Institutions and Ideology: Sources of Opposition to Federal Regulation of Child Care Services in Canada and the United States

This article explores the impact of federal political arrangements and conservative ideology on provisions for regulating child care services embodied in the major proposals for child care legislation under consideration in Canada and the United States during the late 1980s. The initial contrast between the non-centralized approach taken in Bill C-144 (Canada) and the more centralized approach originally proposed in the Act for Better Child Care Services (United States) was a function of differences in the two countries' federal systems. However, conservative preferences and pressures contributed to the eventual adoption of a non-centralized approach in both countries. Federalism facilitated this expression of conservative ideology by providing supporters of a non-centralized approach with resources (constitutional and institutional) with which to pursue their policy preference, and a political rhetoric with which it could be justified.     

Public Opinion on Federalism and Federal Political Culture in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, 2004

This study reports on public opinion surveys on fiscal value,taxation, trust and confidence in governments, and federal politicalculture conducted in Canada, Mexico, and the United States inJune 2004. Compared to past years, support for the federal governmentremains high in the United States, with support for local governmentsurging substantially in 2004. The local property lax is viewedas the worst U.S. lax, followed secondly but distantly by thefederal income tax. Canadians are less supportive of their federalgovernment, and more supportive of their local governments,than Mexicans and Americans. However, Mexicans show low trustand confidence in all their governments, while Americans reportfairly high trust and confidence in all their governments. Onmeasures of federal political culture, Canadians scored highest,Mexicans scored lowest, and Americans fell in between.     

Federal Dynamics in Canada, the United States, and Switzerland: How Substates' Internal Organization Affects Intergovernmental Relations

This article argues that internal substate dynamics can systematicallyaccount for the organization of intergovernmental relations(IGR) in dual federal systems. Whereas majoritarian executive-legislativerelations tend to weaken the institutionalization of intergovernmentalarrangements (IGAs), power-sharing executive-legislative relationstend to facilitate it. Two of the mechanisms at work serve toillustrate this point. Given one-party majority cabinets, completegovernment alternations strongly alter actors' interest constellationsover time, thereby increasing the costs of maintaining stablecross-boundary IGR. Moreover, the heavy impact of a potentialelectoral loss induces politicians to shift blame to other governments,thereby undermining cross-boundary cooperation. Majoritariandynamics also weaken integration between IGAs. Furthermore,integration is weakened by compulsory power-sharing structuresunbridged by party ties. In contrast to noncompulsory partycooperation, such internal constitutional divides easily underminethe setup of strong interorganizational linkages.     

Public Attitudes toward Climate Science and Climate Policy in Federal Systems: Canada and the United States Compared1

Multilevel governance poses several challenges for the politics of climate change. On the one hand, the unequal distribution of power and interests can serve as a barrier to implementing coherent policy at a federal level. On the other, these features also enable policy leadership among sub‐federal units. In the context of wide variation in climate policy at both national and sub‐federal levels in Canada and in the United States, this paper utilizes an original data set to examine public attitudes and perceptions toward climate science and climate change policy in two federal systems. Drawing on national and provincial/state level data from telephone surveys administered in the United States and in Canada, the paper provides insight into where the public stands on the climate change issue in two of the most carbon‐intensive federal systems in the world. The paper includes the first directly comparable public opinion data on how Canadians and Americans form their opinions regarding climate matters and provides insight into the preferences of these two populations regarding climate policies at both the national and sub‐federal levels. Key findings are examined in the context of growing policy experiments at the sub‐federal level in both countries and limited national level progress in the adoption of climate change legislation.     

Measuring Party Identification: Britain, Canada, and the United States

The article proposes an empirically based reflection on how to measure party identification cross nationally, using data from the 1997 Canadian Election Study, the 1997 British Election Study, and the 1996 American National Election Study. These studies included both traditional national questions and a new common one, which allows for an assessment of the effects of question wording on the distribution and correlates of party identification. We show that the distribution of party identification is strongly affected by question wording and that the relationship between party identification and variables such as party and leader ratings, and voting behavior does not quite conform to theoretical expectations. We point out problems in the wording of party identification questions and propose an alternative formulation.     

