Re: Prop Rep in New Zealand
Greetings ... For those interested in the issue of proportional representation and electoral reform, there was a recent issue of Policy Options devoted to the subject. I remain skeptical about the benefits of such a system. I have several reasons for thinking this way. First, I think that much of the enthusiasm for proportional representation is opportunistic. Sure, PR may give greater weight to parties that represent groups that cut across geographical constituencies, such as environmental groups or women's groups. But this is a door that swings both ways. When small radical right wing factions exercise more influence through such systems, PR suddenly doesn't look very good. I can understand why many dislike concentrations of power in the hands of a few, but I don't know how PR solves that. The Westminster model of governance is designed to concentrate power and accountability, but it is not the first-past- the-post electoral system that is necessarily to blame. In fact, I think PR presents a greater risk of manipulative power politics. PR systems that are reliant on coalition governments are forums of back room horse trading, not open and transparent policy making. When such back-room deals are not made and governments fall on a regular basis, the bureaucracy runs the government with near impunity. Some may say: well, in governments with stable coalitions, at least there is a check on power by other parties that can threaten to topple the government. I think this is a very Canadian way of looking at the issue, for Canadians have just become so use to high levels of caucus solidarity that they forget that Canada is an anomaly on this count. Some may say: well, in Canada, government operate virtually unchecked between elections and act with impunity. But this is a very recent phenomenon. It is extremely rare for a federal government to get back-to-back majority governments, such as Mulroney (unusually large majorities)and Chretien (by only a couple of MPs). Remember that it was not too long ago that the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform spent so much time asking the question: why is Canada's electoral system so volatile, given, at the time, the difficulty in obtaining back-to-back majority governments. My larger point is that I wonder if people are placing too much blind faith in PR instead of institutional reforms that DIRECTLY address the issues of accountability, transparency, caucus solidarity, concentrations of power, etc. Oh, and for the political opportunists on the left out there, check the popular vote counts of the last election and wonder to yourself what the likelihood of a Unit The Right coalition would be under a Canadian PR system in the next one. Cheers, Peter. On Fri, 15 Jan 1999, Caspar Davis wrote: > I agree completely with everything you say. Wearing my cynical hat > today, I would say that those who buy the major parties abhor nothing > more than the thought that an un-bought party might get some say. > > They're already spinning oiver the Green inspired phaseout of nukes in > germany. > > Caspar davis > > At 9:07 AM -0800 1/14/99, Colin Stark wrote: > > >I caught a 5 minute interview of N.Z. Prime Minister Jennie Shipley on CBC > >Newsworld > > > >Part of that time was on Proportional Representation > > > >While my knowledge of Proportional Representation in NZ comes mainly from > >the opinions expressed on CDD Listserv by a New Zealander, I was very much > >unimpressed by the views expressed by PM Shipley, egged on by CBC > >Interviewer Don Newman > > > >Her major opinions (prejudices in my opinion) are: > >1that N.Zealanders are unhappy with the "indecisiveness" of > >Proportional > >Representation compared with the former FPTP > >(first-past-the-post) system; > >2that Proportional Representation gives undue influence to > >smaller parties > > > >"a smaller party, in proportional terms, carries a greater degree of > >influence of power than the large party (sic) in fact that is an > >inequity > >in itself . . . we have a minority leading a majority . . .", she says > > > >Seldom have I heard two people manipulate the truth as blatantly as > >Shipley > >and Newman > > > >Think about it!! > > > >1Would you rather have dictatorship, or "indecisiveness" > > > >2If three parties have, say, 42%, 35%, and 23% of the popular > >vote (or > >make up your own numbers), which is more fair: > > > >athat one party have a virtual dictatorship? > >bthat the 42% party should form a coalition with the party of > >its choice, > >and govern in some kind of a compromise? > >cother (I personally prefer "other", which would include Direct > >Democracy, > >but will reserve further comment till I hear from others) > > > >What do YOU think?? > > > > > >Colin Stark > > >
Re: request for information on simulations
