Governance

In 1908, after decades of struggling with a public administration undermined by systemic patronage, the Canadian parliament decided that public servants would be selected on the basis of merit, through a system administered by an independent agency: the Public Service Commission of Canada. This history, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Commission, recounts its unique contribution to the development of an independent public service, which has become a pillar of Canadian parliamentary democracy.

Canadian public administration has provided a rich ground for examining the changing nature of the state. Currents of political change have rippled through the administration of the public sector, often producing significant alterations in our understanding of how best to organize and administer public services. This volume brings together some of the leading Canadian and international scholars of public administration to reflect on these changes and their significance. Providing a historical perspective on public administration in Canada, the volume examines the shift from a traditional model of administration to newer forms such as new public management and governance, and explores current debates and the place of Canadian public administration within a broader comparative perspective.

The rapid expansion of the Internet has fueled the emergence of electronic government at all levels in Canada. E-government's first decade featured online service underpinned by a technically secure infrastructure. This service-security nexus entails internal governance reforms aimed at realizing more customer-centric delivery via integration and coordination across departments and agencies. Yet, as online networking has become more pervasive and public demands for participation rise, pressures for greater openness and accountability intensify. The result is widening experimentation with online democracy. The e-governance focus is thus shifting toward issues of transparency and trust - and new possibilities for re-conceptualizing how power is organized and deployed. In sum, the prospects for digital transformation involve the interplay of these four dimensions: service, security, transparency and trust. This book identifies the main drivers of e-government, assesses the responses of Canada's public sector to date, and sketches out the major challenges and choices that lie ahead. The findings will be of interest to those studying or working in the world of public sector management and e-governance.

In the past ten years, Canadians have witnessed a renaissance in the delivery of government services. New service organizations are cropping up across the country and accomplishing extraordinary things. Efforts are being made to consult citizens on how to improve and integrate services. Considerable resources are being invested in measuring and showcasing performance improvement. This book probes the central dimensions of service reform efforts from a variety of perspectives and answers some pressing questions: How can we make better decisions about service delivery? How should we measure service delivery performance? How should we engage users of government services? How can we create a service culture? How can we use the internet more effectively? Approaching service delivery as not merely technical but inherently political and controversial, the authors look beyond the rhetoric to see what has actually been achieved and what obstacles confront further improvements.

Political commentator and public policy analyst Gilles Paquet examines the benefits and drawbacks of Canada's multiculturalism policy. He rejects the current policy which perpetuates difference and articulates a model for Canadian transculturalism, a more fluid understanding of multiculturalism based on the philosophy of cosmopolitanism which would strengthen moral contracts and encourage the social engagement of all Canadians.

This volume explores and contextualizes the contributions of Gilles Paquet as a social scientist. A quintessential public intellectual, Gilles Paquet's long and multifaceted career has shown him to be a thinker of significant power and creativity. This self-described "homo hereticus"-always critical and sometimes controversial-has influenced scholars and policy makers in Canada and around the globe. The contributors reveal how his assessments of economics, politics, public administration, and education have stirred their minds and helped them make sense of the world around them. The volume also provides comments on Paquet's vision of governance, touching on concepts of which he has made extensive use: meso-analysis, social learning, and moral contracts.

Canada is a prosperous country, but this prosperity is being stressed by demographics, pressures on the public purse, and low productivity growth. To maintain the nation's high quality of life, prosperity must increase while remaining sustainable. Combining Tom Brzustowski's extensive knowledge of government, industry, and academia, The Way Ahead, articulates a strategy for moving the Canadian economy towards higher-value products based on research and development, describing the practical steps government, industry and academia must take to improve things in the short term and prepare strategically for the long term. He recommends increasing productivity growth by embracing an economy based on innovation, prioritizing research and development, marketing Canadian products internationally, and encouraging entrepreneurial activities in all sectors. Ultimately, increasing prosperity will require a new level of understanding, strategic coherence, and mutual support between the private and public sectors in Canada, a challenge that the author feels Canada is prepared to and absolutely must face.

Over the last few decades, the Westphalian nation-state has lost its hegemonic position in the system of geo-governance. A dispersive revolution has led to the emergence of powerful newly networked business organizations, new subsidiary-focused governments, and increasingly virtual, elective, and malleable communities. This in turn has led to the crystallization of distributed governance regimes, based on a wider variety of more fluid and always evolving groups of stakeholders. In The New Geo-Governance, Gilles Paquet develops a general conceptual framework to deal with the new evolving reality of global governance. He uses this framework to critically examine the evolving territorial governance (hemispheric governance, meso-innovation systems, smart city-regions) and tackles the more complex governance challenges raised by sustainability and common-property resources like oceans. Paquet further explores the implications of this emerging polycentric geo-governance on the new forms of stewardship and its impact on citizenship, federalism, and other technologies of coordination, and reflects on the sort of subversive bricolage required if the missing mechanisms for effective coordination are to be put in place. The New Geo-Governance will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in governance, organizational design, international affairs, and political studies.

