Suchergebnisse

AbstractCanada has not escaped trends in most liberal democracies with the rapid growth of agencies created by government to deliver public goods, often justified on elements of their mandate—service delivery, adjudication of disputes, regulatory oversight, among others—benefiting from an arm's-length relationship to the government of the day. Yet Canadian studies of this phenomenon remain mostly absent from the robust comparative literature theorizing and documenting the emergence of widespread "agencification" and its relationship to performance. This article draws on the Government of Canada's Public Service Employee Survey (PSES) microdata from 2017 to test key hypotheses advanced by proponents of agencification, specifically that agencies are more innovative, autonomous and efficient public organizations. We discover that those working in agencies generally report less climate of innovation and less work autonomy than those working in departments, though some types of agencies—namely regulatory and parliamentary ones—defy these trends.

The "systemic turn" has been one of the most important developments in deliberative democracy in the past decade. Through a deliberative systems approach, scholars and practitioners are challenged to think about ways in which various venues and institutions interact together to produce a healthy democratic subsystem. One major challenge to this approach, however, is its methodological weakness. How exactly are various venues and institutions connected? How do they interact with each other? What conceptual tools are available in making sense of the deliberative system?This article proposes the use of "venue coupling" and "actor circulation" to operationalize some of the key concepts of the deliberative system. Through the case of the Local Health Integration Networks in Ontario, Canada, this article maps the governance system, its institutional and interpersonal components, and their interconnections (or lack thereof). By drawing together key concepts in deliberative democracy and network governance, this article sketches out a framework that can be used to analyze governance contexts in which deliberative practices are fused with traditional political institutions like legislative bodies and bureaucracies.

The "systemic turn" has been one of the most important developments in deliberative democracy in the past decade. Through a deliberative systems approach, scholars and practitioners are challenged to think about ways in which various venues and institutions interact together to produce a healthy democratic subsystem. One major challenge to this approach, however, is its methodological weakness. How exactly are various venues and institutions connected? How do they interact with each other? What conceptual tools are available in making sense of the deliberative system? This article proposes the use of "venue coupling" and "actor circulation" to operationalize some of the key concepts of the deliberative system. Through the case of the Local Health Integration Networks in Ontario, Canada, this article maps the governance system, its institutional and interpersonal components, and their interconnections (or lack thereof). By drawing together key concepts in deliberative democracy and network governance, this article sketches out a framework that can be used to analyze governance contexts in which deliberative practices are fused with traditional political institutions like legislative bodies and bureaucracies.

How do key policy professionals inside government view various sources of policy research? Are there systematic differences in the perceptions of the quality and credibility of research derived from different sources? This is a replication of and expansion on Doberstein (2017), which presented a randomized controlled survey experiment using policy analysts to systematically test the source effects of policy research. Doberstein's experimental findings provide evidence for the hypothesis that academic research is perceived to be substantially more credible to government policy analysts than think tank or advocacy organization research, regardless of its content, and that sources perceived as more ideological are much less credible. This study replicates that experiment in three additional Canadian provincial governments to verify whether the relationship found in the original study persists in a larger sample and in conjunction with further randomization procedures. This study corroborates the original study's findings, confirming that external policy advice systems are subject to powerful heuristics that bureaucrats use to sift through evidence and advice.

More than ever before, analysts in government have access to policy‐relevant research and advocacy, which they consume and apply in their role in the policy process. Academics have historically occupied a privileged position of authority and legitimacy, but some argue this is changing with the rapid growth of think tanks and research‐based advocacy organizations. This article documents the findings from a randomized controlled survey experiment using policy analysts from the British Columbia provincial government in Canada to systematically test the source effects of policy research in two subject areas: minimum wage and income‐splitting tax policy. Subjects were asked to read research summaries of these topics and then assess the credibility of each article, but for half of the survey respondents the affiliation/authorship of the content was randomly reassigned. The experimental findings lend evidence to the hypothesis that academic research is perceived to be substantially more credible than think tank or advocacy organization research, regardless of its content. That increasingly externalized policy advice systems are not a pluralistic arena of policy research and advice, but instead subject to powerful heuristics that bureaucrats use to sift through policy‐relevant information and advice, demands added nuance to both location and content‐based policy advisory system models.

Despite not having explicit authority to legislate on matters local in nature, in 2000 the federal government launched the National Homelessness Initiative (NHI). I argue that this federal program, in many critical aspects, mirrors a governance model developed in the European Union called the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), a model developed in an institutional context whereby the European Commission has no formal authority to coerce member states into coordinating social policy, but nonetheless uses "soft" or voluntary mechanisms to work toward this goal. Vancouver and Toronto are examined more closely to demonstrate how the flexibility of the OMC-style model manifests itself in practice, and the implications for governance, accountability, and effectiveness. I conclude that while the issue of homelessness is principally plagued by insufficient and unstable funding, further application of principles in the OMC model—uniquely applied to the Canadian context—holds promise for improving governance, coordination, and effectiveness of the public policy response to homelessness. Application of the OMC model thus calls for more attention from Canadian federalism scholars and policy-makers.

This comparison of three major Canadian cities over a twenty-year period draws on network governance theory to show that effective homelessness policy must be built on inclusive, collaborative decision making that includes policy makers and civil-society actors