The purpose of this paper is to examine what key reform attempts during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies reveal about the wider possibilities for social policy change in the United States. Most particularly, why were Presidents Clinton and Bush able to achieve their goals in some...

Drawing on recent historical institutionalist scholarship, this paper explores the debates leading to the enactment of the Canada/Quebec Pension Plans (C/Q.P.P.) in 1965. More specifically, this analysis underlines the respective role of and the interaction between political institutions,...

The following article explores the links between sub-state nationalism and social policy. Instead of focusing only on the québécois-Canadian situation, the aim is to offer a comparative perspective that could enrich our understanding of the relationship between nationalism and social policy....

Since the late 1990s a growing number of scholars have explored the relationship between decentralization, nationalism, and social policy development. In this paper we explore the impact of substate nationalism on the territorial integration or disintegration of the welfare state in Belgium and...

This paper shows that, beyond the institutional stability of Social Security, changes in the private sector as well as the emergence of a new financial paradigm have transformed both the U.S. pension system and the political debate about its future. Although no major reform of Social Security...

In recent years, social scientists such as Kathleen Thelen and Jacob Hacker have introduced new concepts to assist in the understanding of institutional change. Fostering some of these concepts, this article proceeds to augment the theoretical debate on institutional change in social science and...

Focusing on Canada, this paper explores the politics of social policy retrenchment and restructuring in two policy areas: old-age pensions, especially the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), and Employment Insurance (EI) [formerly Unemployment Insurance (UI)]. Drawing on historical institutionalism and...

The most populous country in the world, China faces immense socio-economic challenges providing adequate pensions to its growing elderly population. In that country, pensions available to older people vary considerably across the country's various pension schemes. This paper calculates the...

Considering the rapid growth of China’s elderly rural population, establishing both an adequate and a financially sustainable rural pension system is a major challenge. Focusing on financial sustainability, this article defines this concept of financial sustainability before constructing sound...

Fiscal equalization is a key political issue in many federal countries, including Canada. Yet, relatively few scholars have paid systematic attention to the political dimensions of Canada's federal equalization program. Taking an historical and institutionalist perspective, this article explores...