Canadian Journal of Sociology Online May-June 2006
Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 30(4) 2005 471
As a Canadian sociologist who has worked both in the academy and in government in Newfoundland and Labrador, my purpose in this essay is threefold: (1) to offer some theoretical and methodological observations, based on my practical experiences, about the nature of politics and how governments work; (2) to show how the application of the sociological imagination has led to some important changes in governance in Newfoundland and Labrador; and, (3) to advocate for greater involvement of sociologists and the application of the sociological imagination within the corridors of power in this country.
Sociologists in North America have been less involved in government than have other social scientists, especially economists and political scientists. [1] Nevertheless, several of our colleagues have been involved in many ways in trying to effect progressive change in Canadian society (Carroll et al, 1992;
* I would like to thank Allison Catmur and Rick Johnstone of Memorial University's sociology department, Vanessa House Milley, and two anonymous reviewers and the editor of the Canadian Journal of Sociology for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay. Back to text
1. In Scandinavian countries, sociologists have been more influential, which may both reflect and contribute to their being more social democratic. For Norway, see for example Ragnvald Kalleberg (2000).Back to text
472 Canadian Journal of Sociology
McFarlane, 1992). For the Newfoundland and Labrador case specifically, Barbara Neis has examined various ways in which sociologists and anthropologists have been involved in what she calls "the uneasy marriage of academic and policy work" in "a rich and multi-faceted thirty-year history of different approaches to policy work organized through a variety of institutional structures" ranging from political activism to private sector consulting (1992: 321).
There is a continuum of involvement of sociologists in practical affairs and policy work, ranging from purely academic studies through advocacy and social movements to formal advisory roles, participation in commissions and taskforces, to public service appointments and elections to political office. To put the subsequent analyses in context, I will briefly summarize my own involvement along this continuum. I started out as a purely academic researcher and writer, with my early work in economic sociology focusing on real estate agents in Montreal and oilmen in Calgary (House, 1974, 1977a, 1977b, 1980). After returning to my native province of Newfoundland and Labrador in the mid1970s, I became more interested in policy issues related to social and economic development. In writing about oil and Newfoundland, I offered a number of recommendations for how the province might maximize its benefits from this new resource industry (1985); and, as Research Director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research, initiated a new series of ISER Research and Policy Papers whereby social scientists at Memorial University commented on several important policy matters (Storey, 1994).
My first opportunity for more direct involvement in government came in 1985 when I was asked by then Premier Brian Peckford to chair a provincial Royal Commission on Employment and Unemployment. The Commission was given a wide-ranging mandate and produced a comprehensive report called Building on Our Strengths (1986).
My second foray into government followed the provincial election of 1989, when I was invited by the new Premier, Clyde Wells, to chair an economic development agency called the Economic Recovery Commission (ERC). As Chair of the ERC, I was considered by those "in the system" (discussed below) to be in a Deputy Minister-equivalent position. From 1994 to 1995, I was also the provincial co-chair of a federal/provincial Task Force on Community Economic Development (1995). Brian Tobin closed down the Commission when he became Premier in 1996 and I returned to my role as an academic sociologist at Memorial.
More recently, since this essay was first drafted, I have accepted another secondment to the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador as Deputy Minister of the Department of Innovation, Trade and Rural Development under the new Premier, Danny Williams. Although most of the material in this essay
Note on the Discipline/Note sociologique 473
relates to the earlier experiences, I have added a few comments based on observations related to my current position.
The research that I carried out early in my career was mainly through participant observation, personal interviews and survey research. While such systematic approaches to data gathering have their strengths, they also have their limitations. I have no doubt that, as an outsider, I was excluded from much of what went on, especially in terms of the tensions and conflicts that inevitably characterized the working lives of Montreal realtors, Calgary oilmen or Scottish oil officials. While I am confident that I acquired "knowledge," I am also certain that it was, at best, partial knowledge.
My method of investigation for this article has been very different. While reviewing various secondary sources, such as minutes and Economic Recovery Commission publications, has been helpful (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1996), my main research method has been the practical experience itself—discussions with other members of the ERC team, meetings with the Premier and various Ministers, battles with an opposed group of old guard senior government officials. This practical experience has shaped my ideas for this essay, and provided insights into the governance process.
"Learning by doing" has a long pedigree within western social science, going back to Karl Marx's notion of revolutionary praxis and the American pragmatist philosophers (Swinegood, 1975: 7; Rice, 1996: 18). A more recent formulation is called the "scholarship of application."
