Allan M. Maslove

Canadian Public Policy Analysis and Public Policy Programs: A Comparative Perspective

Abstract This article seeks to place Canadian public policy programs in a comparative context and to provide an overview that identifies the status of the Canadian public policy analysis profession and policy analysis/policy studies instruction in light of domestic and global developments.1 The authors acknowledge that instruction plays a crucial role in the training as well as in the future approach and orientation of policy analysts and they analyze shifts in the perspective of policy analysis studies and policy analysis instruction. This preliminary comparative paper primarily discusses the characteristics and training needs of policy studies/analysis by tracking the needs of the profession; the development of the field to date; orientations arising from conceptual and historical developments in Canada, the United States, and Europe, and shaping particular public policy programs, curriculum orientations, and practices; and implications of and lessons drawn from the various contexts in comparison to Canada. Throughout the paper the terms policy analysis and policy studies are used interchangeably, because in the various traditions highlighted in this paper, programs of policy studies, rather than policy analysis, are prevalent. Policy analysis skills are promoted, albeit with various degrees of emphasis, within these programs.

What Prompts Health Care Policy Change? On Political Power Contests and Reform of Health Care Systems (The Case of Canada and Israel)

This article attempts to shed light on the complexity inherent in health care reform policies in the context of political power contests that trigger the changes imposed on the health care system. Rather than being solely a response to financial circumstances, as it is often claimed, we argue that these political contests lead to many of the changes in the systems. Furthermore, changes do not necessarily occur when worrying symptoms appear in the system, but rather when the contest reaches a peak and when neither side involved can emerge from the contest as winner or loser and as defender of the public interest. While in both cases fiscal problems in the health systems are usually brought up in order to justify reform, the trigger for change in Israel has been the power contest between the two main parties--the Labor Party and the Likud Party--with the Likud attempting to impair the financial basis of the former. In Canada, the power contests are between the provinces and the federal government.

Learning from Experience? Ottawa as a Cautionary Tale of Reforming Urban Government

This article examines the saga of local government restructuring in Canadas capital city. Specifically, it analyzes the interplay between provincial and local agendas for local government reform over many years, which culminated in provincial legislation and a one-year transition process to establish one municipality for the Ottawa city region. In doing so, the article addresses the extent to which the Ottawa transition demonstrates learning from other major urban restructuring efforts and the extent to which the Ottawa case provides new insights for future local government reform efforts. Key conclusions are that the key motivation for provincially initiated reform—cost saving through simplification of the local government structure in Ottawa—does not fully coincide with local needs and interests. Furthermore, the promise of financial savings has proven difficult to realize as a result of the local politics surrounding existing municipal debt and unresolved human resource management costs. Instead, future benefits from the amalgamation may lie in improved capacity to manage physical development, environmental sustainability, and cultural diversity.

Fairness in Taxation: Exploring the Principles

The papers in this volume explore the idea of distributive justice and fairness in taxation. The collection begins with Heads excellent presentation and analysis of equity in the public finance literature. The other authors, starting from this point, critique and amplify the concept from various philosophical perspectives and academic disciplines.

Tax reform in Canada : the process and impact

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The economic and social environment for tax reform

Major economic and social developments that will determine the context for tax reforms in the 1990s are the subject of this volume. They include the globalization of markets, free trade arrangements, changing technology and production processes, macro-economic policies and conditions in Canada, and population growth and changes in demographic structure.

Canadian Federal Budgeting: Imaginative Responses and Troublesome Confusions

As any reader of Wildavsky knows, budgets and budgeting can be studied on many levels. In this paper, we focus on structures and process issues in Canadian government budgets particularly as they pertain to federal arrangements. The argument to be developed is that Canadian government budgets are in many ways quintessentially Canadian; they reflect the larger compromises struck within a government and within the federation, often in imaginative ways, and sometimes along the way they create confusion.

Comptes Rendus / Book Reviews

Historians usually concentrate on origins rather than later developments, as any reader of biographies of Martin Luther will soon discover: emphasis is on the young Luther and his later years are neglected. But the present study of the Reformation in Strasbourg breaks with historiographical tradition and deals with the citys Reformation over the long haul, stretching from the reform agitation in the opening decades of the sixteenth century, through the triumph of the evangelical cause in the 1520s, down to the definitive (but not total) victory of Lutheran orthodoxy with the passage of the Church Ordinance of 1598. Indeed, the book gives rather short shrift to the much-studied heroic age of Zell, Bucer, Capito, and Hedio, when Strasbourg made its decisive move into the Protestant camp. The reason is that the author focuses attention on the effect of the Reformation on the whole society and only secondarily on the great theological issues that dominated the 1520s. This is, in fact, a social history of the Strasbourg Reformation. The evangelical conquest of the city in the 1520s has been described many times. But the long-term developments and the effect of the Refonnation on the life of the people have been less fully studied: and one of the important achievements of this book to its success in carrying the story all the way to 1598.