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CONTINUITY, RETRENCHMENT AND RENEWAL: THE POLITICS OF GOVERNMENT-UNIVERSITY RELATIONS IN ONTARIO, 1985-2002 by David Wayne Trick A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Political Science University of Toronto © Copyright by David Wayne Trick, 2005 ABSTRACT Continuity, Retrenchment and Renewal: The Politics of Government-University Relations in Ontario, 1985-2002 Doctor of Philosophy, 2005 David Wayne Trick Graduate Department of Political Science University of Toronto This thesis examines how ideas and institutions shaped the Ontario government’s relationship with the province’s universities between 1985 and 2002. Using documentary research and elite interviews, the thesis shows how the relationship was dominated by two government commitments from the postwar era – ensuring access to university for every qualified student and maintaining equality among the universities – commitments that governments from all three political parties in the late 1980s and 1990s accepted, even as they attempted to revise or add to them. Applying the concepts of paradigm shifting (Hall), bounded innovation (Weir) and institutional layering (Thelen), the thesis shows how this dominant paradigm was embedded in institutions established in the 1950s and 1960s, placing boundaries on the range of available policy options and protecting universities from externally-imposed restructuring during a period of fiscal restraint. Significant policy changes are shown to be consistent with the existence of a dominant paradigm. The Ontario government adopted new research policies by layering them on top of the paradigm in response to pressures from the federal government, which felt no responsibility for the paradigm and had the support of the fragment of the university system with resource-intensive research missions. Tuition and student aid were changed through a series of incremental adjustments, all justified within the paradigm, but eventually provoking debate over whether the paradigm was changing from a public model to a student- financed model. Government decisions to expand selected programs for economic reasons ii and to permit the opening of private universities show that, within the paradigm, opportunities existed for actors from outside the policy network to attract political attention and win support. The thesis reviews four institutionally-based models of policy continuity and change (by Hall; Baumgartner and Jones; Pierson; and Coleman, Skogstad, and Atkinson) and assesses the merits of each in explaining the observations in this case. It argues for a synthesis of these models and suggests its potential for explaining how commitments made during the development of the Canadian welfare state fared during a period of fiscal retrenchment and economic globalization. The resilience of the dominant paradigm suggests the future possibility of achieving gains in access for students who are disadvantaged, renewing financial accessibility programs, and integrating educational quality goals into the paradigm. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Being a doctoral candidate has been the best twenty-seven years of my life. I began my doctoral studies in 1978 and, after a long detour, began work on this thesis in 2002. I have many debts to acknowledge. My parents, Dr. Gordon S. Trick and Ella G. Trick, have given our family a love of learning that has sustained us throughout our lives. They have earned the satisfaction of seeing four children attend a total of eleven postsecondary institutions – so far – with a new generation following closely behind. Ronald Manzer, Carolyn Hughes Tuohy and David A. Wolfe, all of the University of Toronto, and David M. Cameron of Dalhousie University read the thesis in its entirety and provided much sound advice. For each of them to agree to serve on my thesis committee in the midst of their many other duties is further evidence, should any be required, of the longstanding devotion each has shown to scholarship and to public higher education. Liang-Hsuan Chen, Daniel W. Lang, B. James Mackay, Diana M. Royce, and Helmut Zisser – valued colleagues all – each read chapters and provided important advice on matters of substance and method. Numerous colleagues opened their file cabinets to uncover long-forgotten documents on my behalf. Ian D. Clark generously made available relevant files from the archives of the Council of Ontario Universities without restriction, as well as providing perceptive advice and encouragement based on his own experience as an outstanding public servant and scholar. J. Stefan Dupré, as the founding chair of the Ontario Council on University Affairs, established the practice of publishing the council’s advice to government and governments’ responses, creating an invaluable resource for researchers. The remarkable collections of the University of Toronto Libraries have also been essential to this work. Michael L. Gourley, David L. Lindsay, Kevin G. Lynch, Lorna R. Marsden, Timothy McTiernan, Bonnie M. Patterson and J. Robert S. Prichard generously made themselves available to be interviewed. I have also benefited from many thoughtful conversations with Robert D. Christie, Sean G. Conway, Kevin Costante, Dianne Cunningham, Sheldon Levy, and past and present colleagues from the Ministry of Training, iv Colleges and Universities. The initial stage of my doctoral studies was supported by the Ontario Graduate Scholarships program. Robert A. Gordon and Alastair J. S. Summerlee approved a leave which permitted me to begin preparation of the final manuscript. David M. Rayside provided much encouragement at the beginning of my doctoral studies and, as associate chair and graduate director of the Department of Political Science, guided me through the process of completing the degree. Many friends and colleagues provided support and advice at critical moments. I especially thank Donna Duncan, Sheila Embleton, Kismet Goodbaum, Catherine Henderson, Maureen Mancuso, Ashley McCall, Peter Neary, Karen Sadlier-Brown, Peter Sadlier-Brown, Audrey Young, David Young, Robert Young and Elka M.Gesink Walsh. My greatest debt in this project is to Stephen Clarkson – thesis supervisor, mentor, friend, devoted teacher, and prolific and path-breaking researcher and author. Stephen’s career is a model of how a scholar can be engaged in the public life of his country. Over the past three years, his patient prodding and support have assisted me in transforming an accumulation of thoughts and opinions into a more coherent whole. Stephen’s confidence that I could bring this project to a worthwhile conclusion was shared by Christina McCall, who was the warmest and most perspicacious of friends. Separately and together, for four decades, Stephen and Christina have demonstrated the value of careful research and lively writing about Canadian politics to hundreds of thousands of readers, of whom I am one. I have thanked Christina, however inadequately, and I thank Stephen now. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PART ONE: INTRODUCTION ...............................................1 1 OVERVIEW AND METHODOLOGY ...................................1 The argument in brief..................................................3 Organization and methodology ..........................................9 An historical institutionalist approach ....................................10 Why study government-university relations? ..............................11 Scope of policies to be analyzed ........................................12 Time period ........................................................13 Sources of information................................................14 The value of studying a single case ......................................15 Contribution of this thesis to the literature ................................16 Boundaries of the thesis ...............................................17 2 HISTORICAL INSTITUTIONALIST APPROACHES TO EXPLAINING POLICY CONTINUITY AND CHANGE ........................................18 Friction between established policy equilibria and new ideas (Hall, Weir, Thelen, Lieberman)...................................................20 Weir: Path-dependency as an explanation of continuity in a sectoral policy field ..................................................23 Thelen: Layering new institutions on top of old ones ..................26 Lieberman: Integrating ideational and institutional explanations for policy change ................................................28 Friction between macro-politics and subsystem politics (Kingdon, Baumgartner and Jones).......................................................30 Adoption of new ideas within a closed policy network (Coleman, Skogstad and Atkinson)....................................................34 Possible exceptions ............................................38 Application to government-university relations in Ontario ..............38 Policy networks, state capacity, and the reaggregation of the state .......40 State-driven retrenchment (Pierson) .....................................42 Choosing among four models of policy continuity and change: a potential synthesis ............................................................45 3 INTERPRETATIONS OF GOVERNMENT-UNIVERSITY RELATIONS IN ONTARIO IN THE 1980s AND 1990s ...................................54 Making universities more responsive to the market .........................54 Shifting towards a market-responsive paradigm ......................54 Using market-type policy instruments