Greetings ... I don't know if this is any help, but Ottawa has a number of sources that peddle large scale macro modeling. The Canadian Dept of Finance has a macro modeling system that they run their budget projections off of, but guard their system like it was the Crown diamonds. Likewise, there are a few think tanks that traffic in this type of information to help government department do various projections into the future, notably Infometrica (time-series statistics for the future, for those that belief in crystal balls). These organisations make their living from these numbers, so, again, I'm not sure what kind of cooperation you can expect. Cheers, Peter. On Thu, 3 Dec 1998, Douglas P. Wilson wrote: > I am looking for more information about economic and other large-scale > simulations. I'd particularly like to find a mailing list where simulation > may be discussed and web pages containing links to simulation resources. > > If you know of anything that might be appropriate please let me know, > and please forward this message to other people or mailing lists who might > be able to help. My apologies to anyone who gets multiple copies of this > request. > > Thank you, > > dpw > > Douglas P. Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.island.net/~dpwilson/index.html >
Re: Canada's claim to be best country may be shot down
On Wed, 9 Sep 1998, Tom Walker wrote: [ snip ] > 1995 is a watershed year for inequality and poverty in Canada, precisely > because federal and provincial budgets introduced in that year have > drastically increased income inequality. There is something disingenuous > about calling Bueckert's item "misleading" because of underlying technical > omissions in the reporting of data and at the same time neglect to mention a > technical feature of the data that makes Canada's record look more > favourable than it currently is. Is the pot calling the kettle black? Touche. But you can say the same thing about Australia, the U.S., and budget cuts across the EU in anticipation of monetary union. Talk about budget cuts' impact on social security, check out Sweden: cuts in the order of 7% of GDP (out of around a totol social security budget of around 36% of GDP) to take effect 1995-99, bringing aggregate social-welfare spending in that country back to its level at the beginning of the 1980s. I bet that country won't rank so high in subsequent rankings. Cheers, Peter.
Re: Canada's claim to be best country may be shot down
Greetings all ... As someone who makes his living trafficking in international income distribution statistics, I feel obligated to respond to this misleading item by Dennis Bueckert - or, perhaps, his recantation of an increasingly popular but misleading view. My case is simply put. 1. Countries with high levels of inequality do not make their inequality statistics available for international comparison. So a country like New Zealand and Japan, which have been experiencing large increases in inequality, generally don't get included in these comparisons because this country doesn't participate in international data pooling projects (such as the Luxembourg Income Study). 2. 10th out of 17 is a very high ranking, considering differences in the structure of the economies involved. Obviously Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Norway will beat Canada on this dimension, for income and wealth redistribution have been nearly the single minded objective of these countries. Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands may also beat Canada, but these differences are less remarkable. The difference between Canada and some of these countries is falling within the margin of error. 3. Canada has the lowest level of disposable income inequality among countries with similar state structures (Esping Anderson's so-called liberal welfare state regime) and decentralized economies. Soon the statistics will catch-up, and the much bandied claim that Canada has the second highest level of child poverty in the "industrialized world" will also be shown to be bogus. 4. Along with Finland and Norway (and to a lesser extent France), Canada is the only country that has been able to offset the large increases in inequality sweeping the OECD world with its tax and transfer system. Between 1980 and 1995, Canada disposable income inequality has remained stable. Only the other countries I've just mentioned can make this claim. All of these claims, which can be backed up with the same data sources used by the UN (if they use the most recent figures this time), suggest that Canada does quite will with regard to inequality and poverty. I would also remind everyone that the whole purpose of a summary indicator like the Human Development Index is to refocus debate away from single dimensions of lifestyle to look at the whole story. Ideologically single minded jurisdictions (the US on one side, the Scandinavian countries on the other) should not fair as well by such measures. Cheers, Peter. On Tue, 8 Sep 1998, Tom Walker wrote: [ snip ] > By DENNIS BUECKERT > > OTTAWA (CP) - Canada's claim to be the world's best country to live in will > take a hit when the United Nations releases its annual Human Development > Report this week. > For the first time, the much-cited report will include an index measuring > poverty in rich countries and Canada's position on that scale will not be > flattering, The Canadian Press has learned.