New intellectual understandings can arise out of the very act of application—whether in medical diagnosis, serving clients in psychotherapy, shaping public policy, creating an architectural design, or working with the public schools. In activities such as these, theory and practice vitally interact, and one renews the other (Boyer, 1990: 23).
Donald Schön argues that "knowing-in-action" calls for not only a new scholarship but also a new epistemology (1995). Conventional scholarship is valid, but other ways of acquiring knowledge are also valid and complementary to academic scholarship. As Eugene Rice puts it, "learning can be characterized as a multidimensional process involving different approaches" (1996:18).
There is a sharp contrast between what "knowledge" means to an academic scholar as compared to a politician in their everyday lives. For the scholar, knowledge is the end of the exercise, it is something to be acquired painstakingly through thorough research and theorizing that can be replicated by other scholars to confirm the reliability of the knowledge. For the political leader, by contrast, knowledge is more of a means to an end. The end is to make decisions
474 Canadian Journal of Sociology
and implement them through a number of policies and programs. Political leaders are under constant pressure to make decisions on a whole variety of issues, whether or not they have sound knowledge on which to base those decisions. This is more than just a difference between academic and political cultures (Bowen, 2001); it reflects different institutional imperatives for those performing scholarly as opposed to political roles. Attempts need to be made to bridge this divide, so that decision-makers can act on the basis of the best available knowledge.
It would be misleading to think that I could have come to my experience in government with my mind a tabula rasa, and to have generated a "grounded theory" of power and politics based only on my experience (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). Instead, I came with several theoretical preconceptions, many of which have been confirmed by my direct involvement in the political process.
During the 1960s and 1970s I learned about various theories of the state, especially functionalist, Marxist and Weberian theories, and was influenced by the work of C. Wright Mills and the neo-Marxist debate between Ralph Miliband's instrumentalist view and Nicos Poulantzas's structuralist view of the capitalist state (Mills, 1956, 1959; Miliband, 1969; Poulantzas, 1974). I also studied economic and political anthropology which have had a lasting influence on my understanding of economic and political behaviour in comparative contexts.
My experience in government has confirmed my preference for a social action approach to political sociology. In particular, it makes me wary of grand concepts like "social structure" and "social system." These are general abstractions that can be helpful for setting the macro-context, but should not be reified as things-in-themselves and should never be thought of as determining behaviour in a mechanistic way. Human beings construct their behaviours in terms of the social and cultural contexts in which they find themselves, according to the meanings and interpretations they assign and the motives that energize them. Weber defined social action as "an action in which the meaning intended by the agent or agents involves a relation to another person's behaviour and in which that relation determines the way in which the action proceeds" (cited in Runciman, 1978: 7). I would prefer the expression "sets the context for" to "determines the way" in this definition. Political action is social action in which the actors vie to make decisions on behalf of the collectivity and to exercise power by controlling the behaviour of other members.
Rather than "structure" and "system," I prefer less rigid terms such as Fredrik Barth's "social frameworks" (Barth, 1959). Certainly, attention must be paid to the institutional context in which political behaviour occurs. In the case
Note on the Discipline/Note sociologique 475
of Newfoundland and Labrador provincial politics, this is set by the British parliamentary system and its particular Canadian federalist division of powers. The term "state" is an abstraction rather than a thing. The state is a complex of institutions through which decisions are made and power is wielded.
Some versions of the social action perspective, symbolic interactionism in sociology and pluralism in political science, imply too benign a view of political life. Politics is all about power and struggles for achieving or maintaining power. Within contemporary political institutions, power is very unequally distributed. Politics is also about influence, which can be defined as the indirect exercise of power by convincing those who hold power directly to act in accordance with one's wishes. This is similar to Freund's concept of pouvoir indirect. Freund suggests that the bureaucracy governs en secret (1990:221-222). I agree with that to an extent, except that it applies mainly to only a select number of key public servants (see below). Much of my time and energy while working with the Economic Recovery Commission was devoted to efforts to influence Premier Wells and various Cabinet ministers to act in accord with the ERC's vision and policy proposals. In this, we were often opposed by a group of established senior public servants who saw us as a threat to their power base and who had a different view of development. Each side attempted to forge alliances and to develop strategies and tactics to win the power struggle by influencing the Premier and Cabinet to its point of view (House, 1999). Although constrained by a heavily entrenched institutional context and political culture, the struggle for power is fierce.
