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Donald J. Savoie asserts that Canada continues to thrive because Canadians and their political leaders have been able to work around shortcomings in the country's political institutions. These shortcomings have pushed political leaders to find solutions outside institutions to meet Canada s political and economic requirements.

Understanding the declining trust in Western governments is one thing; coming up with the right diagnosis another. Savoie suggests the political accountability and public nature of government operations shape the behaviour of civil servants, and policy makers have failed to see that efficacy in government is tied to well-performing institutions.

"Canada's representative democracy is confronting important challenges. At the top of the list is the growing inability of the national government to perform its most important roles: namely mapping out collective actions that resonate in all regions as well as enforcing these measures. Others include Parliament's failure to carry out important responsibilities, an activist judiciary, incessant calls for greater transparency, the media's rapidly changing role, and a federal government bureaucracy that has lost both its way and its standing. Arguing that Canadians must reconsider the origins of their country in order to understand why change is difficult and why they continue to embrace regional identities, Democracy in Canada explains how Canada's national institutions were shaped by British historical experiences, and why there was little effort to bring Canadian realities into the mix. As a result, the scope and size of government and Canadian federalism have taken on new forms largely outside the Constitution. Parliament and now even Cabinet have been pushed aside so that policy makers can design and manage the modern state. This also accounts for the average citizen's belief that national institutions cater to economic elites, to their own members, and to interest groups at their own expense. A masterwork analysis, Democracy in Canada investigates the forces shaping the workings of Canadian federalism and the country's national political and bureaucratic institutions."--

Introduction -- Le contexte. Comprendre la démocratie -- Comprendre les origines de la démocratie canadienne -- Le Canada : population, culture et contexte -- Le Canada à l'époque -- Le fédéralisme canadien maintenant -- Tout ce qui est canadien est régional sauf les institutions politiques nationales -- Le nouveau visage de la démocratie canadienne. Se faire élire : la désinstitutionnalisation des partis politiques -- Les Communes : l'institution qui manque à ses obligations -- Le Sénat : l'institution qui n'a jamais existé -- Le Cabinet : l'institution qui a cessé d'exister -- Les médias : l'institution perdue -- « A Nowhere Man, in a Nowhere Land » : les fonctionnaires maintenant actifs dans deux institutions -- La fonction publique : une institution à six gardiens -- De nouvelles forces au-dessus de la ligne de faille -- Pourquoi et que faire maintenant? Le Canada : une démocratie défaillante? -- Un regard vers l'avenir.

Recent decades have shown the public's support for government plummet alongside political leaders' credibility. This downward spiral calls for an exploration of what has gone wrong. The questions, "What is government good at?" and "What is government not good at?" are critical ones - and their answers should be the basis for good public policy and public administration. In What Is Government Good At?, Donald Savoie argues that politicians and public servants are good at generating and avoiding blame, playing to a segment of the population to win the next election, embracing and defending the status quo, adding management layers and staff, keeping ministers out of trouble, responding to demands from the prime minister and his office, and managing a complex, prime minister-centred organization. Conversely, they are not as good at defining the broader public interest, providing and recognizing evidence-based policy advice, managing human and financial resources with efficiency and frugality, innovating and reforming itself, being accountable to Parliament and to citizens, dealing with non-performers, paying sufficient attention to service delivery, and implementing and evaluating the impact of policies and programs. With wide implications for representative democracy, What Is Government Good At? is a persuasive analysis of an approach to government that has opened the door to those with the resources to influence policy and decision-making while leaving average citizens on the outside looking in

The only rival to Harrison McCain's entrepreneurial success was his deep attachment to his Maritime roots. From McCain's beginnings in Florenceville, New Brunswick, the early mentorship he received from K.C. Irving, to the global success of his corporate empire McCain Foods, Donald Savoie presents a compelling and candid biography of one of the most famous and down-to-earth figures in Canadian business history

"Thirty years ago, Anglo-American politicians set out to make the public sector look like the private sector. These reforms continue today, ultimately seeking to empower elected officials to shape policies and pushing public servants to manage operations in the same manner as their private-sector counterparts. In Whatever Happened to the Music Teacher?, Donald Savoie provides a nuanced account of how the Canadian federal government makes decisions. Savoie argues that the traditional role of public servants advising governments on policy has been turned on its head, and that evidence-based policy making is no longer valued as it once was. Policy making has become a matter of opinion, Google searches, focus groups, and public opinion surveys, where a well-connected lobbyist can provide any answers politicians wish to hear. As a result, public servants have lost their way and are uncertain about how they should assess management performance, how they should generate policy advice, how they should work with their political leaders, and how they should speak truth to political power - even within their own departments. Savoie demonstrates how recent management reforms in government have caused a steep rise in the overhead cost of government, as well as how the notion that public administration could be made to operate like the private sector has been misguided and costly to taxpayers. Abandoning "textbook" discussions of government and public service, Whatever Happened to the Music Teacher? Is a realistic portrayal of how policy decisions are made and how actors and institutions interact with one another and exposes the complexities, contradictions present in Canadian politics and governance."--Publisher's website.

