurent Dobuzinskis, Michael Howlett and
David Laycock. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1996. Pp.vii, 442. $24.95.
This book presents 19 survey articles by 21 academics in an effort to summarize the “art, craft and science” of policy analysis in Canada. I approached
this collection from the perspective of a practising
government policy analyst and advisor, with a research background in multidisciplinary policy study.
I hoped the volume would provide me with a new
and broader understanding of various alternate approaches to policy studies. I was disappointed.
Jones goes on to investigate large Canadian
microdata sets for the presence of hysteresis. He gets
“mixed” evidence of a small degree of duration dependence among the unemployed, but nothing that
could be of macroeconomic significance. Finally,
he finds no clear indication of increasing returns in
the job-worker matching process that could lead to
high unemployment multiple equilibria.
The articles are grouped into four sections. Part
I examines the 30-year evolution, study and approaches to policy studies while Part II outlines the
practice of policy studies in and outside universities in Canada. Although the articles provide some
useful context, they suffer from a lack of concrete
examples from actual policy studies (which is partly,
but not totally, offset by the extensive bibliography
of recent studies).
The study is very convincing that full hysteresis
(or 100 percent persistence) was not a characteristic of industrial countries over the period 1960-90.
It reassures central bankers that, starting from inflation rates between 5 and 20 percent, permanent
reductions in inflation can be engineered through
temporary increases in unemployment. However, it
does not determine whether such a disinflation
policy is socially worthwhile. It remains for others
to pin down the exact degree of unemployment persistence (if less than 100 percent), to obtain more
reliable quantitative comparisons between the tem-
Part III on contemporary approaches to Canadian
policy studies was perhaps the greatest disappointment. Many of the articles appeared to be almost
deliberately crafted to exclude non-specialists — the
authors focused on their highly technical and specialized theoretical approaches and made no obvious effort to translate for non-specialists or practitioners. The works on rational choice theory and
discourse analysis provide little insight for those not
already familiar with their approaches. The chapters on network analysis and comparative policy
studies, in contrast, should provide practitioners
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
106 Reviews/Comptes rendus
with a useful perspective on the theoretical bases,
strengths, and weaknesses of their approaches.
The final section provides two short but pointed
analyses of the prospects for policy studies. Nevertheless, the analyses miss a few critical points. As a
provincial policy advisor, I was somewhat dismayed
to find that I had to read to the sixteenth chapter
and the three-hundredth page to find the first significant reference to policy analysis of provincial
or local issues. Based on this survey, the bulk of
policy analyses would appear to have focused on
national issues. If Pal and Simeon are seriously looking for areas of comparative advantage, Canada
would seem a logical leader in policy studies of
subnational issues (and not simply federalprovincial relations).
I believe Bruce Doern points out the fatal flaw in
this volume. He concludes his introductory survey
article on the art, craft, and science of policy studies with the caution that “policy studies must be a
profoundly interdisciplinary enterprise if it is to
flourish.” In spite of the repeated references to the
critical role in policy studies for economists and
other social scientists, the contributions to this volume are drawn almost exclusively from the political science discipline.
PETER W.B. PHILLIPS, Agricultural Economics, University of Saskatchewan
The Face of the Nation: Immigration, the State,
and the National Identity
by Keith Fitzgerald. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. Pp.xii, 285. $39.50.
Keith Fitzgerald argues that one of the primary
policy tools a nation state has at its disposal to portray its national face is a well articulated immigration policy. This is no doubt true; witness the vitriolic immigration debates based on ethnicity in Italy,
Germany, France, and Nordic Europe where the face
is well worn with deeply embedded cultural furrows.
But how could one presume to explain the political
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
motivations for an immigration policy in newly settled regions such as the United States or Canada?
