Strange Bedfellows: Conservative Governments and Family Policy in Canada and Germany, 2005 - 2015

This dissertation contributes to the academic literature on recent and ongoing family policy reforms in affluent countries by comparing the respective family policy agendas of right party led governments in Canada and Germany between 2005 and 2015. My comparative assessment of reforms enacted by the governments of Stephen Harper and Angela Merkel, respectively, indicates that an increased cross-national salience of the financial and logistical challenges faced by modern (dual-earner) families presents right-of-center parties with an incentive to utilize family policy proposals instrumentally to broaden their electoral appeal. This gives vital context to large-n statistical research that indicates a weakening of partisanship as an explanatory variable for recent family policy developments. The study also finds that differences in the specific policies implemented by each government can ultimately be traced back to the domestic discursive context. Germany presented the more favorable environment for comprehensive, women’s employment supporting reforms due to a widespread perception of the low domestic birth rate as a threat to intergenerational ‘sustainability’. The cause was also helped by the presence of credible policy spokeswoman Ursula von der Leyen, who championed a progressive package of reforms while, at the same time, embodying a traditional image of maternity that appealed to conservatives. By contrast, the Canadian political environment favored a continuation of direct cash payments to families, as exemplified by the Harper government’s signature Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB). Harper later launched two children’s activity tax credits crafted to appeal to families in critical suburban ‘swing ridings’. Although both opposition parties proposed a national daycare strategy as an alternative to Harper’s agenda, the idea has only limited popular appeal due to the questionable record of the country’s only standalone provincial daycare program, based in Québec, and a silencing of feminist perspectives in the national policy dialogue. Lastly, I find that an ancillary discourse linking family policy to the cultural integration of migrants was visible in Germany but not in Canada. This finding is substantiated in Chapter 5 via a statistical topic analysis of over 450 relevant newspaper articles. I also draw from 25 personal interviews in my discussion of Canada.

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