Conference
Greetings all ... If, as Tom Walker suggests, this list is having a few slow news days, let me take this opportunity to make a conference announcement. I am chairing a double session on "State Structures and the Welfare State" at this year's CPSA conference held at the University of Ottawa. I encourage members of futurework to attend. The details are: 2 June 8:30 - 10:20 C13: State Structures and the Welfare State (Double session/Sance double) Chair/Prsident: Peter Stoyko (Carleton) Papers/Communications: Michael O'Neill (Warwick), "New Labour, New NHS? Institutions and health system reform in Post-Thatcherite Britain" George Breckenridge (McMaster), "Regime Change in the United States: The Formation of the Conservative Policy Regime, 1979-1997" R. Kent Weaver (The Brooking Institution) and Antonia Maioni (McGill), "The State and the Welfare State in Canada and the United States" Discussant/Commentateur: Joan Boase (Windsor) Thank you for your attention and I hope to see you there. If you need further details, please feel free to contact me. Cheers, Peter. ----- Peter Stoyko Carleton University Tel: (613) 520-2600 ext. 2773 Department of Political Science Fax: (613) 520-4064 B640 Loeb Building V-mail: (613) 731-1964 1125 Colonel By DriveE-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ottawa, Canada, K1S 5B6 Internet: http://www.carleton.ca/~pstoyko --
Re: UK Employment zones: will they work? (fwd)
Greetings all... Let me thank Michael Gurstein for his thoughtful response to my comments. It rings true to my ears. Let me take this opportunity to add a few additional notes. On Thu, 23 Apr 1998, Michael Gurstein wrote: [snip] > From what I can see, in Canada we have the worst of both worlds. We have > national program stipulations which introduce absurd rigidities locally > (for us), and we have almost complete local decentralization which makes > us subject to the training and skill set of case officers and local > managers with no knowledge of or sensitivity towards any of the areas > where new opportunities for employment creation are emerging. (cf. my > recent posting on WiNS2000). [snip] > The labour market in Canada is so regionally specific that national design > and even national standards make little sense. What works or could work > in Cape Breton bares little or no relation to what could work in Southern > Ontario or rural Saskatchewan. In that sense decentralization is useful. > But to have the degree of decentralization which has been recently > introduced while having virtually no capacity for research, analysis, > longer term planning, or staff upgrading is a recipe for disaster. I tend to agree, for the (soon to be devolved) federal system is organised around two conflicting forces. On the one hand you have administrative decentralisation. An Human Resources Development Canada official was bragging (at last summer's Social Policy Conference at Queen's) that HRDC programme administration is the second most decentralised in the country (after Quebec's). The decision to decentralise in this way is informed (according to my interpretation of public servants' comments) by the fashionableness of "new public management's" decentralisation credo and programme evaluation evidence that suggests that decentralisation of active measures works better. But it is not totally decentralised, for on the other hand you have a high level of policy-making centralisation. This retention of decision-making power in the National Capital Region is informed by our Westminister model's policy-making centralisation convention (handmaden to politicians wanting new targeting) and the paradoxical desire, on the part of public servants, to implement more lessons from programme evaluations (of which they have accumulated over 25 years worth). The result: the system Michael Gurstein describes in Cape Breton. This is an important lesson for Blair, for a look at his government's administrative structures in the wake of the Next Steps reforms - according to Colin Campbell's interviews of British public servants - shows that this type of problem beleaguers the British state across-the-board. In other words, it is a state cut in half. At the top you have policy wonks wanting to test new ideas all the time (e.g. Market Testing) and at the bottom you have management drones charged with the duty to "manage", but must continuously react to new demands coming from the centre. UK Employment Zones, to return to the original topic, are a reaction to this - more discretion to local managers. Or are they a result of this, with all of the claw-backs and the promise of implementing success stories? This seems so very schizophrenic, and unfortuneatly for Blair, dangerously complicated. Thank you for your attention. Cheers, Peter Stoyko
Re: UK Employment zones: will they work? (fwd)
Greetings all... I would like to share my concerns about an apparent contradiction in the UK Employment Zones approach. Reform of active labour market measures in Canada and the UK in the 1990s has involved increases in targetting (but not money), by which I mean the number of discrete programmes aimed at those with distinctive needs (youth, the long term unemployed, older labour force participants, etc). This creates a rigidity when administered on a regional basis. When administered at the local or regional level, the administrators have a specific budgetary allotment for, say, youth, and a different allotment for the aged, both of which are pretty much set. If one locale (zone) has more youth unemployment than unemployment among older workers, too bad; they must spend the allotment as budgeted and programmed. In this context, the UK Employment Zone proposals (if I'm reading the proposals correctly) show promise, for they allow localities the flexibility to reallocate funding according to needs - budgetary decentralisation with a small measure of local policy discretion. But wait, what about all