Moreover, Fitzgerald faces an even more daunting
task since he attempts to explain or rationalize the
underlying political forces which shaped immigration policy in the United States; a country which in
essence maintains three conflicting immigration
policies. The primary entry gate or the so-called US
“front door” is a legislated policy based upon family reunification which can best be described as a
quintessential example of Max Weber’s “iron cage”
of bureaucracy in the extreme. The “back door” for
US immigration is a term used by Fitzgerald to describe the movement from Mexico to the United
States. This entry gate represents an apparent total
collapse of statist-based immigration policy given
the large number of illegal or undocumented immigrants that enter through this doorway. This flow
makes a mockery of Congressional inspired quotas
and enforcement initiatives. Finally a third entry
door — perhaps the side door — is available to refugees, and it opens or closes depending upon US foreign policy or military failures.
The author claims to have a revised version of
political institutional theory to explain this apparently contradictory three-door entry scheme. Under
Fitzgerald’s revised or updated institutional theory,
an argument is made that each successive historical
epoch of US immigration policy is a by-product of
institutions that interest groups lobbied for in the more
or less distant past. Two critical points must be made
about the efficacy of this theoretical paradigm. First,
an explanation of the current state of US immigration policy based upon a lagged distribution of past
events begs for a complete theoretical paradigm for
the earlier period. Fitzgerald clearly does not provide us with this initial or historically based comprehensive model. Next, attempting to explain US
immigration policy without recognizing periodic
outbursts of national xenophobia fostered by “know
nothings” in the nineteenth century or Pat Buchanan
in the twentieth century is to ignore the unfortunate
but persistent element of racism in US politics and
immigration policy in particular.
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
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In sum, this reader can only recommend this book
to specialists in comparative immigration policy or
to those who are genuinely intrigued by the absence
of a coherent immigration policy in the largest immigration-receiving nation in the world.
DON J. DEVORETZ, Department of Economics, Simon
Fraser University
Ontario Hydro at the Millennium: Has
Monopoly’s Moment Passed?
edited by Ronald J. Daniels. Montreal and Kingston:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996. Pp.xiii,
409. $19.95.
Has monopoly’s millennium passed? Among the
participants in this symposium sponsored by Ontario Hydro — the monopoly itself — only Myron
Gordon defends a system delivering, in Stephen
Probyn’s words, “power at whatever it costs Hydro.”
If Gordon cries hold, enough, his discussants’ sword
is in their voice, especially in Probyn’s observation
that “the President of Hydro has stated that deregulation is coming — for sure...” A more appropriate
subtitle of this lengthy volume might be “How might
monopoly pass at this moment?”
There are few brown-outs in these pages; I have
discerned but two major ones. The first is not having a detailed summary of the ten useful papers and
of the uneven comments. The editor’s introduction
is quick. It gives no hint that the deck of paper topics has been well shuffled. There is, however, no
difficulty in dividing the issues addressed among labour, environment, and industrial structure.
Ronald Daniels and Michael Trebilcock provide
a very helpful triplet of models of demonopolization.
All involve divestiture of Hydro’s generating assets,
perhaps gradually for nuclear assets through normal depreciation, and reduction of the corporation
to a transmission grid. (Public or private, to them it
matters little.) Model I envisages competitive access to the grid for private domestic producers and
importers. Model II allows for wholesale contract-
107
ing between large producers and consumers or distributors, with the grid serving as common carrier
and with the new Hydro acting as in Model I with
respect to retail consumers. Model III allows for
direct retail contracting. The authors perceive Model
III as the ultimate goal, with Model II as a waystation. The papers by Adonis Yatchew and Hudson
Janisch also address the structural and regulatory
issues and can profitably be read in conjunction with
that of Daniels and Trebilcock.
The structural subproblems include the pricing
of access (by generators or else by consumers) to
the grid and what to do about stranded capital, nuclear facilities whose high costs will preclude the
recovery of book value after monopoly passes. According to British experience as well as to reflection, even successful nuclear facilities will be very
difficult to unload to the private sector at any price,
because of regulatory uncertainty.
