| Review of: | Federal-Provincial Diplomacy: The Making of Recent Policy in Canada by Richard Simeon |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Gerard Boychuk |
| Reviewed in: | Governance |
| Date accepted online: | 10/04/2008 |
| Published in print: | Volume 20, Issue 04, Pages 703-715 |
Book Reviews
Reviewing a seminal work more than 35 years old and, yet, still recently garnering a major award from the American Political Science Association is particularly daunting-not only simply because one might be reticent to criticize such a highly esteemed work but also because one wonders, what new can be said? Accordingly, this review will dispense with such accolades as "thoughtful," "compelling," "major contribution," and "essential reading."
The chapter on negotiating strategies and tactics is perhaps the most revealing, providing an insider's account of federal-provincial negotiations and showcasing Simeon's diligent interview research and extraordinary access to relevant officials. Perhaps the most interesting theoretical chapters, at least for readers with a taste for more recent theories, which Simeon notes in his preface, are Chapters 11 and 12. Chapter 11 addresses a central element of the book's overarching thesis, asking, "Does the federal-provincial bargaining process we have described really make a difference in the kinds of policies that get made?" (256)
The case of pensions suggests the strong independent effects of the process in that "the negotiations produced alternatives which had not been thought of before" (259). However, in federal-provincial fiscal relations and constitutional relations, one can simply not imagine what the outcomes would look like if the policies were fully under the jurisdictional auspices of one level of government or the other. Instead, Simeon attempts to imagine what outcomes in these areas might have looked like had coordination taken place through an alternative method of independent adjustment. This highlights a challenge resulting from the lack of variation among the case studies. All three policy areas are heavily shaped by federal-provincial interaction and dominated by the same mode of federal-provincial interaction. The case studies are therefore more compelling in understanding the process of federal-provincial diplomacy than in assessing its effects, in identifying the characteristics, which foster this form of negotiation, or in determining whether it ameliorates the scope and intensity of conflict.
Chapter 12 is the most methodologically forward-looking in its examination of feedback effects. It examines path dependence in terms of the centrality of the process of federal-provincial negotiations as well as the ability of provincial governments to successfully press their claims. Of course, as we know in retrospect, there have been important counter-dynamics that served to limit the centrality of federal-provincial negotiations (i.e., Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accord) as well as to limit the increasing ability of the provinces to press their demands against the federal government.
There is much to commend about
On the other hand, had Simeon's work been written today, it would more likely be explicitly comparative. His broadest questions-such as what explains differences in the relationship of central and subnational governments in different federations, how social and institutional factors shape basic patterns of negotiations, and whether federal systems foster types of conflict that would not exist in unitary systems-all cry out for systematic comparative analysis. Some of the most interesting sections of the work are passages in which Simeon discusses (although does not empirically interrogate) comparative examples and he must be lauded for these comparative insights even if they are not fully realized. Second, Simeon's implicit brand of institutionalism tends more toward the rational choice variant than historical institutionalism. Had the book been written today, it might have been more concerned with the unfolding of these processes over longer periods, devoting more time to the sequencing of events, and with a greater appreciation not of their consequences alone but rather how decisions flowed from the consequences of earlier decisions and processes. None of this, of course, is to detract from the fact that the work was clearly at the cutting edge methodologically and conceptually at the time and that Simeon intuitively sensed the importance of a set of questions that were, for the time, more exceptional than commonplace.
Perhaps the most important theoretical implication derives from the postscript where Simeon argues that profound social, political and economic changes since the 1960s-continental north-south economic integration, the "decline of deference," the rise in the status and political claims of cities-had surprisingly little effect on the centrality and conduct of federal-provincial relations in Canada (320). This raises important questions about the degree to which this mode of interaction was primarily shaped by the societal characteristics to which Simeon was so notably sensitive. Moreover, despite Simeon's postscript analysis, there is little evidence of path dependent casual chains explaining why federal-provincial diplomacy as a mode of interaction has persisted (328). Rather, the most compelling explanation for the persistence of such diplomacy is that this mode of interaction flows relatively naturally from the configuration of institutions in Canada: decentralized federalism combined with parliamentary democracy and weak political parties (328-329).
According to Simeon, the most important practical lesson to be drawn from his book is that federal-provincial arrangements in Canada, despite their weaknesses, idiosyncrasies, and tendencies toward dysfunction, generated important policy innovations in the past and are, in his analysis, able to do so again. How they did so and their effects on policy in doing so are the perennial questions, which ensure that