Partisanship, Globalization, and Canadian Labour Market Policy: Four Provinces in Comparative Perspective, by Rodney Haddow and Thomas Klassen, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006, 390 pp., ISBN-13: 978-0-802090-90-4 and ISBN-10: 0-802090-90-7

This book asks two basic questions about the determinants and trajectories of labour market policy in four Canadian provinces since 1990. First, to what extent does the ideological orientation of governing parties (centre-left or centre-right) affect policy outcomes? Second, have the goals and strategies of labour market policy been restructured along neoliberal lines? Six aspects of provincial labour market policy are systematically examined over the period 1990-2004: industrial relations, employment standards, occupational health and safety, workers’ compensation, job training, and transfers to employable persons (principally unemployment insurance and “welfare”). The provinces examined are Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. A chapter by Steffen Schneider then offers a wider comparative perspective by examining the same labour market policies in three quite different German Länder – Bavaria, North Rhineland-Westphalia, and Saxony-Anhelt (in former East Germany) – in the post-unification period. As the book’s title suggests, the authors are particularly interested in how economic globalization intersects with the questions they pose. They want to assess the often-made claims that globalization has rendered partisan political differences increasingly irrelevant (Q1) and that labour market policies in all countries are under inexorable pressure to shift in a neoliberal direction (Q2). Haddow and Klassen draw on the historical institutionalist current within the comparative political economy literature to generate hypothetical responses to their questions. Following Kitschelt, they predict that political ideology will matter most in the provinces that combine relatively liberal economies with two competitive parties, polarized along class issues (i.e., it should result in the widest policy swings in B.C., followed by Ontario). Extrapolating from Soskice, they predict that neoliberal restructuring of labour market policy will proceed furthest in the provinces that were already relatively liberal before globalization began to reinforce that orientation (i.e., it should change most in Alberta, followed by B.C. and Ontario). They expect political party to matter least, and change from a relatively “cooperative” model of labour market regulation to be least pronounced, in Quebec. The authors find that shifts between governing parties do indeed result in larger policy “swings” in British Columbia and Ontario than in Alberta (where the party in government never changes) and Quebec (where the major difference between the PQ and the Parti libéral is their stance on federalism, not their position on the best form of market regulation). However, on the question of longer term policy trajectory, the pattern that emerges in Alberta and Quebec is contrary to their expectations. Except for extensive cutbacks in welfare payments and the new “workfare” conditionality, there is no intensification of the liberal orientation of Alberta’s labour market policy in the 1990s. Conversely, in Quebec, the authors find Charest’s Liberal government pursuing more neoliberal retrenchment than they had anticipated. (This result is presumably reinforced by the growing voter support for the Action démocratique du Québec party since 2004.) In their concluding reflections, the authors offer a number of possible reasons for these differences between predicated and actual results with respect to the degree of neoliberal retrenchment. These suggestions – most importantly, paying more attention to the balance of economic and political power between organized labour and business – are well taken. This power balance is a critical determinant of changes in labour market policy, and to changes in what constant policies actually mean on the ground. This is no small demand, however: a systematic exploration of this sort would require much more attention to the goals, strategies and power resources of labour and business organizations in their interactions with political parties, effectively decentering the book’s current focus on policy reforms. The book would also have been better if the authors had more …