O Canada, thou art not entirely unlike the Thane
of Glamis: What thou wouldst highly, that wouldst
thou liberally. Therefore, in this industry, pricing is
a central issue. Neil Freeman admits that “an economist could spell this out in more detail than I.” The
want of economic analysis of the structural issues
is the book’s other brown-out. Daniels and
Trebilcock’s valiant attempt will not allay the public’s apparent, if unjustified, fear of higher electricity bills and cynicism about executives’ compensation. There is no real review of British experience
with privatization. There is no attempt to deal with
the many types of cross subsidization inherent in
the present model of “power at cost-plus” (Karl
Wahl’s phrase), nor to come to grips with the issues
of access pricing. Indeed, until Janisch’s challenge,
there is very little reference to the obvious benchmark, which is both more advanced in dealing with
all these issues and arguably more complicated:
telecommunications.
Inescapably for a land with a political superiority complex, the requisite deference to the political
is evident. A discussant from Hydro-Québec strikes
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
108 Reviews/Comptes rendus
a chord with some by raising a California bungalow syndrome: despite these bungalows’ aesthetic
appeal, he claims, it would be inappropriate “to build
them, with their slippery courtyard tiles,” in our cold
climate. Rather, home-grown solutions are to be preferred to global, imported ones. One might as easily ponder a Quebec duplex syndrome: exterior main
staircases of wrought iron spiralling to the second
storey, in our cold climate. No, where technologically feasible, competition is the universal generator of the wealth that will afford us, if we wish,
expression of idiosyncratic preferences.
Still, there may be differences in local situations.
Yatchew points to a transitional advantage that Canada’s public systems (inadvertently) may have over
California’s regulated monopoly: it will be easier
to separate generation and transmission into independent corporate forms without having to disentangle private, vertically integrated firms. The working of any of Daniels’ and Trebilcock’s three models would benefit from this feature of our history.
Yatchew avers that making the correct regulatory
and policy transition would be of great social benefit. For Janisch’s money, though, that may be too
much to ask of our political process.
Able reviews of environmental regulation, of first
conventional then nuclear pollution, are provided by
Donald Dewees. His analysis of the problems thrown
up by thermal (mainly fossil-fuel-based) generating
units is nicely complemented by Andrew Muller’s
sophisticated perspective. However, his second paper is weakened by his or his editor’s choice to take
a “just-the-facts-ma’am” approach to the existing
literature, rather than to tackle a critical review. This
problem is largely overcome by some very good
commentary by Stephen Allen, Keith Dinnie, and
Duane Pendergast, who help to place the environmental problems of nuclear and thermal generation
into context.
A major transitional problem is what to do about
stranded labour. Security may well be mortals’
chiefest enemy. Two chapters by Peter Warrian try
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
to work through the foul-and-fair issue of the passage of a labour force accustomed to monopoly’s
privileges toward more toil and trouble. No easy
solution emerges for those with monopoly-specific
skills. Society may grope about for as long as labour remains stranded, something to make us all
shudder who fear the ingredience of the efficient
chalice to our own lips.
As many participants seem to realize, and a few
hope, words to the heat of deeds too cold breath give.
Still, this volume will provide benefits not just to
Ontario’s consumers and taxpayers, but to those of
other provinces where demands for privatization and
greater competition will have to be met before long.
R OBERT D. C AIRNS , Department of Economics,
McGill University
Political Economy and the Changing Global
Order
edited by Richard Stubbs and Geoffrey R.D.
Underhill. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc.,
1994. Pp.553. $31.95.
This volume incorporates 33 chapters that seek to
provide an overview of how political and economic
forces have interacted over the last several decades
in the increasingly international economy. There is
a section of chapters that cover the changes in the
global economy and another that focuses on specific issues and the international economy. A third
section examines regional economies and relates
these developments to the international economy.
The fourth and final section concentrates on the trade
policies of particular states. Overall, one gets an
interesting overview of the trends in global economic change and how these trends relate to existing theories about how and why this economic system has evolved.
