Keith G. Banting

National Identity and Support for the Welfare State

This paper examines the role of national identity in sustaining public support for the welfare state. Liberal nationalist theorists argue that social justice will always be easier to achieve in states with strong national identities which, they contend, can both mitigate opposition to redistribution among high-income earners and reduce any corroding effects of ethnic diversity resulting from immigration. We test these propositions with Canadian data from the Equality, Security and Community survey. We conclude that national identity does increase support for the welfare state among affluent majority Canadians, and that it helps to protect the welfare state from toxic effects of cultural suspicion. However, we also find that identity plays a narrower role than existing theories of liberal nationalism suggest, and that the mechanisms through which it works are different. This leads us to suggest an alternative theory of the relationship between national identity and the welfare state, one that suggests that the relationship is highly contingent, reflecting distinctive features of the history and national narratives of each country. National identity may not have any general tendency to strengthen support for redistribution, but it may do so for those aspects of the welfare state seen as having played a particularly important role in building the nation, or in enabling it to overcome particular challenges or crises.

Do We Know Where We Are Going? The New Social Policy in Canada

This commentary evaluates the new social policy paradigm, which shifts the emphasis from income redistribution to investment in human capital. Canadian governments have embraced the first side of this approach, restructuring income-security programs in ways that reduce the level of economic security assured to working-age Canadians. But their approach to investing in human capital is weakened by uncertain public commitments, problems of timing and sequence, and a failure to come to grips with the policy implications of the socio-economic gradient in educational attainment. The commentary concludes that education and training are carrying too much weight in new social discourse, and that a successful strategy of investing in human capital cannot be divorced from issues of poverty and inequality. The key challenge is one that is largely being ignored: to design a redistributive complement to a human-capital strategy, one that makes meaningful the promise of education as an instrument of economic security, and compensates for its significant limitations.

The Nonprofit Sector in Canada: Roles and Relationships

The size and complexity of the not-for-profit sector, the role of religious organizations in the delivery of social services, the distinctive roles of not-for-profits in caring for the elderly in Ontario and Quebec, the advocacy role of ethno-cultural organizations at the national level, and accountability dilemmas facing not-for-profit organizations are just some of the topics tackled in this book, illustrating the rich diversity of the not-for-profit sector.

Social Citizenship and Federalism: Is a Federal Welfare State a Contradiction in Terms?

Social citizenship and federalism represent two defining features of contemporary governance. Yet, at first glance at least, these two concepts seem to exist in deep tension. The promise of social citizenship is the equality of treatment of citizens, to be achieved through common social benefits and public services available to all citizens throughout a country. The promise of federalism is regional diversity in public policies, reflecting the preferences of regional communities and cultures. Balancing these contradictory logics would seem especially important in countries with federal institutions and mature welfare states.

Migration and welfare state spending

Is international migration a threat to the redistributive programmes of destination countries? Existing work is divided. This paper examines the manner and extent to which increases in immigration are related to welfare state retrenchment, drawing on data from 1970 to 2007. The paper makes three contributions: (1) it explores the impact of changes in immigration on social welfare policy over both the short and medium term; (2) it examines the possibility that immigration matters for spending not just directly, but indirectly, through changes in demographics and/or the labour force; and (3) by disaggregating data on social expenditure into subdomains (including unemployment, pensions, and the like), it tests the impact of immigration on different elements of the welfare state. Results suggest that increased immigration is indeed associated with smaller increases in spending. The major pathway is through impact on female labour force participation. The policy domains most affected are ones subject to moral hazard, or at least to rhetoric about moral hazard.

Reform of Retirement Income Policy: International and Canadian Perspectives

Canada is hardly unique in this respect. Countries around the world are engaged in similar debates, and their experience holds important lessons. Through the perspectives of international and Canadian researchers, Reform of Retirement Income Policy focuses on many key reform issues: future income prospects for the elderly, roles of the public and private sectors, fairness and intergenerational equity, affordability and economic impacts, public expectations, and political constraints. Contributors include Bob Baldwin (Canadian Labour Congress), Keith G. Banting (Queens), Ken Battle (Caledon Institute of Social Policy), Gordon Betcherman (Ekos Research), Robin Boadway (Queens), Thomas J. Courchene (Queens), James Cutt (Victoria), James Davies (Western), Andrew Dilnot (Institute of Fiscal Studies, England), Estelle James (World Bank), Newman Lam (Victoria), Harvey Lazar (Queens), Jack M. Mintz (U of T), Brian Murphy (Statistics Canada), John Myles (Florida State), Paul Pierson (Harvard), Michael Prince (Victoria), Jill Quadagno (Florida State), William B.P. Robson (C.D. Howe Institute), Monica Townson (economic consultant), Thomas A. Wilson (U of T), Michael Wolfson (Statistics Canada).

