Michael M Atkinson
Biographic Data
| ID | 953221 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael M Atkinson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael M |
| FAMILY NAME | Atkinson |
| SIGNATURE | ATKINSON M M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Saskatchewan |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 503 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
The Adaptable Country: How Canada Can Survive the Twenty-First Century , Alasdair Roberts
The Duel: Diefenbaker, Pearson, and the Making of Modern Canada . John Ibbotson
Want to Improve Math Scores? An Empirical Assessment of Recent Policy Interventions in Canada
The Canadian provinces have implemented various strategies aimed at improving kindergarten through 12th-grade mathematics performance. There is no clear evidence which, if any, of these strategies improve achievement scores. We apply hierarchical linear modelling to the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment data to isolate the effects of policy interventions. We find that efforts to improve learning conditions can be worthwhile, but t…
Are Canadians Stealth Democrats? An American Idea Comes North
In an influential 2002 study, John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse make the provocative argument that high numbers of Americans seek “stealth democracy,” that is, processes that discover the will of the people without requiring substantial citizen effort. This article applies the concept in a Canadian province and argues that the stealth democracy measure represents an ambiguous amalgam of attitudes that are only loosely related to one another…
Fiscal rules in the Canadian provinces: Abject failure or qualified success
Most Canadian provinces have introduced legislation to require politicians of all ideological stripes to meet annual balanced budget (BB) targets. Critics of this type of legislation argue that it is unnecessary, confining, and subject to manipulation. We examine provincial balanced budget legislation before and after the Great Recession and argue that the response of provinces needs to be evaluated taking into account the multiple objectives of …
Better Politicians: If We Pay, Will They Come
While each election provides the Canadian House of Commons with a fresh batch of politicians, no consideration has been given to the question of whether the quality of politicians is improving. Yet improving quality has been the focus of several commissions urging increases in MP compensation. This article addresses the competence and compensation questions by asking whether changes in levels of compensation might make a difference to the educati…
Richard Simeon and the Policy Sciences Project
In his classic 1976 article on the state of policy studies in Canada, Richard Simeon explicitly warned against following the path toward a policy science. Simeon was suspicious of the normative agenda embedded in the policy sciences project and worried that it would submerge politics in a broader set of interdisciplinary concerns. Was Simeon right? The policy sciences have not developed the way their principal proponent, Harold Lasswell, had anti…
Public Policies toward Aboriginal Peoples: Attitudinal Obstacles and Uphill Battles
This paper examines public attitudes towards aboriginal policy in Canada, focusing on evidence from two surveys conducted in Saskatchewan, a province with a large and growing Aboriginal population. We show that although non-Aboriginals are collectively divided on Aboriginal public policies, expressing considerable support for some, but strong reservations when it comes to others; the individual-level evidence indicates that there is a single Abor…
The Cost of Government: Decomposing Provincial Expenditures, 1981–2007
Debates about the size of government, which are often debates about what government should or should not do, need to be joined by a concern for the relative cost of government. Since 1981, the price in the public sector has grown faster than the price for GDP. We decompose the ratio between the price index for the public sector and that for GDP in the Canadian provinces and capture the governments' price advantage/disadvantage in different spendi…
Why do governments use pay for performance? Contrasting theories and interview evidence
In C anada, pay‐for‐performance ( PFP ) systems to compensate senior public servants have been established in several jurisdictions despite arguments by academics who doubt their efficacy in public sector environments characterized by high levels of intrinsic motivation. This article traces the pattern of PFP in C anada and distinguishes among “aggressive,” “passive,” and “reluctant” regimes. It explores why PFP is growing in popularity despite i…
Learning from the best: Policy, administration and three extraordinary careers
Policy, Politics and Political Science: Presidential Address to the Canadian Political Science Association, Victoria, June 5, 2013
Political scientists are increasingly studying public policy in interdisciplinary environments where they are challenged by the political and normative agenda of other disciplines. Political science has unique perspectives to offer, including a stress on the political feasibility of policy in an environment of power differentials. Our contributions should be informed by the insights of cognitive psychology and we should focus on improving governa…
