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Béland D, Myles J. Varieties of federalism, institutional legacies, and social policy: Comparing old‐age and unemployment insurance reform in CanadaWith reference to Canada, this article explores the politics of reform affecting two social insurance programs: Employment Insurance (EI) and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP). Comparing these two large, yet institutionally distinct, social insurance schemes underscores how institutional differences in policy legacies and governance among social programs create distinct obstacles and opportunities for reform in federal countries. Drawing on historical institutionalism and emphasizing the types of federalism and decision making specific to EI and CPP, the article explains key political differences between these two programs. Focusing on reforms enacted in the 1990s, the article explores the institutional obstacles and opportunities for policy change in EI and CPP, which offers insight into how these programs could change in the future. We show that different forms of federal governance pointing to the "varieties of federalism" and, more generally, the institutional and territorial logics embedded in these two programs create different obstacles and opportunities for reform.

Whether or not relative rates of assortative marriage have been rising in the affluent democracies has been subject to considerable dispute. First, we show how the conflicting empirical findings that have fueled the debate are frequently an artifact of alternative methodological strategies for answering the question. Then, drawing on comparable census data for Canada and the United States, we examine trends in educational homogamy and intermarriage with log-linear models for all marriages among young adults under 35 over three decades. Our results show that educational homogamy, the tendency of like to marry like, has unambiguously risen in both countries since the 1970s. Rising levels of marital homogamy were the result of declining intermarriage at both ends of the educational distribution.

Depuis la fin des années 1970, les programmes de transferts sociaux basés sur le concept d'impôt négatif, proposé par Milton Friedman au début des années 1940 et brièvement envisagé au cours de la décennie 1960, gagnent du terrain au Canada et aux États-Unis. Leur développement coïncide avec l'érosion continue des formes traditionnelles d'assistance, fondées sur le critère de ressources, la notion d'assurance sociale et le principe d'universalité. Cette forme inédite de redistribution de la richesse par l'État se développe sur fond d'austérité, ralliant en une coalition politique inattendue les tenants du recul de l'État-providence et les groupes qui soutiennent la fonction redistributive des dépenses de l'État. Des deux pays, c'est le Canada qui est allé le plus loin dans la voie de l'impôt négatif, devenue celle de plus de la moitié de ses transferts sociaux ; aux États-Unis, seule s'inscrit dans cette foulée la progression de l'Earned Income Tax Credit, programme plutôt modeste à ses débuts. La conception des programmes sociaux préexistants, les tensions interraciales aux États-Unis et les structures législatives comptent parmi les explications invoquées ici pour expliquer la situation des deux pays et leurs différences.