For generations, debating the expansion or contraction of the American welfare state has produced some of the nation's most heated legislative battles. Attempting social policy reform is both risky and complicated, especially when it involves dealing with powerful vested interests, sharp ideological disagreements, and a nervous public.The Politics of Policy Change compares and contrasts recent developments in three major federal policy areas in the United States: welfare, ...

Fiscal Federalism and Equalization Policy in Canada aims to increase public understanding of equalization and fiscal federalism by providing a comparative and multidisciplinary perspective on the history, politics, and economics of equalization policy in Canada. The authors provide a brief history, an analysis of the politics of equalization as witnessed over the last fifteen years, and a discussion of key economic debates concerning the role of the program and its effects. They a...

Despite the recent proliferation of literature on nationalism and on social policy, relatively little has been written to analyse the possible interaction between the two. Scholars interested in social citizenship have indirectly dealt with the interaction between national identity and social programs such as the British NHS, but they have seldom examined this connection in reference to nationalism. Specialists of nationalism rarely mention social policy, focusing instead on language, cult...

This is the comprehensively-revised second edition of a volume that was welcomed at its first appearance as 'the most authoritative survey and critique of the welfare state yet published'. Its fifty-one chapters have been written by acknowledged experts in the field from across Europe, Australia, and North America. Some chapters are brand new; all have been systematically revised, and they are right up to date. The first seven sections of the book cover the themes of Ethics, History, Appro...

Bringing together top scholars in the field, Universality and Social Policy in Canada provides an overview of the universality principle in social welfare. The contributors survey the many contested meanings of universality in relation to specific social programs, the field of social policy, and the modern welfare state. The book argues that while universality is a core value undergirding certain areas of state intervention—most notably health care and education—the contributory p...

Welfare Reform in Canada provides systematic knowledge of Canadian social assistance by assessing provincial welfare regimes and emphasizing changes since the late twentieth century. The book examines activation, social investment, and economic inequalities and provides nuanced perspectives on social welfare across Canada's provinces in relation to trends and issues in the country and beyond. These conceptual, international, and historical perspectives inform in-depth case studies...

Featuring insights from some of the top specialists in the country, Fiscal Federalism in Canada unpacks numerous complexities of fiscal federalism in Canada. The book features key regional and provincial perspectives, while taking into account Indigenous realities, the three territories, and municipal affairs. The contributing authors go beyond the major federal transfers to examine the financing of education, cities, infrastructure, and housing.This volume shows that fisc...

This Element maps the relationship between taxation and social policy from a comparative and historical perspective. It critically reviews studies in fiscal sociology, history, political science and political economy to highlight blind spots in the body of knowledge that future studies could explore. It shows that exploring the revenue side of social policy offers compelling answers to central questions tackled in welfare state scholarship and addresses questions such as: What explains the...

Although the idea that existing policies can have major effects on politics and policy development is hardly new, the last three decades witnessed a major expansion of policy feedback scholarship, which focuses on the mechanisms through which existing policies shape politics and policy development. Starting with a discussion of the origins of the concept of policy feedback, this element explores early and more recent contributions of the policy feedback literature to clarify the meaning of...

This Element provides a critical review of existing literature on the role of ideas and institutions in the politics of public policy with the aim of contributing to the study of the politics of public policy. Because most policy scholars deal with the role of ideas or institutions in their research, such a critical review should help them improve their knowledge of crucial analytical issues in policy and political analysis. The following discussion brings together insights from both the p...

La COVID-19 a provoqué la crise mondiale la plus importante et la plus globale du 21e siècle. Pour certains, les répercussions ont été rapides et dramatiques, la pandémie poussant des dizaines de millions de personnes dans la pauvreté et générant une insécurité alimentaire extrême. Pour d’autres, les transformations bouillonnent encore sous la surface et des questions demeurent quant à savoir si les changements de société induits par la COVID-19 perdureront dans la période post-pandémique....

Writing about ideas, John Maynard Keynes noted that they are "more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else." One would expect, therefore, that political science--a discipline that focuses specifically on the nature of power--would have a healthy respect for the role of ideas. However, for a variety of reasons--not least of which is the influence of rational choice theory, which presumes that individuals are self-maximizing rational actors--this is not...