Lindblom’s lament: Incrementalism and the persistent pull of the status quo
Charles Lindblom never abandoned the incremental version of decision-making he introduced in 1959, but as his work progressed he increasingly lamented the impaired quality of inquiry that characterizes public (and private) decision-making. Lindblom did not identify the precise origins of socially created incompetence, but he made it clear that incrementalism is not the source. This article suggests that two lines of intellectual inquiry—one based…
Discrepancies in Perceptions of Corruption, or Why is Canada So Corrupt
Politicians, the Public and Political Ethics: Worlds Apart
Increased regulation of political ethics has not produced a growing satisfaction with the conduct of politics or the behaviour of politicians. We examine the proposition that regulation produces a convergence of attitudes and expectations between politicians and the public in the realm of political ethics. A distinction is drawn between political ethics conceived as a policy issue and as a process issue. Two models based on that distinction are d…
Tattooed: The Sociogenesis of a Body Art
Is There Convergence in Provincial Spending Priorities
This article examines the question of whether the provinces are becoming increasingly similar in their total spending and in the level of spending devoted to particular functional areas. Using various measures of spending, we begin by briefly tracing the pattern of provincial spending between 1971 and 1994. We then show, using Dispersion Indexes, that in some areas there has been a persistent movement toward similar levels of spending and similar…
Against the Odds: Retrenchment in Agriculture in France and the United States
This article extends recent work on a comparative theory of retrenchment in social policy by asking whether the politics of retrenchment travels well across policy areas, with policy feedback remaining a crucial variable for explaining government success or failure. The article analyzes policy change in agriculture in the United States and France, a natural choice for an extension of retrenchment theory because agricultural policy resembles socia…
Paradigm Shifts and Policy Networks: Cumulative Change in Agriculture
This article presents an alternative trajectory to policy paradigm change to that outlined by Peter A. Hall's social learning model, in which unsuccessful efforts by state officials to respond to policy failures and anomalies in the existing paradigm eventually trigger a broader, societal, political partisan debate about policy principles. From this society-wide contestation over policy goals, problems, and solutions, a new policy paradigm emerge…
What Kind of Democracy Do Canadians Want
This article analyzes the recent constitutional turmoil in Canada by arguing that disenchantment with political institutions can be traced to confusion and indecision about the kind of democratic regime Canadians want. Using the work of Johan Olsen and James March, the author outlines two models of democratic political institutions, both centred on the concept of popular sovereignty but each offering its own version of how popular rule is to be a…
The Collapse of Canada
Obstacles to organizational change: The creation of the Canadian Space Agency
This article begins with the observation that the recently established Canadian Space Agency possesses very few of the organizational attributes that its early promoters had envisioned. The agency is much less autonomous, for example, and is located much farther from the industry than was originally expected. We describe three rather distinct perspectives on organizational change and argue that each one has a contribution to make in understanding…
Studying the Canadian Parliament
In recent years the study of the Canadian Parliament has lost some of its original momentum. Major gaps in research have begun to appear, and critics have argued that students of Parliament take a much too docile, uncritical view of parliamentary government as it is practiced in Canada. This article reviews recent research on the Canadian Parliament in light of these criticisms and compares it to more established work on the subject. The prospect…
Policy Networks, Policy Communities and the Problems of Governance
This article reviews and evaluates the literature on policy networks and policy communities that has emerged in the comparative public policy field. It argues that these concepts are important innovations because they suggest a renewed attempt to be both encompassing and discriminating in describing the policy process: encompassing because they refer to actors and relationships in the policy process that take us beyond political‐bureaucratic rela…
Moving Right Along: The Roots of Amateurism in the Canadian House of Commons
It has been argued that rapid membership turnover in the Canadian House of Commons robs the institution of a dedicated and experienced group of MPs and produces a Parliament stocked with political amateurs. Both electoral defeat and voluntary retirement have been seen to play a role in the amateurism phenomenon. The authors explore the roots of amateurism and critically examine the argument that a frustrating career structure in the House of Comm…