My experience also leads me to agree with Weber's and Mills' view that politics and political power have their own dynamics independently of economics and economic power. States in contemporary western democracies are not simply the political superstructures of capitalist economies. Political power is an independent force in its own right, it is not derivative of economic power. The state is not the political arm of the bourgeoisie, it is the political arm of powerful politicians, public servants and behind-the-scenes functionaries. While there are pervasive interconnections between the wielding of political power and the wielding of economic power, "the causal nexus by no means always points in a single direction" (Weber, cited in Gerth and Mills, 1946: 162).
This view accords with Larry Pratt's observations about political leadership, province-building and federal-provincial relations in Alberta. In Pratt's words: "To argue that the Lougheed government is merely the instrument of outside capital is a serious error" (1977: 135). The Lougheed government used the jurisdictional powers of the provincial government, in particular its jurisdiction over its petroleum resources, to effect economic diversification in the Alberta economy during the 1970s. The provincial government of Brian Peckford made similar attempts in Newfoundland and Labrador, but was
476 Canadian Journal of Sociology
constrained by a weaker provincial economy and a lack of jurisdiction over offshore resources.
One area of Max Weber's political sociology that I have reservations about, based on my experience, is his theory of bureaucracy. [2] Rather than Weber's ideal type of bureaucracy being the most efficient form of organization, in contemporary society it has in several ways become ineffective in both the private and public sectors. In a knowledge-based society, which places a premium on well-educated, creative personnel, hierarchical command structures inhibit innovation and act as barriers to progress. Nevertheless, in the provincial public service of Newfoundland and Labrador, such an organizational form is solidly entrenched, and there are strong vested interests which are highly resistant to change. The term "system" is used by people within government itself to refer to this bureaucratic form of organization, with potentially creative lower- and middle-level employees despairing of the degree to which their behaviour is controlled and micro-managed by senior officials. The ERC was a strong advocate of reform toward a more horizontal, team-based approach to public management (Kickert and J¯rgensen, 1995; Salter and Salter, 1997; Goodman, 1998).
The previous section situates my experience in government within the general approach to sociology that resonates best with my experience. In this section, I will discuss briefly seven more specific findings of my "learning by doing" experience in government.
The Locus of Power. It is generally recognized that it is in Cabinet, not the House of Assembly (or, federally, the House of Commons), where political decisions are effectively made. Within the provincial corridors of power in Newfoundland and Labrador, power is even more concentrated in the hands of the Premier and a few key ministers. Under both Brian Peckford and Clyde Wells, these ministers constituted the Planning and Priorities (P & P) Committee of Cabinet. It is there that important decisions were made, with the full Cabinet invariably going along with decisions made in the P & P Committee. Treasury Board was also powerful, with most of its recommendations on financial matters accepted by Cabinet. Other committees of Cabinet, the Resource Policy Committee and the Social Policy Committee, were not par-
2. There is more to Weber's writings on bureaucracy than his famous ideal type, which is my focus here. See, for example, Julien Freund (1990) and various chapters in the collection of readings edited by Peter Lassman and Ronald Spiers (1994). Back to text
Note on the Discipline/Note sociologique 477
ticularly powerful. They acted more to provide information and advice to P & P on various issues. [3]
The great majority of public servants within the provincial government are remote from the locus of decision-making power. Their job, in principle at least (but see the section on negative power below), is simply to carry out directives from Cabinet and implement the policies and programs that Cabinet decrees. There are, however, a few public servants and political advisors who are strategically located such that they can have a strong influence on the Premier and other powerful ministers who constitute P & P and Treasury Board. The Clerk of the Executive Council and Secretary to Cabinet, who is the senior public servant in government, enjoys a particularly influential position through managing the meetings of both P & P and Cabinet. The Secretary to Treasury Board, the Deputy Minister of Finance, and the Secretary to Cabinet for Intergovernmental Affairs are also typically influential. The Premier's Chief of Staff, a political appointment, is also strategically located and the incumbent of that position had a lot of influence on Clyde Wells.
As a general principle, the closer one is to the Cabinet process, the more influential one can be. As Chair of the Economic Recovery Commission, appointed by the Premier and reporting directly to him and the Minister of Development, I was also in an influential position. But I lacked the day-to-day proximity and influence on the whole of the P & P and Cabinet process enjoyed by the Clerk of the Executive Council and other senior officials within the central agencies of government. My role was not as clearly institutionalized within the corridors of power, and could be eliminated without affecting the day-to-day running of government.
