The Puzzling Persistence of Racial Inequality in Canada

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Keith Banting ◽  
Debra Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Theoretical Terms ◽  
Policy Regimes ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
Key Policy ◽  
Canadian Public Policy

Abstract This article examines the failure of Canadian public policy in addressing racial economic inequality directly. Our analysis contends that Canada's key policy regimes were established in the postwar era, when approximately 96 per cent of Canadians were of European descent. As a result, the frameworks, problem definitions and policy tools inherited from that era were never intended to mitigate racial economic inequality. Moreover, this policy inheritance was deeply shaped by liberal universalism, which rejected racial distinctions in law and policy. These norms were carried forward into the more racially diverse Canada of today, where they have steered attention away from the use of racial categories in policy design. As a result, racial inequality was not a central priority during major policy reforms to core policy regimes in recent decades. In theoretical terms, our analysis contributes to Canadian Political Development through a sustained consideration of the intersecting roles of ideational frameworks, path dependency and policy inertia.

Main Tax Policy Matters for Establishing Chile as a Regional Operative Investment Hub

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugo Hurtado ◽  
Jaime Del Valle
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Tax Policy ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Oecd Countries ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
Holistic View ◽  
Regional Approach ◽  
Key Policy ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
International Tax Policy

Unlike other OECD countries, Chile has not yet established a uniform tax policy toward foreign investment. Moreover, Chile had past experiences of unsuccessful legislation on specific exempted investment vehicles created with the purpose of establishing the country as a hub or platform for foreign investment. An effective international tax policy design requires taking a holistic view of the challenges and their corresponding solutions. As a country’s tax regime is a key policy instrument that may negatively or positively influence investment, Chilean tax policy is being oriented in this regard. This Article reviews the progress of those projects and current legislation, compares other OECD countries’ experiences in this matter, analyzing the main facts or elements to consider upon deciding the relevant tax policy, and finally proposes a tax regime that could make Chile more competitive when attracting foreign operative investment, focused on a more regional approach. Accordingly, this Article also intends to serve as guide or help to be considered by regulators on the hard road of designing tax standards. 

scholarly journals New Urbanism as Urban Political Development: Racial Geographies of ‘Intercurrence’ across Greater Seattle

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 417-428
Author(s):  
Yonn Dierwechter
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Urban Politics ◽  
New Urbanism ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Simultaneous Operation ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Policy Regimes ◽  
New Urbanist

While New Urbanism is now subject to a range of theorizations from different perspectives and disciplinary approaches, it is rarely framed as part of a society’s overall political development. This article explores New Urbanism through recently ‘cosmopolitanized’ and ‘urbanized’ theories of American Political Development (APD). For many years, APD scholars like Skowronek and Orren have emphasized the conceptual importance of ‘intercurrence,’ which refers to the simultaneous operation of multiple political orders in specific places and thus to the tensions and abrasions between these orders as explanations for change. Urban scholars have engaged with these ideas for some time, particularly in studies of urban politics and policy regimes, but APD’s influence on urban planning theory and practice remains underdeveloped. This article takes up this lacuna, applying select APD ideas, notably intercurrence, to understand how multi-scalar governments develop space though New Urbanist theories of place-making, with special attention paid to race. Examples from metropolitan Seattle are used to illustrate (if not fully elaborate) the article’s overall arguments and themes.

Has Social Policy Expansion in Latin America Reduced Welfare Decommodification and Defamilialisation? Evidence from an Overview of the Mexican Welfare Regime

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 645-659
Author(s):  
Ricardo Velázquez Leyer
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Family Support ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Welfare Regime ◽  
Regime Theory ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Design And Implementation

Mexican social policy has been transformed in recent years with the introduction and expansion of social assistance programmes, causing a diversion from the trajectory based on social insurance since the first decades of the twentieth century. This article aims to understand the outcomes of that transformation, by applying welfare regime theory to establish how social policy reforms have affected the distribution of welfare responsibilities among the state, markets and families. The research identifies (de)commodification and (de)familialisation outcomes of policy changes in pensions, healthcare, unemployment and family support. Results suggest that the expansion has not produced significant reductions in decommodification or defamilialisation because of: a) the explicit or implicit role assigned to markets in policy design and implementation, and b) the reliance of the process of economic liberalisation on the welfare role performed by families. The case of Mexico may illustrate the current welfare challenges faced by societies across Latin America.

A Lighter Shade of Brown? Racial Formation and Gentrification in Latino Los Angeles

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfredo Huante
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Racial Formation ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Racial Ideologies ◽  
Boyle Heights

Abstract Conventional gentrification literature has meaningfully demonstrated how economic inequality is perpetuated in urban settings, but there has been a limited understanding of how racial inequality is maintained. Drawing from participant observation, interviews, and digital ethnography in the barrio of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles that were collected over five years, this study examines how gentrification functions as a racial project and supports new forms of racialization to maintain uneven development along racial lines. Examining the ways that racial formation processes unfurl at the local scale expands conventional understanding of racial formation theory and practice while, simultaneously, illustrating the centrality of place in race-making. This study finds new race and class formations are developed by casting the barrio itself and significant portions of the Mexican American population as “honorary white.” Despite colorblind and post-racial ideologies espoused in majority-minority cities like Los Angeles, this landscape fostered emerging racial formations alongside gentrification processes which have increased racial, political, and economic inequality.