Strong States and Weak States: Sectoral Policy Networks in Advanced Capitalist Economies
The theme of strong and weak states has recently figured largely in comparative political economy. However, significant variation across sectors in single countries in the degree to which the state is able and willing to intervene in the economy has led to calls for a disaggregated view of the state, with more attention devoted to the different levels – micro, meso, macro – at which the state confronts the economy. The concepts of strength and we…
Policy Networks, Policy Communities and the Problems of Governance
This article reviews and evaluates the literature on policy networks and policy communities that has emerged in the comparative public policy field. It argues that these concepts are important innovations because they suggest a renewed attempt to be both encompassing and discriminating in describing the policy process: encompassing because they refer to actors and relationships in the policy process that take us beyond political‐bureaucratic rela…
Paradigm Shifts and Policy Networks: Cumulative Change in Agriculture
This article presents an alternative trajectory to policy paradigm change to that outlined by Peter A. Hall's social learning model, in which unsuccessful efforts by state officials to respond to policy failures and anomalies in the existing paradigm eventually trigger a broader, societal, political partisan debate about policy principles. From this society-wide contestation over policy goals, problems, and solutions, a new policy paradigm emerge…
Moving Right Along: The Roots of Amateurism in the Canadian House of Commons
It has been argued that rapid membership turnover in the Canadian House of Commons robs the institution of a dedicated and experienced group of MPs and produces a Parliament stocked with political amateurs. Both electoral defeat and voluntary retirement have been seen to play a role in the amateurism phenomenon. The authors explore the roots of amateurism and critically examine the argument that a frustrating career structure in the House of Comm…
Do We Need a Code of Conduct for Politicians? The Search for an Elite Political Culture of Corruption in Canada
Do we need a code of conduct for politicians, or are the existing unwritten rules a sufficient safeguard against acts of political malfeasance? Based on interviews with 84 backbench MPs, this article examines politicians' informal codes of conduct. The study reveals considerable disagreement in assessments of particular acts, notably those involving conflicts of interest and constituency service. Differences among MPs are related to a number of f…
Against the Odds: Retrenchment in Agriculture in France and the United States
This article extends recent work on a comparative theory of retrenchment in social policy by asking whether the politics of retrenchment travels well across policy areas, with policy feedback remaining a crucial variable for explaining government success or failure. The article analyzes policy change in agriculture in the United States and France, a natural choice for an extension of retrenchment theory because agricultural policy resembles socia…
Politicians, the Public and Political Ethics: Worlds Apart
Increased regulation of political ethics has not produced a growing satisfaction with the conduct of politics or the behaviour of politicians. We examine the proposition that regulation produces a convergence of attitudes and expectations between politicians and the public in the realm of political ethics. A distinction is drawn between political ethics conceived as a policy issue and as a process issue. Two models based on that distinction are d…
Lindblom’s lament: Incrementalism and the persistent pull of the status quo
Charles Lindblom never abandoned the incremental version of decision-making he introduced in 1959, but as his work progressed he increasingly lamented the impaired quality of inquiry that characterizes public (and private) decision-making. Lindblom did not identify the precise origins of socially created incompetence, but he made it clear that incrementalism is not the source. This article suggests that two lines of intellectual inquiry—one based…
Studying the Canadian Parliament
In recent years the study of the Canadian Parliament has lost some of its original momentum. Major gaps in research have begun to appear, and critics have argued that students of Parliament take a much too docile, uncritical view of parliamentary government as it is practiced in Canada. This article reviews recent research on the Canadian Parliament in light of these criticisms and compares it to more established work on the subject. The prospect…
Selecting Policy Instruments: Neo-Institutional and Rational Choice Interpretations of Automobile Insurance in Ontario
The rational choice model of politics, which construes important political processes as a series of choices taken by self-interested political actors, has dominated theorizing on the subject of policy instruments in Canada. While useful, this approach is nonetheless limited by its narrow conception of rationality and its inattention to the context of instrument choice. As an alternative, the neo-institutional approach offers a perspective on poli…