these other conditions? Those over 25 and are classified as long(ish)-term unemployed (over 1 year) are targeted - a slight claw-back of decentralization. A minimum amount must be spend on certain key targeted programmes - a restiction on policy making capacity of the zone. Project success stories will be replicated across Britain, whether they are suitable to other regions or not - a reduction in local flexibility. And what happens when the central governments wants to target another class of labour market participant? Budgetary centralisation and a reduction in local policy discretion, that's what. In fact, this is the cycle that has taken place in Canada: (1.) demands for more flexibility come from local programme offices of the federal ministry; (2.) budgetary allotments between programmes are made more flexible; (3.) new demands emerge for another targeted programme, such as youth; (4.) central level of government demands such-and-such amount spent on the new initiative (or package of iniatiatives), and local flexibility is reduced. With the Blair government embarking on an on-going redesign of the welfare state, the likelihood of new targeting measures seems very high. What this boils down to is one question: are these local experiments to create ideas for redesigning of the larger system, or are they pilot projects in decentralisation of the entire system? (Surely, the maintenance of a small and perminent cadre of priviledged zones is politically unsustainable as backbenchers lobby behind the scenes for special status for their own constituencies.) This is an either-or proposition, each with its own perils, for making compromises between the two creates an overly complex system - a state that active measures sometimes seem prone to gravitate towards. The Australian scenario would be the risk: programme targeting becoming so complex and success so difficult to monitor that, eventually, those held accountable get fed up with the unwieldliness and chop the system down to size. Thank you for your attention. Cheers, Peter Stoyko - Peter Stoyko Carleton University Tel: (613) 520-2600 ext. 2773 Department of Political Science Fax: (613) 520-4064 B640 Loeb Building V-mail: (613) 731-1964 1125 Colonel By DriveE-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ottawa, Canada, K1S 5B6 Internet: http://www.carleton.ca/~pstoyko -- On Tue, 21 Apr 1998, Michael Gurstein wrote: > > -- Forwarded message -- > Date: Tue, 21 Apr 1998 19:51:41 +0100 GMT > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: UK Employment zones: will they work? > > UK Employment zones: will they work? > Zones d'Emploi britanniques: marcheront-ils? > > The Blairite solution to poor prospects for employment is to identify parts > of Britain where these problems cluster and then concentrate resources. > Smart. Will the policy work? > > Employment zones are areas where the usual national programmes for > the unemployed will be ditched in favour of running trials of local > initiatives. The five areas chosen to pilot the scheme all have high > concentrations of the long-term jobless. > > "Employment Zones will give communities the flexibility to devise local > solutions which best meet local needs," said the Employment Minister, > Andrew Smith, when he invited bids for zone status last September. > Plymouth, Liverpool, north-west Wales, south Teeside and Glasgow > began running their own programmes in February. The schemes must all > include training plans to improve employment p
Re: uk-policy Welfare State Reform: Soul-Craft and Small Differences
On Fri, 27 Mar 1998, Tom Walker wrote: > Peter, > > Which brings me to a question about the Project on Governance Implications > of Labour Market Polarization. It seems to me that the key terms of > "governance" and "polarization" portend troubling issues regarding the > foundations for a democratic society. With this in mind, I would like to > inquire about the criteria governing who is involved in the research group: > who gets access to the group's deliberations and on what terms? who controls > the process? and to whom must the process be legitimated? > > ... > > It just seems to me -- and I > note Thomas Lunde's and Colin Stark's similar comments -- that there are a > lot of people whose voices don't get heard or acknowledged on labour market > issues. ... > Greetings ... I am glad to find that you are so interested in my research group's activities. I will be sure to notify members of futurework of our published findings. But I worry that there is a misunderstanding of the nature of this endeavor. This is not a Royal Commission, a programme of political activism, or a conspiratorial "star chamber," but scholarly research of a more garden variety: an empirical analysis of labour market developments given available quantitative data and attempts to shed light into the future by way of international comparisons and econometric modelling. It is largely an exercise in data mining, number crunching, and induction. I understand that it is fashionable to insist on representativeness in policy analysis activities of various kinds. I agree that it is important to be careful about making statistical generalization for fear of subsuming the stories of individuals and groups whose experiences diverge in important respects. This is, in some ways, a chronic weakness of this form of inquiry and demands a great deal of analysts' knowledge. For example, the labour market experience of Canada's aboriginal citizens differ in important respects, but underreporting of this group in official statistics makes it difficult to identify valid trends. Some of the better research I have read on the subject takes this sort of thing into account and attempts to compensate, insofar as it is possible. Let me assure you that these lessons are not lost on myself or my collegues. If you are implying that the terms "governance" and "polarization" are embued with ideological baggage of some sort, I have can only respond by saying that: (1.) "governance" is just simply the jargon-de-jour for "policy"; and (2.) "polarization" is a technical term with various meanings, including (2.1.) the decline of the share of an income and/or opportunity distribution held by a stratum defined as "middle class", (2.2.) dispersion of income and/or opportunities between two strata defined as "upper class" and "lower class", and (2.3.) dispersion of income and/or opportunities between non-class groups (e.g. gender, age cohort, ethnicity, etc.). This later definition seems to be what your comments are about. I hope this answers your questions. Cheers, Peter Stoyko
