State, Class, and Bureaucracy: Canadian Unemployment Insurance and Public Policy

by Leslie A. Pal

Recent explanations of public policy have increasingly focused on state-centred theories which emphasize internal state dynamics, as opposed to society-centred theories which concentrate on external forces such as interest group pressure. State, Class, and Bureaucracy assesses the fruitfulness of these approaches by comparing neo-Marxist and neo-pluralist explanations (society-centred) with explanations that emphasize the effects of bureaucracy and federalism (state-centred). Unemployment insurance (UI) was chosen as a case study because of its importance to employer and employee groups; if any program or policy is susceptible to a society-centred explanation, UI should be.

224 pages, ebook

First published February 1, 1988