Bureaucratic politics and the new fighter aircraft decisions
According to the bureaucratic politics approach to policy making, an appreciation of competition and conflict among bureaucrats is considered to be critical for an understanding of decision outcomes. In this paper, we employ the bureaucratic politics model to assess the outcomes of the initial phase of the Canadian government's new fighter aircraft (NFA) program, which began in March 1977 with cabinet approval of the procurement and ended in Apri…
Public Policies toward Aboriginal Peoples: Attitudinal Obstacles and Uphill Battles
This paper examines public attitudes towards aboriginal policy in Canada, focusing on evidence from two surveys conducted in Saskatchewan, a province with a large and growing Aboriginal population. We show that although non-Aboriginals are collectively divided on Aboriginal public policies, expressing considerable support for some, but strong reservations when it comes to others; the individual-level evidence indicates that there is a single Abor…
Bureaucrats and Politicians in Canada: An Examination of the Political Administration Model
This article examines the characteristics of the “political administration” in Canada and compares these characteristics with those found in other liberal democratic systems. The findings are based on interviews conducted with 82 federal public officials interviewed in 1982 and 1983. The contact patterns of these public officials and their attitudes toward the personnel and institutions of liberal democracy are studied within the structural conte…
Policy, Politics and Political Science: Presidential Address to the Canadian Political Science Association, Victoria, June 5, 2013
Political scientists are increasingly studying public policy in interdisciplinary environments where they are challenged by the political and normative agenda of other disciplines. Political science has unique perspectives to offer, including a stress on the political feasibility of policy in an environment of power differentials. Our contributions should be informed by the insights of cognitive psychology and we should focus on improving governa…
Better Politicians: If We Pay, Will They Come
While each election provides the Canadian House of Commons with a fresh batch of politicians, no consideration has been given to the question of whether the quality of politicians is improving. Yet improving quality has been the focus of several commissions urging increases in MP compensation. This article addresses the competence and compensation questions by asking whether changes in levels of compensation might make a difference to the educati…
Is There Convergence in Provincial Spending Priorities
This article examines the question of whether the provinces are becoming increasingly similar in their total spending and in the level of spending devoted to particular functional areas. Using various measures of spending, we begin by briefly tracing the pattern of provincial spending between 1971 and 1994. We then show, using Dispersion Indexes, that in some areas there has been a persistent movement toward similar levels of spending and similar…
What Kind of Democracy Do Canadians Want
This article analyzes the recent constitutional turmoil in Canada by arguing that disenchantment with political institutions can be traced to confusion and indecision about the kind of democratic regime Canadians want. Using the work of Johan Olsen and James March, the author outlines two models of democratic political institutions, both centred on the concept of popular sovereignty but each offering its own version of how popular rule is to be a…
Executive Power and Committee Autonomy in the Canadian House of Commons: Leadership Selection, 1968–1979
L'étude des relations entre le pouvoir exécutif et le pouvoir législatif est souvent ardue parce qu'il est difficile d'évaluer le pouvoir ou l'influence. Nous pouvons contourner une telle difficulté en étudiant, par exemple, l'autorité de l'exécutif sur les nominations des parlementaires aux différents postes de cadres au sein du Parlement. Naturellement si le gouvernement maîtrise parfaitement ces nominations l'autonomie du Parlement est plutôt …
Why do governments use pay for performance? Contrasting theories and interview evidence
In C anada, pay‐for‐performance ( PFP ) systems to compensate senior public servants have been established in several jurisdictions despite arguments by academics who doubt their efficacy in public sector environments characterized by high levels of intrinsic motivation. This article traces the pattern of PFP in C anada and distinguishes among “aggressive,” “passive,” and “reluctant” regimes. It explores why PFP is growing in popularity despite i…
Conflict of Interest in Britain and the United States: An Institutional Argument
Although conflict of interest is a problem endemic to representative institutions, it manifests itself in different ways from one system to the next. This paper examines how conflict of interest has been interpreted and managed in the United States Congress and in the British House of Commons. Differences in the regulatory systems are described, and the argument is made that the crucial distinction is the greater autonomy members of Parliament ha…
Fiscal rules in the Canadian provinces: Abject failure or qualified success