In Crippling Epistemologies and Governance Failures, Gilles Paquet criticizes the prevailing practices of the social sciences on the basis of their inadequate concepts of knowledge, evidence and inquiry, concepts he claims have become methodological "mental prisons". Paquet describes the prevailing policy development process in Canada in terms of its weak information infrastructure, poor accountability, and inflexible organization design. In contrast, he suggests that social science and public policy should promote forms of "serious play" that would allow organizations to experiment with new structures. Paquet engages with numerous foundationalist programs in the social sciences in order to show their inadequacy and suggests important and unexplored directions in policy areas as diverse as education, science, health, intergovernmental and foreign policy. He closes the work with a plea for experimentalism in academic research, policy development, and organization design.

Boundaries between business and government are increasingly fluid and often transcended. Yet it remains important to acknowledge and make appropriate use of the fundamental differences between these sectors. Five areas that offer the most critical challenges to business and government in Canada today are corporate governance, lobbying and influence, security and privacy, public-private partnerships, and geography and development. This book is an exploration of the systemic dynamics of the inter-sectoral governance that shape the collective performance of Canada's national jurisdiction. Three perspectives of the relational dynamics between business and government, drawn from leading Canadian scholars, are adopted in order to frame the examination of independence, influence, and interdependence. This book makes a case for the advancement of "virtuous hybrids," while pointing out the challenges that remain in terms of the formation and successful performance of such hybrids in Canada, a challenge that calls for political leadership as well as social learning. An informed and engaged public, wearing multiple hats (i.e. as voter, shareholder, employee, activist etc.) would be the ultimate arbiter of sectoral and collective performance.

Australia, Canada, and Ireland are all engaged in questions of multiculturalism and in the politics of recognition and reconciliation, the opportunities and pressures of geographic regionalism, shifts in political agendas associated with the impact of neo-liberalism, and moves to frame political agendas less at the macro-level of state intervention and more at the level of community partnership and empowerment. In related but distinct ways, each state is being challenged to devise policies and offer outcomes that address an unfolding and unsteady synthesis of issues relating to citizenship, the role of nation-states in a 'borderless' world, and the management of economic change while preserving an enabling sense of national identity and social cohesion. Analyzing issues ranging from urban planning and the provision of broadcasting services for minority languages, to principled debates over basic rights and entitlements, these essays offer penetrating summaries of each political culture while also prompting comparative reflection on the broad theme of "democracy and difference."

The Case for Decentralized Federalism and its sister volume The Case for Centralized Federalism are the outcome of the Federalism Redux Project, created to stimulate a serious and useful conversation on federalism in Canada. They provide the vocabulary and arguments needed to articulate the case for a centralized or a decentralized Canadian federalism. The Case for Decentralized Federalism brings together experts who believe decentralized federalism is the optimal arrangement for governing the contextual diversity and cultural pluralism in Canada. Using different approaches, they argue that by dividing the work of public governance among different levels of government, it is easier to address the needs and aspirations of the diverse groups that make up Canada.

In 2004, Paul Martin asked Justice John Gomery to lead a public inquiry into potential misspending in the federal Sponsorship Program, a relatively small investment of taxpayers' money to try to convince Quebeckers of the benefits of Canadian federalism in the aftermath of the 1995 referendum on Quebec separation. The Gomery inquiry chose to focus exclusively on the sordid details of the money laundering and paid no attention to the deeper causes and sources of the problem: the dysfunctions of an existing centralized governing apparatus that is tearing the fabric of the country apart and the collusion of centralizing groups defending the status quo.

The standing committees of the House of Commons and Senate make it possible for practically any person or group to access the policy-making process and become a lobbyist. This handy and complete guide coaches prospective witnesses to do it right. Targeted primarily at those who have a stake in advancing a cause "on the hill," this guide reveals the lessons and advice of experienced parliamentarians and those who work behind the doors of Parliament. It is a "how-to" for lobbyists and advisors and "must-read" for students of political science and public administration. This refreshed edition has been updated to reflect key developments in procedure and committee practices in an ever-changing parliamentary environment.