Re: uk-policy Welfare State Reform: Soul-Craft and Small Differences
Greetings ... Thank you for the interesting comments. I'm afraid, however, I found them a bit desultory. Not knowing how to respond, let me just clarify my earlier statements. 1. My concern with legal rights as an instrument of 'poverty alleviation' or 'reduction of descrimination against the poor' involves their: (1.) inherent lack of potence with respect to policy issues that do not easily conform to the structure of legal institutions and discourse; and (2.) and the constraints faced when trying to give such rights teeth. When advocates of social rights in the early 2/3rds of this century talked about rights, they did not speak of rights in a formal legal sense, but as a moral appeal for a welfare state that does not leave an excluded underclass. My further concern is the lack of uniformity by which legal rights (often inappropriately called "guarantees") are applied, for clearly not all Canadian jurisdictions would be willing to add poverty discrimination to their human rights codes. More importantly, there is something rather contradictory about providing legal rights to alleviate poverty, for the impoverished are the constituency who are least likely to make use of the legal system on account of the high cost, highly esoteric language and procedures, etc. Legal action funds have proven to be a poor solution, and vulnerable to the spending whims of elected officials. My larger point is not that rights constitute a major constraint. To the contrary, they are not much of a constraint to policy makers or economic actors generally. 2. This leads to my second clarification: I think we have to be suitably realistic about the capacity of our policy instruments. In a society and economy that is becoming increasingly diverse, blunt instruments (such as untailored regulation) can make an impact, but often one not intended by policy makers and with potentially adverse second-order consequences. Hence, "first, do no harm." My meaning is simply this: if faced with a problem (e.g. undesirable distribution of working hours), reflect on the causes of problem and the consequences of policy actions before implementing knee-jerk responses (i.e. use the state's coersive power to redistribute working hours). Thanks again for your attention. Cheers, Peter. ----- Peter Stoyko Carleton University Tel: (613) 520-2600 ext. 2773 Department of Political Science Fax: (613) 520-4064 B640 Loeb Building V-mail: (613) 731-1964 1125 Colonel By DriveE-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ottawa, Canada, K1S 5B6 Internet: http://www.carleton.ca/~pstoyko --
uk-policy Welfare State Reform: Soul-Craft and Small Differences
Greetings ... Thanks again for your interest. Perhaps I should preface my further comments by underscoring that the opinions I express here are not those of the Project nor any government agency. They are solely my own. On Thu, 26 Mar 1998, Tom Walker wrote: > Peter, > > 1. How do you respond to the Canadian Human Rights Commission's call for > recogniziing poverty as a human rights issue in Canada. > I have heard about this in the news, but have not actually read this document. Is the Commissioner suggesting that the "international community" recognizes some form of social rights? The traditional post-war welfare state can be conceived as being underpinned by some notion of social rights of citizenship, as defined by T.H. Marshall in his classic Citizenship & Social Class (1950). According to this view, the 18th century saw the emergence of legal rights, the 19th century democratic rights, and the 20th century social rights (the right to at least a modicum of social provisions to, in some countries, the right to enjoy a standard of living close to that prevailing in society). The Commissioner seems to be overstating the extent to which governments have officially endorsed this position, for such official endorsements would seem to be isolated to countries in northern Europe. Nonetheless, the notion of social rights of citizenship has been an important legitimizing device for the welfare state, albeit one that is heard less in the last few decades (although "rights talk" in general seems to be proliferating at a furious pace). If the suggestion is that appeals to judicial institutions should be the mechanism by which poverty (or discrimination against the impoverished) is to be ameliorated, I am very skeptical. There will be difficulty in developing legally judiciable definitions of poverty and descrimination (policy analysts can't even seem to agree on this subject). There will be difficulty selecting which forms of income-based descrimination should be banned, for capitalist markets are, to a great extent, a series of income descriminating transactions. If taken too far, Human Rights Legislation (which owes more to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights tradition of rights) will conflict with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (which owes more to the American notion of rights), and the latter, as constitutional law, will prevail. The Charter is relatively biased towards the liberal anti-statist conception of "fundamental freedoms," and "poverty" is not one of the ennumerated grounds