One of the strongest features of the volume and
one that all collections of essays by many authors
should emulate is the use of “introductions” for each
of the four sections. These introductions allow the
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
Reviews/Comptes rendus
editors to summarize the readings in the section and
to highlight the most important points made by the
authors. A second useful feature is the focus on the
political implications of increasing global trade,
investment, and integration.
The volume has many useful and interesting articles. The articles are relatively short; on average
they are about 15 pages long including references.
They also have a point to make. Maureen Appel
Molot’s chapter describes the Canadian move toward
free trade in the 1980s and why it occurred. Pierre
Martin has an excellent chapter on US “unilateralism” in trade policy, a problem that the WTO and
the Uruguay round agreement were supposed to
curtail. There are many other valuable articles on a
range of topics from the regulation of banking and
the role of the IMF to agricultural trade and trade
issues in the Asia-Pacific region. While the book was
published in 1994, this volume will have value for
years to come. As we get past the first phases of
trade liberalization, many readers will want to reexamine the hows and whys of the many decisions
and assess whether the results have proven
beneficial.
KENNETH WOODSIDE, Department of Political Studies, University of Guelph
Canada and the Global Economy: The
Geography of Structural and Technological
Change
edited by John N.H. Britton. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996. Pp.x,
458. $32.95.
This volume is the third to be published in the Canadian Association of Geographers’ Series in Canadian Geography. With contributions from 24 academics and geographers in private consulting, the
book is organized thematically and generally covers issues in the decade before Canada entered the
North American Free Trade Area. Part one, the open
economy, has four chapters providing an international perspective on foreign trade, inward and out-
109
ward direct investment and the Canadian financial
system. The new staple economy, also with four
chapters, examines the traditional resources sector
in an era of increased competition. Much of the focus in the six chapters on manufacturing industry is
on the significance of economic and technological
change. A fourth section on services and the spatial
organization of the economy has four chapters covering transportation, consumer markets, business,
and financial services. Three final chapters review
political economic questions such as the role of governments and the restructuring of labour markets.
All parts of Canada and the Global Economy
have a strong public policy interest. Several chapters emphasize the shallowness and vulnerability of
economic development not only in the resource periphery but also in core cities such as Toronto. The
substantial role of the public sector in the Canadian
economy is also clearly developed in various sections of the book. The editor, well-known for his
work on technological innovation, makes a strong
case for future policy initiatives in the continued
development of the national telecommunications
network and enhanced training in information technology if the present standard of living is to be
maintained.
With only eight maps in the book, changing spatial patterns and spatial relationships are not always
easy to follow, although tables and graphs offer some
guidance. For readers seeking an integrated view of
the effects of macro forces of change on provinces,
regions, and communities, the absence of any regional chapters leaves a serious void. While recognizing many excellent individual contributions in
this volume, the overall effect of the emphasis on
thematic issues somehow reduces the colour and
texture of the Canadian economic landscape to a
high-altitude monochrome vista.
G.T. BLOOMFIELD, Department of Geography, University of Guelph
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
110 Reviews/Comptes rendus
The New Public Management: Canada in
Comparative Perspective
by Peter Aucoin. Montreal: Institute for Research
on Public Policy, 1995. Pp.vi, 274.
Over the last two decades, as Peter Aucoin ably demonstrates in this book, governments in the parliamentary democracies of Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia have embarked on
substantial restructuring of their public management
systems. In varying degrees, according to the author, the central governments in these countries have
sought to reassert control over the state apparatus
in order to direct change in accordance with political priorities, to reconfigure the balance of power
within Cabinet government so as to allow greater
strategic direction and discipline in public policy
management, and to devolve responsibilities for
policy implementation in order to improve the performance and responsiveness of government operations (p.4). The general pattern in the restructuring
that has subsequently emerged in these countries is
what Professor Aucoin refers to as “the new public
management.”
The analysis focuses on developments in the system of public management in the federal government of Canada. Comparison with experiences in
other countries that share our Westminister style of
government is used to identify broadly based trends
and to generalize the discussion of underlying causal
factors, as well as to provide a firmer basis for the
author’s well-considered assessment that public
management in Canada can be improved by making
careful use of selected ideas that have been tried
elsewhere.