Annotation

Has power moved out of institutions into the hands of powerful individuals?

There is a consensus throughout much of the western world that the public sector is in urgent need of repair. This study seeks to understand why this is so by comparing developments in Canada and the United Kingdom. It looks to changes in values both in society and inside government, and to the relationships between politicians and civil servants at the top and between civil servants and citizens at the bottom. Donald J. Savoie argues that both Canada and the UK now operate under court government rather than cabinet government. By court government, he means that effective power now rests with their respective prime ministers and a small group of carefully selected courtiers. For things that matter to prime ministers and their courts, the decision-making process shifts from formal to informal, involving only a handful of actors. For things that matter less to them, the decision-making process is horizontal, cumbersome, and consultative, and involves a multitude of actors from different government departments and agencies as well as a variety of individuals operating outside government. Court governments undermine both the traditionally bureaucratic model and basic principles that have guided the development of our Westminster-Whitehall parliamentary system. Nonetheless, Canada and the United Kingdom still cling to accountability requirements better suited to the past and the traditional bureaucratic model. Savoie concludes with a call for new accountability requirements that correspond with court government as well as the new relationships between politicians and civil servants, and civil servants and citizens.

During his successful campaign to become Conservative Party leader in the spring of 2004, Stephen Harper said of the Maritime provinces, "We will see the day when the region is not the place where you visit your grandparents, but instead more often than not the place where you visit your grandchildren." In Visiting Grandchildren, esteemed policy analyst and scholar Donald J. Savoie explores how Canadian economic policies have served to exclude the Maritime provinces from the wealth enjoyed in many other parts of the country, especially southern Ontario, and calls for a radical new approach in how Canadian governments determine policies that affect the different regions.Savoie advocates a 'ratchet effect' for national economic policies, whereby regions take turns at high growth, with the slow-growth region of one period becoming the high-growth region of the next, with none moving from slow-growth to decline. He demonstrates how this pattern has been effective in countries undergoing long-term regional convergence and how it would recognize that what is good for the Maritimes is good for Canada no less than what is good for Ontario is good for Canada.Visiting Grandchildren looks to history, accidents of geography, and to the workings of national political and administrative institutions to explain the relative underdevelopment of the Maritime provinces. Savoie argues that the region must strive to redefine its relationship with the national government and with other regions, that it must ask fundamental questions of itself about its own responsibility for its present underdevelopment, develop a cooperative mindset, and embrace the market, if it is to prosper in the twenty-first century. Savoie's work serves as the blueprint for a new way of envisioning the Maritime region

Visiting Grandchildren looks to history, accidents of geography, and to the workings of national political and administrative institutions to explain the relative underdevelopment of the Maritime provinces.

"In Breaking the Bargain, Donald J. Savoie reveals how the traditional deal struck between politicians and career officials that underpins the workings of our national political and administrative process is today being challenged. He demonstrates that the role of bureaucracy within the Canadian political machine has never been properly defined, and that the relationship between elected and permanent government officials is increasingly problematic. In effect, Savoie argues, the public service cannot function if it is expected to be both independent of, and subordinate to, elected officials." "While the public service is attempting to define its own political sphere, the House of Commons is also in a state of flux. The prime minister and his close advisers wield ever more power, and cabinet no longer occupies the policy ground to which it is entitled. Ministers, who have traditionally been able to develop their own roles, have increasingly lost their autonomy. Federal departmental structures are crumbling, giving way to a new model that favours that sharing of policy and program space. The implications of this functional shift are far-reaching, having a deep impact on public policy, government operations, and ultimately, individual and institutional accountability." "Drawing on a wide range of sources, including published and unpublished government documents and extensive interviews with present and former government officials, Savoie provides important historical background and clear analysis of the realities facing ministers, deputy ministers, and members of Parliament. Comprehensive and insightful, Breaking the Bargain makes a significant contribution to contemporary debate on governance and the potential for political reform in Canada."--Jacket.