Most Canadian provinces have introduced legislation to require politicians of all ideological stripes to meet annual balanced budget (BB) targets. Critics of this type of legislation argue that it is unnecessary, confining, and subject to manipulation. We examine provincial balanced budget legislation before and after the Great Recession and argue that the response of provinces needs to be evaluated taking into account the multiple objectives of …
Discrepancies in Perceptions of Corruption, or Why is Canada So Corrupt
The Politics of Canadian Public Policy
Richard Simeon and the Policy Sciences Project
In his classic 1976 article on the state of policy studies in Canada, Richard Simeon explicitly warned against following the path toward a policy science. Simeon was suspicious of the normative agenda embedded in the policy sciences project and worried that it would submerge politics in a broader set of interdisciplinary concerns. Was Simeon right? The policy sciences have not developed the way their principal proponent, Harold Lasswell, had anti…
The Cost of Government: Decomposing Provincial Expenditures, 1981–2007
Debates about the size of government, which are often debates about what government should or should not do, need to be joined by a concern for the relative cost of government. Since 1981, the price in the public sector has grown faster than the price for GDP. We decompose the ratio between the price index for the public sector and that for GDP in the Canadian provinces and capture the governments' price advantage/disadvantage in different spendi…
The Canadian Legislative System: Politicians and Policy-Making
Constitutional Conflict in France: Deputies' Attitudes toward Executive-Legislative Relations
The primary purpose of a constitution in a liberal democratic system is to impose restraint on the arbitrary use of power. The favored means of insuring this principle of constitutionalism is a judicious application of the doctrine of separation of powers: a separation which usually includes the functions of government, its agencies, and the individuals who occupy legitimate roles in the government.l Modifications to the constitution are normally…
Comparing Legislatures: The Policy Role of Backbenchers in Ontario and Nova Scotia
Cet article vérifie l'hypothèse selon laquelle les attitudes et les comportements des députés dans un régime parlementaire peuvent se rattacher partiellement à des différences de cadre institutionnel. D'une manière plus précise nous cherchons à déterminer si les membres d'un Parlement de métier, complexe, spécialisé et qui possède un système de commissions autonome ont une façon différente d'aborder les questions politiques que les membres d'un P…
Executive Power and Committee Autonomy in the Canadian House of Commons: Leadership Selection, 1968–1979
L'étude des relations entre le pouvoir exécutif et le pouvoir législatif est souvent ardue parce qu'il est difficile d'évaluer le pouvoir ou l'influence. Nous pouvons contourner une telle difficulté en étudiant, par exemple, l'autorité de l'exécutif sur les nominations des parlementaires aux différents postes de cadres au sein du Parlement. Naturellement si le gouvernement maîtrise parfaitement ces nominations l'autonomie du Parlement est plutôt …
Regime Support in Canada: A Comment
In their article, ‘Some Correlates of Regime Support in Canada’, (this Journal, VIII (1978), 199–216), Allan Kornberg, Harold D. Clarke and Lawrence LeDuc set out to describe ‘the distribution and foundations of public support for the political regime in Canada’ (p. 199). Using the 1974 National Election Study as their data base and regression analysis as their primary technique, they attempt to identify the correlates of regime support and come …
Bureaucratic politics and the new fighter aircraft decisions
According to the bureaucratic politics approach to policy making, an appreciation of competition and conflict among bureaucrats is considered to be critical for an understanding of decision outcomes. In this paper, we employ the bureaucratic politics model to assess the outcomes of the initial phase of the Canadian government's new fighter aircraft (NFA) program, which began in March 1977 with cabinet approval of the procurement and ended in Apri…
Seizing the Future: Opportunities for Canada in the 1980s
The Politics of Canadian Public Policy
On the prospects for industrial policy in Canada
A Primer on the Economics of Industrial Policy . By W.C. W atson . The Challenge of Diversity: Industrial Policy in the Canadian Federation .; By M ichael J enkin . Public Money in the Private Sector . By A llan T upper . Partners in Industrial Strategy: The Special Role of the Provincial Research organizations . By D onald J. L eroy and P aul D ufour
Bureaucrats and Politicians in Canada: An Examination of the Political Administration Model
This article examines the characteristics of the “political administration” in Canada and compares these characteristics with those found in other liberal democratic systems. The findings are based on interviews conducted with 82 federal public officials interviewed in 1982 and 1983. The contact patterns of these public officials and their attitudes toward the personnel and institutions of liberal democracy are studied within the structural conte…