Important developments in the structure of public management in Canada that are investigated in
separate chapters include changes in the degree of
partisanship of the federal public service, a movement to centralize policy decision making within the
executive while, at the same time, devolving administrative authority, responsibility, and accountability for the management of operations, and a heightCANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
ened emphasis on responsiveness and efficiency in
the delivery of public services. Attempts, both here
and abroad, to simultaneously centralize responsibility for policy making while devolving responsibility for government operations appear to be at the
centre of the “new public management.” The discussion of this issue in the book is extensive and
interesting.
At the risk of oversimplification, the explanation
Aucoin offers for the emergence of reforms that are
intended to centralize policy and at the same time
decentralize operations may be put in the following
way: central governments have been under pressure
to recapture authority to set policy from the bureaucracy, in part to deal with traditional principal-agent
problems and partly as a way of insuring budgetary
restraint. At the same time, the increasing complexity of the public sector has made it difficult for ministers to handle both policy and operations, leading
to greater reliance on delegation of authority for
service delivery. Increased delegation of responsibility for such operations has also been seen as a
way to make public service delivery more responsive to a citizenry that has become increasingly disenchanted with the public sector.
The comparative analysis of recentralization of
policy making along with decentralization of service delivery reveals that in the United Kingdom and
New Zealand, delegation of service delivery has
evolved so far as to involve specific contractual relations with heads of quasi-independent agencies
(outside traditionally defined departments) who report directly to the minister. This experience stands
in contrast to that in Canada where similar developments have been more limited in scope and still involve reporting through deputy ministers. Aucoin
suggests at various points that Canada can benefit
from more structural change of the sort that the UK
and New Zealand have adopted.
The implication of the trend toward centralization of policy making along with decentralization
of service delivery for the accountability of public
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
Reviews/Comptes rendus
servants is not ignored. Professor Aucoin emphasizes the centrality of the accountability issue in the
parliamentary system of government. He stresses
that maintaining accountability while delegating
responsibility for operations outside traditional departmental boundaries presupposes the existence of
better methods of monitoring and enforcing standards of public service delivery. The establishment
of such methods forms an important part of his recommendations for reform.
Aucoin’s analysis, which is presented with an admirable style, prompts many questions including this
one: If it is really possible to write a well-defined
contract with the head of a quasi-independent agency
for the delivery of public services, what reason is
there to keep the people providing that service within
the public sector in any meaningful sense? To put
this in another way, one can ask if what Aucoin observes in the UK and New Zealand is a long-lasting
restructuring of public management, or, rather, an
intermediate step in the redrawing of the boundary
between public and private sectors?
Aucoin implicitly recognizes the ambiguity in the
analysis of public management reform introduced
by such questions, most notably in his discussion
of the Australian experience, though he does not
tackle the issue as directly as I think is warranted.
It seems that, as in Canada, there is a reluctance in
Australia to accept radical separation of policy and
operational responsibilities, though in both countries there has been some devolution of managerial
authority within traditional departmental boundaries. In this respect Aucoin quotes the Australian
Malcolm Holmes who points out, in an analysis of
some recent reform proposals, that in contrast to
reforms in the UK and New Zealand: “bringing
[policy and delivery] together has been one of the
planks of FMIP and Program Management and
Budgeting” (p.145).
Aucoin continues by noting the two arguments
for this position that Holmes offered: first, to have
the “needs of clients better advanced in the policy
111
process by those who have the most direct contact
with clients, namely service providers; and second,
to promote on the part of those who deliver services
a greater focus on achieving outcomes costeffectively” (p.145).
In the absence of private-market type contracts
with public service providers, Holmes’ position
strikes me as a reasonable one. My guess is that further work, beyond that presented in the book, will
be required in order to sort out opposing views about
the efficacy of greater separation of policy and operations with devolution of responsibility for the
latter, and to permit further progress on the closely
related question of where to draw the line between
the private market and those matters that properly
require the assistance of public bureaucracy. This
work probably should include a consideration of the
impact on the structure and scope of the public sector of ongoing, steep declines in the costs of information transmission and processing, an issue not
addressed in the book.