In Life, Fish and Mangroves, Melissa Marschke explores the potential of resource governance, offering a case study of resource-dependent village life. Following six households and one village-based institution in coastal Cambodia over a twelve-year period, Marschke reveals the opportunities and constraints facing villagers and illustrates why local resource management practices remain delicate, even with a sustained effort. She highlights how government and business interests in community-based management and resource exploitation combine to produce a complex, highly uncertain dynamic. With this instructive study, she demonstrates that in spite of a significant effort, spanning many years and engaging many players, resource governance remains fragile and coastal livelihoods in Cambodia remain precarious.

Border security has been high on public-policy agendas in Europe and North America since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York City and on the headquarters of the American military in Washington DC. Governments are now confronted with managing secure borders, a policy objective that in this era of increased free trade and globalization must compete with intense cross-border flows of people and goods. Border-security policies must enable security personnel to identify, or filter out, dangerous individuals and substances from among the millions of travelers and tons of goods that cross borders daily, particularly in large cross-border urban regions. This book addresses this gap between security needs and an understanding of borders and borderlands. Specifically, the chapters in this volume ask policy-makers to recognize that two fundamental elements define borders and borderlands: first, human activities (the agency and agent power of individual ties and forces spanning a border), and second, the broader social processes that frame individual action, such as market forces, government activities (law, regulations, and policies), and the regional culture and politics of a borderland. Borders emerge as the historically and geographically variable expression of human ties exercised within social structures of varying force and influence, and it is the interplay and interdependence between people's incentives to act and the surrounding structures (i.e. constructed social processes that contain and constrain individual action) that determine the effectiveness of border security policies. This book argues that the nature of borders is to be porous, which is a problem for security policy makers. It shows that when for economic, cultural, or political reasons human activities increase across a border and borderland, governments need to increase cooperation and collaboration with regard to security policies, if only to avoid implementing mismatched security policies.

In the early hours of April 22, 1914, American President Woodrow Wilson sent Marines to seize the port of Veracruz in an attempt to alter the course of the Mexican Revolution. As a result, the United States seemed on the brink of war with Mexico. An international uproar ensued. The governments of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile offered to mediate a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Surprisingly, both the United States and Mexico accepted their offer and all parties agreed to meet at an international peace conference in Niagara Falls, Ontario. For Canadians, the conference provided an unexpected spectacle on their doorstep, combining high diplomacy and low intrigue around the gardens and cataracts of Canada's most famous natural attraction. For the diplomats involved, it proved to be an ephemeral high point in the nascent Pan-American movement. After it ended, the conference dropped out of historical memory. This is the first full account of the Niagara Falls Peace Conference to be published in North America since 1914. The author carefully reconstructs what happened at Niagara Falls, examining its historical significance for Canada's relationship with the Americas. From this almost forgotten event he draws important lessons on the conduct of international mediation and the perils of middle-power diplomacy.

The Case for Centralized Federalism and its sister volume The Case for Decentralized Federalism are the outcome of the Federalism Redux Project, created to stimulate a serious and useful conversation on federalism in Canada. They provide the vocabulary and arguments needed to articulate the case for a centralized or a decentralized Canadian federalism. In The Case for Centralized Federalism, an array of experts condemns the federal government's submissiveness in its dealings with the provinces and calls for a renewed federal assertiveness. They argue that the federal government is best placed to create effective policy, support democracy and respond to issues of national importance.

Public administration in Canada needs to change. A handful of scholars across Canada have been sounding the alarm for years but to no avail. Talented young bureaucrats have been joining the public service with fresh ideas capable of creating real change, but the black hole consumes all. In The Black Hole of Public Administration, experienced public servant Ruth Hubbard and public administration iconoclast Gilles Paquet sound a wake-up call to the federal public service. They lament the lack of "serious play" going on in Canada's public administration today and map some possible escape plans. They look to a more participatory governance model — "open source" governing or "small g" governance — as a way to liberate our public service from antiquated styles and systems of governing. In their recognizably rebellious style, Hubbard and Paquet demand that public administration scholars and senior level bureaucrats pull their heads out of the sand and confront the problems of the current system and develop a new system that can address the needs of Canada today.

Many scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers in the cultural sector argue that Canadian cultural policy is at a crossroads: that the environment for cultural policy-making has evolved substantially and that traditional rationales for state intervention no longer apply. The concept of cultural citizenship is a relative newcomer to the cultural policy landscape, and offers a potentially compelling alternative rationale for government intervention in the cultural sector. Likewise, the articulation and use of cultural indicators and of governance concepts are also new arrivals, emerging as potentially powerful tools for policy and program development. Accounting for Culture is a unique collection of essays from leading Canadian and international scholars that critically examines cultural citizenship, cultural indicators, and governance in the context of evolving cultural practices and cultural policy-making. It will be of great interest to scholars of cultural policy, communications, cultural studies, and public administration alike.