Do We Need a Code of Conduct for Politicians? The Search for an Elite Political Culture of Corruption in Canada
Do we need a code of conduct for politicians, or are the existing unwritten rules a sufficient safeguard against acts of political malfeasance? Based on interviews with 84 backbench MPs, this article examines politicians' informal codes of conduct. The study reveals considerable disagreement in assessments of particular acts, notably those involving conflicts of interest and constituency service. Differences among MPs are related to a number of f…
Public Policies and Political Development in Canada
Inside the Industrial Policy Garbage Can: Selective Subsidies to Business in Canada
Cet article dtudie comment les bureaucrates et les hommes politiques essayent de venir a bout des obstacles rencontres lors de la mise en ex6cution des programmes d'assistance selectives aux entreprises. Parce que ces programmes typiquement n'ont pas de raisons d'etre economique et politique precises ils sont souvent diriges par ce que l'on appelle vulgairement 'le modgle poubelle de prise de decision'. En examinant le Programme de Developpement …
Academics and Public Policy: The Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada
Federal State, National EconomyPeter Leslie Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987, pp. xvi, 205
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The State, Business, and Industrial Change in Canada
Through the lens of these sectors Coleman and Atkinson shed considerable light on the intersection of political considerations and policy development, and offer a new base on which to move forward in planning for economic growth.
Selecting Policy Instruments: Neo-Institutional and Rational Choice Interpretations of Automobile Insurance in Ontario
The rational choice model of politics, which construes important political processes as a series of choices taken by self-interested political actors, has dominated theorizing on the subject of policy instruments in Canada. While useful, this approach is nonetheless limited by its narrow conception of rationality and its inattention to the context of instrument choice. As an alternative, the neo-institutional approach offers a perspective on poli…
Strong States and Weak States: Sectoral Policy Networks in Advanced Capitalist Economies
The theme of strong and weak states has recently figured largely in comparative political economy. However, significant variation across sectors in single countries in the degree to which the state is able and willing to intervene in the economy has led to calls for a disaggregated view of the state, with more attention devoted to the different levels – micro, meso, macro – at which the state confronts the economy. The concepts of strength and we…
The State, Business, and Industrial Change in Canada
Conflict of Interest in Britain and the United States: An Institutional Argument
Although conflict of interest is a problem endemic to representative institutions, it manifests itself in different ways from one system to the next. This paper examines how conflict of interest has been interpreted and managed in the United States Congress and in the British House of Commons. Differences in the regulatory systems are described, and the argument is made that the crucial distinction is the greater autonomy members of Parliament ha…
The State, Business, and Industrial Change in Canada
Policy Networks, Policy Communities and the Problems of Governance
This article reviews and evaluates the literature on policy networks and policy communities that has emerged in the comparative public policy field. It argues that these concepts are important innovations because they suggest a renewed attempt to be both encompassing and discriminating in describing the policy process: encompassing because they refer to actors and relationships in the policy process that take us beyond political‐bureaucratic rela…
Moving Right Along: The Roots of Amateurism in the Canadian House of Commons
It has been argued that rapid membership turnover in the Canadian House of Commons robs the institution of a dedicated and experienced group of MPs and produces a Parliament stocked with political amateurs. Both electoral defeat and voluntary retirement have been seen to play a role in the amateurism phenomenon. The authors explore the roots of amateurism and critically examine the argument that a frustrating career structure in the House of Comm…
The Collapse of Canada
Obstacles to organizational change: The creation of the Canadian Space Agency
This article begins with the observation that the recently established Canadian Space Agency possesses very few of the organizational attributes that its early promoters had envisioned. The agency is much less autonomous, for example, and is located much farther from the industry than was originally expected. We describe three rather distinct perspectives on organizational change and argue that each one has a contribution to make in understanding…
Political science (38 works) · Law (29 works) · Law (26 works) · Politics (24 works) · Economics (18 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Public Administration (17 works) · Public Administration (16 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Political economy (10 works)