Politics and Policies. Another lesson that I have learned is to distinguish between two meanings and uses of the term "policies." Generally, policies refer to the approaches taken by a government to deal with important issues and problems. They include a set of more or less well-articulated principles (which may accord loosely with some general political philosophy or ideology, such as "free enterprise" or "local preference"), and a set of programs designed to achieve the policy objectives.
One objective for designing policies is to contribute to the province's social and economic development. This is the perspective that the ERC took for granted. It is also given lip-service by politicians. However, for the politicians, there is a competing perspective that can conflict with and override the
3. Williams has adopted a somewhat different approach. With a smaller Cabinet, he relies on Cabinet as a whole as the main locus of decision-making. The Economic Policy Committee is more influential than under Wells. This works to my advantage as it is chaired by the Minister, Kathy Dunderdale, to whom I report. Back to text
478 Canadian Journal of Sociology
development principle. This perspective has to do with political popularity, securing votes, and doing whatever it takes to win the next election. Opposition parties have little power. They are almost as remote from the locus of decisionmaking as any ordinary citizen.
Politics within contemporary western societies is all about designing and implementing effective strategies and tactics to win elections and achieve power. Within this context, policies become a means to an end. The party's electoral platform, which contains a number of more or less clearly articulated policy positions, is one of the factors (others being leadership, perceived need for change, party organization) that affect electoral success. [4] From this perspective, a "good policy" is one that will attract votes. On difficult issues, such as the need for fiscal restraint, reductions in health care services, or income security reform, it is often preferable politically to avoid annunciating policy altogether, particularly for a party which is leading in the polls.
The political imperative for policies that are popular can pose a dilemma for agencies oriented towards long-term social and economic development. The two often conflict, with no easy resolution of the tension between them. This poses a major challenge for effective political leadership. There are also a number of other constraints on the political leaders of small coastal provinces.
Constitutional/Jurisdictional Limitations and Opportunities. Provincial governments in Canada enjoy real but limited constitutional and jurisdictional rights. Working in government helps clarify how these constraints play out in terms of actual political behaviour. Coastal provinces are constrained further by not having control over their offshore resources. When Newfoundland joined the Canadian confederation in 1949, it relinquished jurisdiction over its fisheries to the Government of Canada, and the Supreme Court ruled in1983 that the federal government also has jurisdiction over offshore petroleum. It is not my intention here to debate the rights and wrongs of this situation, but to point to the way in which it constrains what provincial leaders can do. Canadian provinces dependent mainly on offshore resources are at a jurisdictional disadvantage within the Canadian confederation. This is essentially a power issue. Marc Lalonde, federal Minister of Mines and Energy at the time, made no bones about it in an interview with me: "It's bad enough dealing with Lougheed, there's no fuckin' way we're going to get into the same situation with Peckford."
4. The Williams government is exceptional in the extent to which its electoral platform, Our Blueprint for the Future (commonly referred to as "the Blue Book") is actually being adhered to in implementing government policies. The senior public service are surprised by this and, for the most part, impressed. Back to text
Note on the Discipline/Note sociologique 479
Brian Peckford's government put a huge effort into fighting for more provincial say in offshore resource control and management, with some limited success in the signing of the Atlantic Accord in 1985. But, until recently, most of the net fiscal benefits of oil production accrued to the federal treasury through reduced equalization payments. To this day, the federal government remains intransigent in its insistence on fisheries management.
Subsequent provincial governments have had to make strategic decisions about how much of their effort should be devoted to fighting the federal government over resource issues, and how much effort to devote to matters which are indisputably under provincial jurisdiction, such as education and social services. Politically, leaders are constrained by a perceived expectation of the electorate that they will be strong in "standing up for our rights" with Ottawa. This dilemma of how to steer a constructive course between battling for more resource control or focusing more on those issues under provincial jurisdiction (discussed further in the section on leadership below), is a second major challenge to provincial politicians in Newfoundland and Labrador. A third challenge is how to deal with multinational corporations.
