Research by political scientists on the modern welfare state focuses on its historical
development and on the emergence of distinctive welfare state regimes. Research conducted in
the past decade has also been concerned with the implications for the welfare state of the
recurrent crises which have afflicted western economies since the late 1970's. However, while
the politics of building welfare states are now better understood, there remains little systematic
study of the politics of their retrenchment, a phenomenon which has been under way for the past
two decades in most advanced capitalist states.
This study examines the politics of retrenchment in Canada over the period 1978 to 1993.
Focusing on three categories of federal income security programmes (family benefits, retirement
income programmes, and Unemployment Insurance), the thesis describes a gradual shift in
programme design away from universality and toward greater selectivity. Concomitant with this
development was an increasing reliance on the tax system as an instrument of social policy.
Applying Gosta Esping-Andersen's analysis of welfare state regimes, the thesis contends that
the cumulative effect of programme retrenchment during this period was to reinforce the liberal-residualist
character of Canada's welfare state at the expense of its social democratic aspects.
In an effort to explain the process of welfare state retrenchment in Canada, within and
between different categories of income security programmes, the thesis tests hypotheses
associated with three major approaches to the study of public policy: class analysis,
institutionalism, and pluralism. The thesis concludes that retrenchment in Canada was broadly
facilitated by a decline in the political power resources of labour in relation to those of business.
Because of the weakness of the relevant non-class pressure groups, pluralism is of limited value
in explaining retrenchment outcomes. Insights into more specific patterns of retrenchment are
gained from two institutionalist perspectives. The first of these, a state-centred approach, draws
attention to the larger role in social policy-making that was assumed by the Department of
Finance, the chief fiscal guardian of the Federal Government. The second perspective, a rational
choice theory developed by Paul Pierson, provides insight into the manner in which certain
retrenchment measures were formulated. Based on Kent Weaver's blame-avoidance thesis,
Pierson's model provides a persuasive explanation for the reliance of Canadian governments on
arcane changes to tax rules and indexation formulae as an instrument of retrenchment.
Since each of the analyses provides at best only a partial explanation for the politics of
welfare state retrenchment, the thesis proposes the scheme of an integrated approach which
incorporates the explanatory power of class analysis and institutionalism.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/9916 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Phillips, Stephen |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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