for nondescrimination (re: section 15). Even if these challenges could be resolved, judicial institutions are not well suited to enforcement or proactive policy making. It would also have to be excepted by provincial human rights commissions to effect Canada writ large (something that doesn't even exist for more conventional categories of nondiscrimination). It is for these reason that this set of recommendations will not go very far. I understand the moral challenge being made here, but I personally think issues of poverty alleviation should be debated within legislatures, not courts. The Commission's position seems to be more of a reaction to recent deficit reduction efforts than a sober and systematic study of the role of legal rights and labour market operations. As policy analysts, we need to be more wary of these sorts of contraints in order to develop of policies with a meaningful effect, as my original uk-policy posting put forth. Thanks again for your attention. Cheers, Peter Stoyko
uk-policy Welfare State Reform: Soul-Craft and Small Differences
Greetings ... Thank you for your interest in my uk-policy posting. I am only a member of the futurework moderated list, so I am not privy to all comments made about my contribution. Let me take this opportunity, then, to comment on your thoughtful response. On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, Tom Walker wrote: > Peter, > > ... As you no doubt are aware, polarization in hours > of work is an important dimension in income polarization, as has been > documented in several statscan studies. I was surprised, therefore, in > reading your message that you made no reference to substantive, incremental > policy proposals -- such as Lars Osberg has advanced in the recent federal > "Collective Reflections" consultation on the changing workplace -- for > "leveling the public policy playing field for hours of work". > > Osberg points out -- as have many others, including myself -- that the > current regime of employment standards, the structures of payroll taxes and > tax exemptions for employer-paid benefits create incentives for employers to > favour longer hours for full-time workers and to increasingly use benefit > deficient part-time, contract and contingent workers. > My comments to uk-policy pertain to common trends among OECD countries with mature welfare states. While growing earnings inequality among males is a more-or-less common trend, it does not seem to be caused by the same factors in each country (e.g. changes in hours worked vs. wage rates). It is true that hours worked have become more polarized in Canada and this is a major cause of earnings polarization. As Garnett Picot (StatCan, Analytical Studies Branch) also points out in the latest issue of Canadian Business Economics, stagnating real earnings among males at the bottom of the earnings distribution is also a contributing factor. It should be noted, however, that polarization becomes more pronounced in Canada when looking at family market income (suggesting the influence of changes in household arrangements and investment income). I am also familiar with Lars Osberg's work (he, too, is a contributor to my research group) and I share his view that public policy has largely ignored labour demand. I too share your concern about incentive structures faced by employers (for further comment on this point, see: Peter Stoyko, "'Creating Opportunity' or Creative Opportunism: Liberal Labour Market Policy," in Gene Swimmer, ed., How Ottawa Spends 1997-98). I am more cautious about endorsing state sanctioned reductions in the work week (or redistributing hours worked generally) to encourage employment or reverse earnings polarization. Statistics Canada has conducted a microsimulation on the role that a reduced work week would have on employment. Although I have a few methodological misgivings about the study, it showed that work week reductions would have only a neglible effect on aggregate employment levels. In other countries, such as those in continental Europe, there is a great deal of enthusiasm for this type of policy. However, if you look at average hours worked per week in countries like Germany you will find that they have been declining over the last several decades on account of collective bargaining agreements. Despite this, employment growth has remained stagnant. The Canadian Labour Market & Productivity Centre, a union/management cooperative think-tank, has conducted case studies on this too. They have discovered that using job sharing and reduced work weeks is a highly particularistic activity; it works in some cases, but there is a need for differences in arrangements and labour/management quid pro quo from enterprise to enterprise, and sector to sector. This suggests to me that some form of blanket legal regulation would unduly restrict organizations and may even undermine some interesting innovations in the field. The moral of this story is: first, do no harm. I also doubt that this type of arrangement would reduce earnings polarization. The experience of other countries suggest that if working arrangements are highly restrictive, employers simply reduce wage rates. Conversely, if wage rates are made rigid, they take it out on working arrangements. This is part of the reason for variation across jurisdictions re: respective role of wage rates over hours worked as cause of earnings polarization. But these are just symptoms. If policy makers are interested in shielding workers at the bottom of the income distribution from greater earnings polarization, they may want to address trends in unionization and collective bargaining. Collective bargaining has become more decentralized across most OECD countries, even in Canada's already decentralized system (from enterprise to plant level). Those at the bottom of the earnings distribution are less shielded from pressures from international trade, technological development, etc
