Law and Public Policy

D01 - The Politics of Public Provision: The Dynamics of Social Policy Development and Delivery

Date: Jun 3 | Time: 08:30am to 10:00am | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Rachel Laforest (Queen's University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Alain Noël (Université de Montréal)

How should public dollars be spent? Whom should they benefit? In what form should public goods or services be delivered? These questions are foundational to the politics of social policy investments and retrenchment. In this panel, we bring together scholars examining a range of policy design questions at the core of how governments make decisions about the distribution of public resources. These questions are central to the politics of welfare state development: decisions around the distribution of public resources creates haves and have-nots (resource effects), and can shape the interpretation, legitimacy and longevity of policy changes (interpretive effects). The papers on this panel have the shared goal of understanding the political dynamics of the distribution of public resources: they explore the theoretical underpinnings of design decisions around universalism as compared to targeted models, policy decisions around delivery agents, empirical insights into the attribution of blame or credit when things go wrong (or right), and to the articulation of target populations.

Stratified Universalism: Carmen Ho (University of Guelph), Daniel Béland (McGill University)
Abstract: Research suggests that universal, rather than targeted, policies are better able to reduce inequality. By extending benefits to all members of a group, welfare states have had greater redistributive success. Yet in countries with universal social policies, inequality persists. What explains this? This paper introduces the concept of "stratified universalism" to show that in practice, universal benefits are rarely afforded to all. Universal social policies provide social protection to certain segments of the population, while underserving others, reinforcing existing inequalities. This paper describes the empirical phenomena, seen in welfare states around the world, then develops a framework for studying the pathways to stratified universalism.

Are the Kids All Right? Governing the Public/Private Divide of Child Welfare: Anika Ganness (Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP))
Abstract: We have traditionally grown to think of our lives as divided between the public and private spheres. While the realm of families and child rearing has typically been conceived of within the private sphere, the child welfare system has unique authority—through the power of the state—to cross the threshold of the home. Child welfare systems involve the state in scrutinizing the family, with the authority to remove children who are deemed at risk of maltreatment or who need protection. While this authority is vested in government, its services have been delegated to nonprofit and private, for-profit organizations. What does it mean for the most vulnerable citizens—children— when the state delegates this authority to private organizations, allowing privatized companies to undertake responsibility for Crown wards, who are under the guardianship of the state. Studies have addressed the increasing privatization of traditionally public sectors services such as education, health and others. Few studies, however, have examined the involvement of the private sector in the industry of child welfare. This paper examines the governance dynamics between provincial state powers, nonprofit child welfare, as well as private foster agencies and the accountability mechanisms within the child welfare sector. It takes a critical look at governance within the child welfare system and examines how regulatory frameworks or lack thereof in such a sacred sphere of child protection impact outcomes for children.

Vaccine Prioritization and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Public Policy Decision-Making by the Canadian and Ontario Governments During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Joanne Garcia-Mores (University of Guelph)
Abstract: In early 2021, Covid-19 vaccines were approved but supplies were limited necessitating policies to prioritize access. Public health officials and Indigenous advocates called for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit (FNMI) to be targeted for priority vaccine access. While Crown governments in Canada and Ontario adopted policies prioritizing FNMI vaccine access, there is no evidence that this was done to respect rights to health and self-determination set out in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and adopted through federal legislation (UNDRIP Act, 2021). Rather I argue that a confluence of pre-existing jurisdictional factors and key changes inside Crown governments leading up to the pandemic were influential, including federal jurisdiction over First Nations and Inuit health, the creation of Indigenous Services Canada in 2017, and the growing influence of Indigenous public servants and health experts within government and health services. Given the considerable literature enumerating Crown government failures to respect Indigenous rights by ensuring meaningful participation in policy decision-making affecting Indigenous Peoples, the case of Covid-19 vaccine access policy in Canada could be considered a sign of change aligned with rights implementation through the policy process. My paper is based on research exploring factors affecting participation by Indigenous Peoples in Covid-19 vaccine prioritization policies, the resulting policy outcomes, and the implications for Indigenous rights. The research design is inductive and qualitative and based on data collection through elite interviews with public officials and experts, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, and the review of relevant policy documents and news media.

The Intergovernmental Dynamics of Credit Claiming and Blame Avoidance in the Canada Wide Early-Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) Program: Shauna Hughey (McMaster University), Adrienne Davidson (McMaster University)
Abstract: Typically, the establishment or expansion of program benefits creates “positive” feedback effects that are self-reinforcing and enable program stability and maintenance. Policy feedback processes, however, also have the potential to be self-undermining (Jacobs and Weaver, 2015), leading the mass public to misattribute blame for policy failures. We hypothesize that the (federal) design and (provincial) implementation of CWELCC masks the roles and responsibilities of the various levels of government in financing and regulating child care services, creating the opportunity for governments to misattribute successes and failures. In this paper, we rely on a national scan of newspaper coverage to track the patterns of credit claiming and blame avoidance on the part of provincial and federal governments, as well as the dynamics of blame attribution from mobilized interest groups. We then examine the intergovernmental dynamics to hypothesize the relationship between dominant frames and the potential these narratives hold for undermining broader public support of the program.