Documents found
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271.More information
In recent years, strongly critical discourses of the Quiet Revolution's institutional legacy have appeared in Québec. This article undertakes a sustained examination of these discourses, grouped under the neoliberal and postmodern banners. Mainly preoccupied with the economic consequences of the statism inherited from the Quiet Revolution, the discourses with neoliberal tendencies are shown to rest on weak empirical foundations. The more post-modern discourses, for their part, often suffer from severe shortcomings in terms of theory. It is therefore argued that these discourses provide a weak premise for justifying a profound reform of the institutions that Québec inherited from the Quiet Revolution.
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273.More information
The debate surrounding the creation of the Société nationale de l'amiante (SNA) in 1978, the last major intervention in the natural resources sector at the time of the Quiet Revolution, took place in a particular context. While the Lévesque government was supportive of the principle of participatory democracy that transcended the large public hearings processes that had been in place since his election, it was reluctant to do the same for its all-new asbestos policy, which was the key component of Bill 70 that established the SNA. Why? The purpose of this article is to analyze the political debates surrounding the project to create the SNA and to study the opinion expressed by citizens during the process that was defined by public hearings before a parliamentary committee. If the article shows a deep division between the political leaders of the Lévesque government and those from the opposition parties, the latter even using the parliamentary tactic of filibuster to express their discomfort with the project of the partial nationalization of asbestos, it stresses, however, a relative consensus among the regional groups and bodies that intervened at the invitation of the Commission to give their limited or virtually unlimited support for the bill. In doing so, the article investigates the role played by citizens during the parliamentary debate on the nationalization of asbestos to explain how much it helped the Lévesque government in its state decision-making process.
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274.More information
This article focuses on governance, not in a mainstream sense but as the allocation of power according to the principles of participatory democracy that includes all stakeholders. Situating this kind of governance in local communities, the article questions the autonomy of the social and solidarity economy's experiences. Demanded by individuals and non-profit organizations, and recognized by the state, autonomy is a principle of democracy that entails the separation of civil society and state. The author shows, however, that it is under threat in forms of institutional governance, where conflicts are disappearing and the boundaries between actors blurred.
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275.More information
AbstactThis article considers issues of asylum in Great Britain and among undocumented aliens (“sans-papiers”) in France as comparable topics of study pertinent to “illegal” immigration. Our analysis is based on a large number of individuals in many organizations and at various levels acting in support of asylum seekers and the undocumented. Focusing on the complex dynamics that intersect the public space and public policies within and beyond the borders of the nation state, we examine a range of factors at the core of current discussions on the political process approach nd join the debate on the filiations and limits to the approach advanced in Charles Tilly's From Mobilization to Revolution (1978).
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276.More information
In Quebec, economic diversification is a major challenge for resource regions historically characterized by an extractivist, export-oriented mode of exploitation. Using a sociological neo-institutionalist approach, this article examines the role of government and public policy in the institutionalization of emerging production niches. Two important factors in the institutional stabilization of niches are analyzed: firstly, the institutional work of articulating an extractivist landscape, sectoral and territorial public policy regimes, and emerging productive niches; secondly, the processes of problematization and instrumentation of the niche deployed by actors. These propositions are operationalized through a case study of Québec mariculture, an emerging productive niche in Québec's maritime regions in the mid-1990s. After crystallizing strongly during the 2000s, this niche entered a period of stagnation from 2010 onwards. An analysis of these three periods highlights the role of regional, professional and state actors, as well as the public policy context, in the emergence and anchoring of the niche in the political economy of a resource region. This article highlights the major role played by the state in stabilizing the niche.
Keywords: Diversification économique, niche, travail institutionnel, mariculture, Québec Maritime, Economic diversification, niche, institutional work, mariculture, Québec Maritime
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277.More information
The author summarises a number of ideas regarding the impact of various technologies on the future development of public libraries. After defining the mission of the public library, he describes the various changes currently underway that affect simultaneously the collections, the services, the premises, the staff, the budget and the readership.
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278.More information
SummaryFollowing the seminal work of Esping-Andersen, many studies have identified a variety of welfare regimes in Western Europe and North America. This study examines a set of quantitative social indicators, using hierarchical cluster analysis, in order to identify such regimes, which display specific arrangements between markets, the State and families in the production and distribution of the resources required for the well-being of people. Indeed, our empirical analyses reveal the existence of the three regimes originally identified by Esping-Andersen — social-democratic, liberal, and conservative — to which one must add, as many authors had pointed out, a fourth regime, distinct from the latter, called Latin. These results pertain whether one turns to data from the 80s or the 90s. The data also reveal strong and durable relations of mutual causality between the configuration of social programs in the various societies under analysis, the social situations which largely result from these social programs, and, lastly, the level of civic participation, which leads (or not) people to collective mobilization which in turn shapes social programs. Our comparative analysis allows us to identify Canada's place in the worlds of welfare capitalism.