In addition to developments concerning the management of policy and operations, Professor Aucoin
deals at length with the politicization of the bureau
and with specific issues of service delivery, as I
noted above. I cannot do justice in this short review
to all of the material presented here concerning public management in Canada and other countries. Although I do not share all of the views expressed,
agreement with all parts of a book can never be the
basis for an overall recommendation about it. A good
book, in my view, is one that informs, stimulates
discussion and even controversy, and ultimately provokes further research. This is a good book by a
thoughtful scholar. I recommend it to anyone who
is interested in public management in Canada, or
who is concerned with the future of public management in general.
STANLEY WINER, School of Public Administration,
Carleton University
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
112 Reviews/Comptes rendus
Developments in Local Government Finance:
Theory and Policy
edited by Giancarlo Pola, George France and Rosella
Levaggi. Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar, 1996.
Pp.xxi, 333. $79.95.
At a period in Canada’s history when federal and
provincial governments are frantically examining
how to reduce debt, provide public services more
efficiently and reorganize the provision of public
goods, this is a timely volume. Several contributions
in this book address topics that are at the centre of the
debate in Ontario on restructuring local government.
The book is divided into four sections: New Solutions to Old Problems; Applying Theory to the
Real World; Local Government and Local Policy
Making: Autonomy and Constraints; and finally,
Fiscal Issues for Existing and Future Federations.
As with any collection of scholarly papers, it is
sometimes difficult to collect several papers under
a short section title that captures the content of the
individual contributions. The 15 papers cover a very
wide range of topics pertaining to local government
in several countries although one is disappointed to
see that both Australia and Canada, two of the most
complex federal systems in the world, are excluded
from the volume!
Of the 15 papers, eight involve the specifying and
testing, empirically, of hypotheses regarding local
government finance. Glen Bramley’s paper examines who uses local public services in Britain and
concludes that services are clearly not “pro-poor.”
Alan Duncan and Peter Smith are interested in the
concept of territorial equity; the idea that regions
with equal need receive equal support in a federal
system. They review two empirical models and conclude that the framework for measuring such effects
accurately is lacking. When certain aspects of welfare spending were transferred to the local level in
France, expenditure slowed. Gilbert and Rocaboy
developed an econometric model to determine if
decentralization was the cause for the slowdown in
spending. Their conclusion is that it was not a factor.
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
The transfer of local spending and taxation power
to local governments in Italy in recent years has led
to speculation that additional tax bases will be given
to local government. Rosella Levaggi constructs a
social welfare maximizing model of local spending
and uses the empirical results to simulate the impact of new tax bases. The result? Local governments will likely raise spending in response to a new
tax base.
In the US, Howard Chernick and Andrew
Reschovsky argue that fiscal interest groups at the
local level determine the degree of tax progression
at the local level. They also hypothesize that tax
incidence and mobility are related. An expenditure
determination model is constructed that includes
such variables as fiscal need, politics, local resource
base, and personal wealth. The empirical results
support the first hypothesis but not the second one.
A model for Switzerland by Pommerehne,
Kirchgassner and Feld looks at whether or not local
tax rates influence location and their results support the hypothesis for those in higher income
groups.
At the macroeconomic level, Laramie and Mair
construct a Kaleckian macro model (allowing for
institutional prices and less than full employment)
to examine the incidence of state and local taxes in
the US. Their results indicate a very different pattern of incidence for state and local business taxes
than similar taxes at the federal level. Such taxes
have no effect on corporate profits and no short-run
impact on personal savings rate.
The book includes two theoretical papers. The
first by David King is a somewhat traditional model
of the optimum local authority size. Several variations in the model with respect to homogeneous and
heterogenous preferences within a jurisdiction and
between jurisdictions are examined and all results
point to the trade-off between cost per unit of service and control over quantity and quality of public
services. Peter Else uses a “bureau manager” maximizing model to look at changing perceptions of
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
Reviews/Comptes rendus
local government in the UK. The model points up
the sources of failure of local government to meet
the preferences of voters.
