Learning in Public Policy by Claire A. Dunlop Claudio M. Radaelli & Philipp Trein

Author:Claire A. Dunlop, Claudio M. Radaelli & Philipp Trein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

© The Author(s) 2018

Claire A. Dunlop, Claudio M. Radaelli and Philipp Trein (eds.)Learning in Public PolicyInternational Series on Public Policy https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76210-4_8

8. Public Versus Non-profit Housing in Canadian Provinces: Learning, History and Cost-Benefit Analysis

Maroine Bendaoud1

(1)Department of Political Science, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

Maroine Bendaoud

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

CanadaCanadian provincesCost-benefit analysisInstrumental learningPublic housingHistorical analysis

As shown by the editors in their introductory chapter, the concept of learning is far from novel in political decision-making. In a seminal article that has largely influenced the ‘new institutionalist’ turn in political science, March and Olsen (1984, p. 745) wrote: ‘It is a frequent observation of institutionalism that institutions accumulate historical experience through learning’. However, the concept of learning remains fuzzy and is marginalized by many contemporary scholars of institutional change and welfare state reforms (see for example, Pierson 2004; Van Kersbergen and Vis 2014). The fuzziness is explained by the lack of a common understanding of ‘learning’ as a driver of institutional change, the actors involved in the learning process, the intentions of those actors, and other dimensions (Bennett and Howlett 1992; Dunlop and Radaelli 2013). As a result, the few researchers interested in the transformations of the welfare state who mostly use learning mechanisms do so in different and somewhat contradictory ways, adding to the confusion (Hemerijck 2013; Fleckenstein 2013; Gilardi et al. 2009; Weyland 2007). This chapter proposes a renewed examination of learning in decision-making, based on observations in the low-income housing sector.

At the outset, I introduce the empirical background of this study. With the objective to alleviate housing inequalities in terms of affordability and suitability, low-income housing assistance was a key social policy within the welfare state expansion in the post-war era. And yet, over the past decades, many institutional changes have taken place in the housing sector of numerous Western countries . That is also visible in Canada . Two major changes related to housing policy instruments are observed in Canadian provinces since the mid-1990s, when the federal government exited the low-income housing policy domain: (1) a move away from government-owned public housing; (2) a stronger support to non-profit organizations (NPOs) operating affordable housing (CMHC 2011, pp. 131–139; CHRA 2014, pp. 2–16). Therefore, I address the following research question: How can we explain the change of policy instruments in provincial low-income housing policy from 1995 to 2015? In order to offer a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the reforms, the chapter examines the low-income housing policy in British Columbia , Alberta and Quebec , from 1975 to 2015.

Researchers focusing on welfare states’ transformations have identified different forces driving the reforms. Generally speaking, left-wing or social democratic governments are known to be stronger supporters of direct state intervention in the provision of services (Esping-Andersen 1990; Huber and Stephens 2000). Adversely, right-wing administrations prefer to rely on non-state actors , using private market instruments and NPOs (Morgan and Campbell 2011). ‘Politics matter,’ in other words, and that goes beyond political convictions or ideology. For instance, Bonoli (2013) uses Weaver’s (1986) framework to highlight the political payoffs of selecting specific policy instruments, the ones enjoying a bigger popularity among the electorate.

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