Trade Policy in Ethiopia, 1991–2016

2019 ◽  
pp. 229-248
Author(s):  
Berihu Assefa Gebrehiwot
Keyword(s):  
Trade Policy ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
Public Enterprise ◽  
Global Integration ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Policy Regimes ◽  
Tariff Structure

The chapter reviews the trade policy regimes and the evolution of the trade policy reforms implemented in Ethiopia since 1993. Trade policy reform measures included import liberalization through rationalization of the tariff structure and reduction of quantitative restrictions, simplified licensing procedures, the introduction of market-oriented and more transparent allocation of foreign exchange, new investment codes, and labour and public enterprise laws. Additional trade policy instruments were introduced to promote investment, exports and industrialization. By the early 2000s, Ethiopia was moving away from the conventional market-oriented policy reforms, and instead pursuing a developmental state approach. In addition, Ethiopia has taken concrete steps with regard to its accession to the WTO, and is a member of a number of continental and regional integration efforts. The chapter assesses how Ethiopia balances its goal of pursuing a trade policy that supports its long-term development objective with the goal of regional and global integration.

The Color Line and the State

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberley S. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Minority Politics ◽  
Early American ◽  
Core Questions

This article examines the ways in which scholars of American political development (APD) have encountered the color line through their research, and the strides they have made in bringing race back into the field of political science in general and the study of the state in particular. Three core questions about race and APD are considered: How is race defined? When does race matter? In what direction does race matter? Two approaches relating to race and American politics are discussed: the race relations approach and the racial politics (or minority politics) approach. It then explores five challenges that must be addressed in order to overcome the persistent connections between APD and the discipline’s racial anomalism. It also analyzes the role of race in the establishment of the early American welfare state and concludes by reflecting on the persistence of racial inequality and prospects for APD in the twenty-first century.

Reconstituting the Submerged State: The Challenges of Social Policy Reform in the Obama Era

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 803-824 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Mettler
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Higher Education Policy ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Political Capacity ◽  
Federal Policies ◽  
Social Policy Reform ◽  
The Status ◽  
Redistributive Effects ◽  
Private Actors

President Barack Obama came into office with a social welfare policy agenda that aimed to reconstitute what can be understood as the “submerged state”: a conglomeration of existing federal policies that incentivize and subsidize activities engaged in by private actors and individuals. By attempting to restructure the political economy involved in taxation, higher education policy, and health care, Obama ventured into a policy terrain that presents immense obstacles to reform itself and to the public's perception of its success. Over time the submerged state has fostered the profitability of particular industries and induced them to increase their political capacity, which they have exercised in efforts to maintain the status quo. Yet the submerged state simultaneously eludes most ordinary citizens: they have little awareness of its policies or their upwardly redistributive effects, and few are cognizant of what is at stake in reform efforts. This article shows how, in each of the three policy areas, the contours and dynamics of the submerged state have shaped the possibilities for reform and the form it has taken, the politics surrounding it, and its prospects for success. While the Obama Administration won hard-fought legislative accomplishments in each area, political success will continue to depend on how well policy design, policy delivery and political communication reveal policy reforms to citizens, so that they better understand how reforms function and what has been achieved.

Obligations to the FutureFreedom is considered one of America’s most cherished values. Most Americans agree that freedom requires order, justice, security, opportunity, fairness, absence of harm, absence of undue interference, and a variety of rights. But

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-69
Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Eppard ◽  
Erik Nelson ◽  
Cynthia Cox ◽  
Eduoardo Bonilla-Silva
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Intergenerational Transmission ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Concentrated Disadvantage ◽  
Societal Problems ◽  
Elected Representatives

Freedom is considered one of America’s most cherished values. Most Americans agree that freedom requires order, justice, security, opportunity, fairness, absence of harm, absence of undue interference, and a variety of rights. But while Americans may agree on these things in broad, abstract terms, they are often divided over their precise definitions. In this article, the authors emphasize how a variety of societal problems—including climate change, racial inequality, poverty and economic inequality, concentrated disadvantage, intergenerational transmission of privilege and disadvantage, and the undermining of truth and expertise—are issues of freedom. The authors discuss the connection between these issues and freedom, and the need to demand action from elected representatives in order to enact true freedom for all Americans.

Monumental Promises, Incremental Gains

2021 ◽  
pp. 222-244
Author(s):  
Khalilah L. Brown-Dean
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
President Obama ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
Key Policy

There were growing public demands to address ongoing tensions over biased policing, excessive sentencing, and the often lethal consequences of disproportionate minority contact. However, the Obama administration’s professed commitment to comprehensive criminal justice and mass incarceration reform was constrained by institutional norms, federalism, and a skepticism about individual responsibility that most frequently came from Republican detractors. Hyperincarceration in the United States has garnered substantial attention from scholars, activists, and analysts. Yet beyond crime rates, the racially disparate consequences of this autonomous system hold significant implications for the institutionalization of Black political power. African Americans are disproportionately represented in every realm of punitive control, from surveillance to arrest to conviction to incarceration to postrelease supervision. Crime control policies, then, shape individual access and communal representation. In this chapter, I interrogate President Obama’s record through the lens of what I term “concentrated punishment.” I begin by highlighting the behemoth growth of the criminal justice system that set the tone for the challenges President Obama attempted to address. From there, I analyze key policy reforms within these two domains to characterize President Obama’s legacy of criminal justice reform. Finally, I outline a reform path for future administrations.

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