Other papers in the book examine how local governments will operate within the European Union
(George France, Erich Thonki), the importance of a
balanced budget at the local level (Dafflon) and developing indexes of deprivation for grant purposes
in the UK (Paul Chapman). The impact of the “taxe
professionale” in France is examined by Remy
Prud’homme. In this case, local governments were
given a new tax base and the freedom to impose
rates. In the end, the central government had to place
113
limits on how it was to be used because of the burden created by the local use of the tax base.
For academic public finance students, the variety of models should be stimulating and some could
be adapted to test certain hypotheses about local
spending in Canada. For the practitioner and
policymaker, the general and specific issues raised
in several papers will remind one that local government reform, and hence reform of local finance is
complex and can have lasting incidence and
allocative effects on the economy.
DOUGLAS AULD, President, Loyalist College
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997
114 Reviews/Comptes rendus
NEW BOOKS
André-J. Bélanger and Vincent Lemieux. Introduction à l’analyse politique. Montréal: Les Presses
de l’Université de Montréal, 1996. Pp. 326. $32.00.
Canadian Ethnic Studies Special Issue: Racial and
Ethnic Inequality. XXVI, 3, 1994. Pp. 204.
Tom Courchene. Redistributing Money and Power:
A Guide to the Canada Health and Social Transfer.
Toronto: C.D. Howe Institute, 1995. Pp. 120. $12.95.
Jim Harding (ed.). Social Policy and Social Justice: The NDP Government in Saskatchewan during the Blakeney Years. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier
University Press, 1995. Pp. xii, 484. $29.95.
Claus Hofhansel. Commercial Competition and
National Security: Comparing U.S. and German
Export Control Policies. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1996. Pp. viii, 232. $59.95.
John F. Mahon and Richard A. McGowan. Industry as a Player in the Political and Social Arena: Defining Competitive Environment. Westport, CT:
Quorum Books, 1996. Pp. xiii, 216. $59.95.
Bruce Mitchell (ed.). Resource and Environmental
Management in Canada: Addressing Conflict and
Uncertainty. Toronto, Oxford, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995. Pp. ix, 445. $24.95.
Kristen Renwick Monroe. The Heart of Altruism:
Perceptions of a Common Humanity. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1996. Pp. xix, 292.
$29.95.
National Council of Welfare. A Pension Primer.
Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1996. Pp. 54.
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES,
National Council of Welfare. A Guide to the Proposed Seniors Benefit. Ottawa: Supply and Services
Canada, 1996. Pp. 34.
Thomas Michael Power. Environmental Protection
and Economic Well-Being: The Economic Pursuit
of Quality (2d ed.). Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe,
1996. Pp. xv, 251. $24.95.
Christopher A. Sarlo. Poverty in Canada (2d ed.).
Vancouver, BC: The Fraser Institute, 1996. Pp. xviii,
290.
Pierre Sauvé and Daniel Schwanen (eds.). Investment Rules for the Global Economy: Enhancing
Access to Markets. Toronto: C.D. Howe Institute,
1996. Pp. viii, 332. $19.95.
Savoie, Donald J. (ed.). Budgeting and the Management of Public Spending. Brookfield, VT:
Edward Elgar Publishing Co., 1996. Pp. xx, 387.
Snell, James G. The Citizen’s Wage: The State and
the Elderly in Canada, 1900-1951. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. Pp. xxii, 286. $18.95.
Sheryl R. Tynes. Turning Points in Social Security:
From ‘Cruel Hoax’ to ‘Sacred Entitlement.’
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Pp. viii, 253. $39.50.
White, Joseph. Competing Solutions: American
Health Care Proposals and International Experience.
Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1995.
Pp. xv, 392. US$16.95.
VOL . XXIII, NO . 1 1997