Administrative Reform and Political Control in Canada

The federal and provincial governments elected in Canada over the last ten years have defeated their opponents in promising to manage government in a more productive manner, especially through the introduction of businesslike managerial practices. After a first series of across the board cuts in the operational expenditures of the governmental departments and agencies, they have undertaken very significant managerial reforms, especially at the federal level. These initiatives have generated important savings in the operational budgets of the government departments and agencies. However, any significant additional productivity improvement is likely to require substantive information on programs that central decision-making arrangements such as the federal and provincial treasury boards are not likely to obtain. Finally, the productivity gains to be expected from the introduction of businesslike managerial practices in government are likely to reach, in a short while, their threshold of decreasing marginal returns in a context where governments have already privatized or employed user charges wherever government services had a market. Public bureaucracies have always aroused contradictory assessments. Until 1970, the dominant view was to consider public bureaucracies as bastions of rationality, neutrality and, above all, efficiency. Although some students of public bureaucracies did not share this view, their critical assessments were usually not thought to question the very existence of public bureaucracies as instruments employed for the production and delivery of public services because one could not imagine efficient alternatives. Bureaucratic failures were usually considered as gross exaggerations based on cynicism, not on systematic data. This is no longer the case. Bureaucratic failures are now under more serious attack because private market mechanisms and principles employed to manage private organizations are now considered serious contenders for public bureaucracies. As stated in many political manifestos, public 0192-5121 93/04 335-015 ? 1993 International Political Science Association This content downloaded from 157.55.39.147 on Wed, 18 May 2016 05:25:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Administrative Reform and Political Control in Canada bureaucracies are frequently associated with waste, whereas private market mechanisms are considered to offer automatic guarantees of efficiency. For many the issue has been settled. Tight public budgets and the conservative ideological mood have jointly combined against expansion, if not simple maintenance, of public bureaucracies. This paper claims that, in many industrialized countries, but especially in Canada, there is some ambivalence between two alternatives either to implement administrative reforms aimed at strengthening bureaucratic efficiency, or to reduce government's size and place it under ideologically correct political control. To put the issue in Williamson's (1975) evocative image, it is an ambivalence between markets and organizations, between the production of public services by the private market, where demand and supply are equilibrated through price mechanisms, and the production of public services by public organizations, where demand and supply are adjusted through hierarchical principles of resource allocation. This ambivalence denotes some hesitation with respect to the role of the state in a market economy. One usually distinguishes those who claim that the state should be used primarily to foster increased efficiency of the market economy, from those who think policy instruments of the state should be used primarily to promote equity. On the one hand, supporters of state interventionism assume that private market incentives undermine equity, while on the other hand, supporters of private market mechanisms claim that state interventions undermine efficiency. These philosophical postures are, however, frequently employed to conceal special interests. Efficiency tends to be looked for in others, whereas one is induced to base one's own demands on equity considerations. This strategy of concealment overshadows the ambivalence between administrative reforms and political controls. Why is there so much ambivalence? Although the causes are many, one can distinguish three categories of explanation: (1) the emergence of a new context; (2) the impact of state interventionism; and (3) decreasing returns on investment in public services. These three sets of explanations shed light on the context and define the margin of maneuver left to the traditional instruments of state intervention in the realm of administrative reform and political control. Emergence of a New Context The competitive environment of Canadians has changed significantly over the last three decades with respect to the competitiveness of private and public institutions. According to Porter (1991: 5), Traditionally, Canadians have lived in a relatively insulated environment brought about by paternalistic government policies, a history of market protection, and the accumulated attitudes and experiences of both individuals and businesses. Canadian firms are no longer able to insulate themselves from external pressures. Increasing globalization of markets and investments, the decreasing technological self-sufficiency of individual firms, and the increasing intensity of international competition in every industry, including resource-based industries, represent significant discontinuities in the nature of the traditional business environment. These discontinuities require adjustments to a new international competitive environment. At the same time, internal pressures for the development of competitive advantages have increased significantly. Government policies are less used to limit local 336 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.147 on Wed, 18 May 2016 05:25:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

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