Shifting scales of governance and civil society participation in Canada and the European Union

Abstract

This article compares how the role and place of

Balancing a House of Cards: Throughput legitimacy in Canadian Governance Networks

“…Following Kohler-Koch (2010a), we define network governance institutions as planning and decision-making bodies that include civil society actors alongside government actors. These institutions are increasingly present across urban policy domains in Canada (Doberstein, 2013), in contrast to the more consultative bodies that proliferate at the provincial and federal level (Laforest, 2013). They are created for numerous reasons, among them to resolve a lack of state capacity to govern complex policy files, to co-ordinate multi-level government activity and to create more democratically inclusive sites of policy planning (Sorenson and Torfing, 2007).…”

“…As Skogstad (2003a) stresses, network governance institutions serve to undermine traditional state-based authority, requiring actors to turn to expert, market or popular mechanisms of authority to ameliorate democratic deficits. Yet despite the potential for networks to draw on either input or output legitimacy, researchers focusing on network governance institutions incorporating Canadian federal government and non-state actors note that these networks are increasingly relying on the output, or expert authority, of non-state actors, such as consultants and scientific experts, rather than the input legitimacy generated by organized interest groups (Laforest, 2013; Laforest and Orsini, 2005; Laforest and Phillips, 2007). At the same time, while federal institutions have shifted toward output authority, urban scholars in Canada note a different dynamic, with some urban governance networks demonstrating a movement to deepening popular authority and input legitimacy (Bradford, 2004), illustrating Skogstad's assertion (2003a) that the complementary infusion of popular authority through deliberative systems involving non-state actors in policy formulation is a governance arrangement most likely to generate lasting levels of legitimacy over time.…”

Who governs the internationalization of higher education? A comparative analysis of macro-regional policies in Canada and the European Union

“…Despite these profound differences, there are several similarities, particularly in the sphere of postsecondary education that the EU and Canada share. First, both engage in multi-level governance practices with powers divided between the levels of government (Laforest, 2013). In Canada the constitution assigns exclusive power to regulate, coordinate and implement higher education policies to provincial governments.…”

“In the shadows of hierarchy”: Intergovernmental governance in Canada and the European Union

“…In addition, there is the open method of coordination (OMC), the quintessential non‐hierarchical approach that, according to Simmons, constitutes a “risk free” method for governments to explore an appetite for and achieve possible consensus on common EU measures, primarily in the social policy area (Simmons ). Simmons explores parallels between OMC processes in the EU and some of the developments in Canada in the 1990s and early 2000s revolving mainly around the 1999 Social Union Framework Agreement (SUFA); so too does Rachel Laforest in her article on multilevel governance (Laforest ). Donna Wood examines labour market policy, which is the field in the EU where OMC has been used most extensively (Wood ).…”