Introduction: The Politics of Constitutional Change

Notwithstanding Machiavelli’s warning to the Prince who would embark on projects of constitutional change, and tamper with the basic political structures and rules of the game, many different countries have recently experienced attempts to amend or alter their constitutions. Constitution-making has preoccupied not only the leaders of new states or those which, like Germany after the Second World War, have undergone convulsive shifts in regime. Demands for change have also arisen with increasing frequency in a number of other advanced industrial societies whose basic political structures have been stable over long periods of time. Even the United Kingdom, long considered the classic example of institutional stability — without a formal written constitution and therefore without special rules for amending it — has in the last decade debated a wide-ranging set of constitutional conflicts and initiatives. As James Kellas reports, a ‘continuing agenda of constitutional reform … keeps reasserting itself’. Constitution-making may in many ways be an extraordinary political process, but it is by no means an uncommon one, and there are some indications that political debate focused on the underlying rules, assumptions, and institutions of the political regime is increasing.

The Politics of Constitutional Change in Industrial Nations

During the last two decades serious attempts to alter basic constitutional structures have taken place in many industrial nations, even in those often thought to have highly stable political institutions. In some cases, such as Belgium and Spain, far-reaching constitutional changes have been put in place; in others advocates of reform have achieved only partial victories or have been entirely frustrated. In all cases, controversy over the constitution has been intense, involving basic conceptions of legitimacy, representation, sovereignty and the purposes of the state. Constitutional politics often reveals much about political life of modern societies that is obscured in day-to-day events. The results of constitutional changes can significantly affect the distribution of power, the ability to manage conflict and the outcomes of policy debates. This book explores the dynamics of constitutional politics through case studies of Spain, Belgium, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, West Germany and Eastern Europe, including Poland, prepared by leading students of these countries. Other chapters draw out the more general patterns of constitutional politics, highlighting the pressures which lead to change, and the formidable obstacles confronting them.

The Canada Paradox: The Public-Private Divide in Health Insurance and Pensions

In recent years, academic attention has returned to an issue highlighted by Richard Titmuss half a century ago: the intersection of public and private social benefits (Titmuss 1958). This renewed interest in the public-private divide reflects an understanding that the structure of private benefits can have a significant impact on the development of public programs. It also reflects a growing realization that the balance between public and private benefits is critical to the distribution of risk in contemporary society, and that current changes in private benefits in many countries are triggering a privatization of risk that is not being offset by public benefit programs.

The global promise of federalism

Acknowledgements 1. The Global Promise of Federalism - Grace Skogstad (University of Toronto, Political Science), David Cameron (University of Toronto, Political Science, Dean of Faculty of Arts and Sciences), Martin Papillon(University of Ottawa, Political Science) and Keith Banting (Queens University, Political Studies and Policy Studies) 2. Federalism and Democracy: A Critical Reassessment - Thomas Hueglin (Wilfred Laurier University, Political Science) 3. Is There a Political Culture of Federalism in Canada? Charting an Unexplored Territory - Francois Rocher (University of Ottawa, Political Science, Director of the School of Political Studies) and Patrick Fafard (University of Ottawa, Political Science) 4. A Problem of Trust: Can Federalism Silence the Guns? - Marie-Joelle Zahar (Universite de Montreal, Political Science) 5. Designing a Durable Federation: The Case of Cyprus - John McGarry (Queens University, Political Science) 6. The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Federalism and the Theocratic Challenge - Ran Hirschl (University of Toronto, Political Science) 7. Ideology, Identity, Majoritarianism: On the Politics of Federalism - Alain Noel (Universite de Montreal, Political Science) 8. Adaptability and Change in Federations: Centralization, Political Parties, and Taxation Authority in Australia and Canada - Luc Turgeon (University of Ottawa, Political Science) and Jenn Wallner (University of Ottawa, Political Science) 9. Living with Contradictions in Federalism: Goals and Outcomes of Recent Constitutional and Financial Reforms in the Spanish Estado autonomico - Cesar Colino (Spanish National Distance-Learning University, Political Science and Public Adminitration) 10. Spatial Rescaling, Federalization and Interest Representation - Michael Keating (Aberdeen University, Social Sciences) 11. Engage Intellectuals, Technocratic Experts, and Scholars - Jan Erk (University of Leiden, Political Science) 12. Reflections on a Federalist Life - Richard Simeon (University of Toronto, Professor Emeritus) The Collected Works of Richard Simeon - Andrew McDougall Contributors