From Corporatism to Associationalism: Linking State and Society, and Deepening Democracy, in the Canadian Polity

Abstract

Canada has had less experience than most developed nations with efforts to deepen democratic accountability through formal state-society links in policy-making and implementation. Nevertheless, experiments with such mechanisms have become more common since the early 1990s. This article examines these and assesses their future prospects. Reforms have either been corporatist, implying a careful balancing of business and labour interests in arrangements that mirror those created in some Western European nations; or associational, smaller in scale and more flexible in design. The impediments to successful corporatist initiatives are substantial in Canada; they are rooted in the country’s Westminister style of parliamentarism and in a societal setting where class organizations are fragmented and organized labour relatively weak. Consequently, there has been a trend towards associational reforms in recent years, or towards corporatist initiatives that are modest in scale. With the partial exception of Quebec, only efforts of this type have had much chance of success. While even smaller scale initiatives often fail, the article argues that they address important “compatibility problems” encountered by governments in Canada today. Consequently, we are likely to see more of them in the future.

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