Federalism, Political Structure, and Public Policy in the United States and Canada

Two of the three large countries on the North American continent—the United States and Canada—share a number of similarities that often make it difficult for the untrained observer to differentiate between the two nations. On the surface, the two are structured similarly as federal systems that, by definition, exhibit shared power between the national government and provincial or state political entities.Although there are other important social and economic characteristics of the two countries that help explain differences in policy processes and outcomes, it is the contention of this article that one gets the clearest sense of what Elazar has called thinking federal by utilizing an analytical approach that joins questions related to federalism with some conceptual frameworks of the public policy field. Two frameworks undergird the argument in this article—the Lowi typology of different types of policies and Deil Wright's typology of different models that describe the American inter-governmental system.In both countries, policies must be sensitive to the greater interdependencies between units of government as well as to linkages between policy areas. The mechanisms or instrumentalities for dealing with policy issues are intrinsically complex. It is also clear that the intergovernmental networks that exist in both the U.S. and Canada are composed of an array of actors. The differing political structures of the systems do impact the types of intergovernmental policies that have emerged in the two countries. The executive dominance so imbedded in Canadian governments has contributed to their ability to adopt and implement certain controversial redistributive policies, such as a national health insurance program. By contrast, the fragmentation of the U.S. system makes redistributive policies more difficult.     

Federalism and Modernization: Canada and the United States

Since World War II, the federal systems in the United Statesand Canada have moved in opposite directions: the U.S. has becomeincreasingly centralized, while the provinces in Canada havegained power at the expense of Ottawa. These divergences canbe explained by such societal factors as economic structures,international commitments, and locations of minority populations;and by institutional factors, such as the number of constituentunits, methods by which provincial authorities are representedin federal legislatures, and especially by the contrast betweenCanada's Westminster-type institutions and the U.S. separationof powers. These differences are illustrated by intergovernmentalfiscal processes, energy policies, and federal-municipal relations.They cannot be accounted for by modernization theories, butrather by economic structures, demographic distributions, andespecially constitutional and institutional arrangements.     

Public Opinion on Federalism in Canada, Mexico, and the United States in 2003

This research reports on public opinion surveys on intergovernmentaland federal issues conducted in Canada, Mexico, and the UnitedStates in March and April 2003. In all three countries, respondentsmost often see their federal government as being the least effective,least efficient, and least trustworthy. Respondents from Canadaappear least supportive of their federal government and mostsupportive of their local governments; those from Mexico appearmost supportive of their state governments; respondents fromthe United States appear more "balanced" in their support ofthe various orders of government. Also, far greater regionaldifferences in opinion exist in Canada than in Mexico or theUnited States. Support for more decentralized federalism isfound to be strong in all these federal countries. This researchalso updates long-term trend data for the United States. Comparedwith respondents from previous years, U.S. respondents in 2003showed a measurable uplick in support for the federal government,compared with state and local governments. This support seemsto be a carryover from the terrorist attacks of 11 September2001.     

Conjoint Federalism and Environmental Regulation in the United States

Many of the environmental laws enacted by Congress employ adistinctive blend of national and state authority. In theseconjoint arrangements, state authority is not totally preempted,but it is subordinated to national authority if states wishto participate in environmental regulation. Under normal circumstances,national and state authority are deployed concurrently in pursuitof environmental policy objectives. Conjoint arrangements aremuch more controlling of state action than the stimulative andfacilitative approach to intergovernmental program implementationcommonly associated with cooperative federalism. Despite nationalprimacy, in the bargaining that marks implementation processes,state officials may enjoy considerable influence. Although administrativelycumbersome and criticized from a variety of perspectives, conjointarrangements are not the major reasons for a slow rate of improvementin environmental quality. When the various options are considered,there are reasons to conclude that conjoint arrangements arethe most realistic means for attacking environmental problems,although questions remain about the appropriate balance of nationaland state authority in them.     

