Federalism and the Strong-State/Weak-State Conundrum: Canadian Economic Policymaking in Comparative Perspective

The areal dispersion of power and constitutional division ofresponsibilities in federal arrangements are generally feltto limit the ability of federal systems to improve economicperformance. Examining Canada within a comparative framework,we assess "the federations as weak states" hypothesis as wellas the utility of the "strong-state/weak-state" model itself.Although some aspects of the Canadian federal system—namelythe combination of federal with parliamentary traditions andthe resulting adverse policy styles—inhibit the adoptionof effective economic adjustment policies, these features arenot necessarily found in other federal arrangements. Comparisonswith Switzerland, Austria, and West Germany suggest that, undercertain circumstances, federal power sharing may be conduciveto bringing about broad agreement on both goals and policiesamong national, regional, and local governments and major economicactors.     

Reviews

Michael Mandelbaum (ed.), The Strategic Quadrangle. Russia, China, Japan and the United States in East Asia. New York: The Council on Foreign Relations, 1995, vii + 221 pp., $16.95.

Theodore H. Friedgut & Jeffrey W. Hahn (eds), Local Power and Post‐Soviet Politics, New York and London: M. E Sharpe, 1994, xv + 292 pp., £40.00 h/b, £19.95 p/b.

Paul G. Lewis, Central Europe since 1945. London: Longman, 1994, xv + 135 pp., £13.99.

Gareth Winrow, Turkey in Post‐Soviet Central Asia. London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1995, 53 pp.

Henry S. Rowen, Charles Wolf, Jr & Jeanne Zlotnick (eds), Defence Conversion, Economic Reform, and the Outlook for the Russian and Ukrainian Economies. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1994, 262 pp., £34.00.

Thomas M. Nichols, The Sacred Cause: Civil‐Military Conflict over Soviet National Security, 1917–1992. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1993, xiii + 259 pp., $35.75.

Sergei N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis & Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993, xi + 393 pp., £30.00.

Andrew Horton (ed.), Inside Soviet Film Satire: Laughter with a Lash, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, xii + 171 pp., £27.95; Michael Brashinsky & Andrew Horton (eds), Russian Critics on the Cinema of Glasnost, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, viii+167 pp., £30.00.

Vida T. Johnson & Graham Petrie, The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky. A Visual Fugue. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995, xviii + 334 pp. Distributed in the UK and Ireland by Open University Press, £42.50 h/b, £18.99 p/b.

Andrea Peto & Mark Pittaway (eds), Women's History—Women in History: Central and East European Perspectives, Central European University, History Department, Working Paper Series 1, Budapest, 153 pp. (EU Press, 1994).