Back to the Future? Senior Federal Executives in the United States

Based on findings from the 1970s, research literature on senior government executives emphasized a growing integration of politics and administration. This integration was reflected in what we called the "Image IV" bureaucrat wherein political role traits combined with those of traditional bureaucratic ones. Although this was by no means a dominant trend, we were led to speculate that traditional divisions between political and bureaucratic roles were eroding. Data gathered from the 1980s and 1990s, however, lead us to infer that divisions between political and bureaucratic roles have reasserted themselves and that integration between them is being diminished rather than strengthened. We conclude that this may be because in an era of governmental austerity the demand for executive policy entrepreneurs has slackened while the political needs have shifted to those of managerial control over an inertial or even contracting state.     

The Obama Administration and United States Trade Policy

For all the focus on economic issues in the wake of the crisis of 2008 the Obama administration has remained ambiguous about a central component of economic policy. As both candidate and President, Obama has sent mixed messages about trade policy. This ambiguity reflects wider uncertainty within the Democratic Party about global trading relationships and this paper explores and assesses the reasons for this uncertainty. A large part of the answer lies in the disparate sources of support for the Democrats. That is, the party has courted support from interest groups and core groups of voters that have widely divergent views about the value of trade liberalisation.     

Financial Regulation in the United States: Lessons from History

History is institutional memory writ large. One looks at economic history to see what problems recur, what causes them to recur, what solutions have worked best in the past, and which interventions have made the problems worse. The authors argue that a moderately complex interaction between the workings of the financial sector, the way in which the political system is organized, and the administration of regulation makes perfect regulation of the financial sector extremely unlikely. Many of these problems arise as a result of conflicting incentives for those participating in and regulating the financial field. The authors find that some proposed solutions have improved matters but have costs, and that some proposed solutions have actually worsened problems in the financial sector.

Peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
— Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1837

     

The Politics of Social Learning: Finance,Institutions, and Pension Reform in the United States and Canada

Because the traditional concept of social learning has faced significant criticism in recent years, more analytical work is required to back the claim that the lessons drawn from existing institutional legacies can truly impact policy outcomes. Grounded in the historical institutionalist literature, this article formulates an amended concept of social learning through the analysis of the relationship between finance, social learning, and institutional legacies in the 1990s debate over the reform of earnings‐related pension schemes in the United States and Canada. The article shows how social learning related to specific ideological assumptions and policy legacies in the public and the private sectors has affected policymaking processes. At the theoretical level, this contribution stresses the political construction of learning processes, which is distinct from the technocratic model featured in the traditional literature on social learning. This article also distinguishes between high‐ and low‐profile social learning while emphasizing the impact of private policy legacies on learning processes.     

Regulating Lobbyists: A Comparative Analysis of the United States, Canada, Germany and the European Union

Lobbying is central to the democratic process. Yet, only four political systems have lobbying regulations: the United States, Canada, Germany and the EU (most particularly, the European Parliament). Despite the many works offering individual country analysis of lobbying legislation, a twofold void exists in the literature. Firstly, no study has offered a comparative analysis classifying the laws in these four political systems, which would improve understanding of the different regulatory environments. Secondly, few studies have analysed the views of key agents—politicians, lobbyists and regulators—and how these compare and contrast across regulatory environments.
We firstly utilise an index measuring how strong the regulations are in each of the systems, and develop a classification scheme for the different 'ideal' types of regulatory environment. Secondly, we measure the opinions of political actors, interest groups and regulators in all four systems (through questionnaires and elite interviews) and see what correlations, if any, exist between the different ideal types of system and their opinions. The conclusion highlights our findings, and the lessons that can be used by policy-makers in systems without lobbying legislation.