Multinational Corporations and Dependency in a Small, Coastal Province. Dependency theory and staples theory are helpful for understanding the problems faced by jurisdictions dependent on outside capital for developing their resource industries. Their economic surplus is appropriated from the region, and they have difficulty capturing backward and forward linkages related to resource extraction. But the theories are not very helpful in determining what to do about such a situation. Since the 1970s, successive Newfoundland and Labrador governments have been attempting to negotiate better deals for such new resource developments as the Hibernia and Terra Nova offshore oil fields, and the Voisey's Bay nickel mine. They have had some success in that more employment and business spin-offs have been achieved within the province than in the past. This has not been a difficult adjustment for the multinational oil and mining companies, which have simply moved from an exploitative to a more subtle incorporative approach to the local community. They allow a few more benefits to accrue locally, but ownership and control, profit-taking and most forward and backward linkages still accrue outside the province. This poses a third vexing and perpetual problem to provincial political leaders and their advisors: how to benefit more from resource developments in a global, capitalist economy in which free market rhetoric and ideology are so strong.
Leadership as a Sociological Concept. Working in government has convinced me that leadership is an undervalued and underdeveloped concept within political sociology. For example, two recent textbooks in political sociology, one American and one Canadian, make no reference to leadership in either their table of contents or index (Kourvetaris, 1997; Baer, 2002). As social action
480 Canadian Journal of Sociology
theories point out, however, individuals are not simply the passive pawns of social forces. They can also act back on society and, under certain circumstances, change it. Adding a power dimension to this, we can see that those who hold the most powerful and influential positions within any social formation are best situated strategically to effect change. Through initiating and implementing new policies and programs, political leaders can bring about institutional changes. Leadership, in this sense, is an important sociological concept.
The Economic Recovery Commission itself quite explicitly aimed to be a catalyst for various kinds of change. To the extent that it was able to persuade the Premier and other powerful politicians and officials to its way of thinking, it was effective. To the extent that it was stymied by other powerful players in the political game, notably the old guard within the public service who had vested interests in maintaining the status quo, it was not successful.
The ERC was most successful in initiatives that Premier Wells himself felt strongly about. For example, a proposal establishing a new approach to development through creating twenty regional economic development boards was vehemently opposed by Treasury Board officials. Nevertheless, Wells ignored their objections and proceeded to use the power of his office to effect an institutional change that persists to this day. A more recent example has been the educational reform from a denominational to a public system. This was initiated under Wells and successfully implemented under Brian Tobin. Political leaders can use the power of their offices to bring about significant social changes.
Effective leaders must be ready to take advantage of strategic opportunities when they arise. Danny Williams' recent success in negotiating a better deal for Newfoundland and Labrador on offshore oil revenues is a case in point. While the dramatic gesture of lowering the Canadian flag grabbed media and popular attention, the underlying opportunity that he grasped effectively was the election of a minority government and a promise made by the Prime Minister, Paul Martin, during the heat of a closely contested election campaign.
Negative Power. Politicians and senior public servants can also use their power to obstruct or prevent proposed reforms from occurring. Elsewhere, I described seven techniques used by the old guard within the provincial public service to undermine various initiatives of the Economic Recovery Commission and other agents of reform (House, 1999: 81-88). This constitutes "negative power," the power to prevent things from happening, to obstruct change and thereby preserve the status quo and the vested interests and ways of thinking of those in privileged positions within the established order of things.
Strategies and Tactics. Day-to-day politics is largely about conflict between those attempting to initiate and implement change and those who resist change. Both sides employ various strategies and tactics in trying to play the system to their advantage. The Economic Recovery Commission had to play this game
Note on the Discipline/Note sociologique 481
and become strategic. [5] It had to work out a plan of action whereby it could get things done despite the objections of other powerful people. The approach was known as the "surround 'em strategy", designed to get the support of so many other agencies, such as the federal government, the private sector, and educational institutions that provincial politicians and officials would have to come on side. Tactics refer to shorter term, specific actions which support a particular strategy. For example, in the early 1990s, John Crosbie, who at the time was the federal Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), balked at establishing an organization to be called the Enterprise Network to run a system of regional telecentres because he felt the name was too much like the provincial government's development agency, Enterprise Newfoundland and Labrador. To get Crosbie on side, we made the tactical moves of suggesting to him that the agency could be called the ACOA/Enterprise Network, thereby ensuring that he get greater profile, and that one of the telecentres would be established in his district. These tactics worked. Crosbie came on side and agreed to provide funding through a federal/provincial agreement to be 70 per cent funded by the federal government.
Politics at every level is all about conflicting coalitions of interests devising and implementing strategies and tactics, and counter-strategies and countertactics, in order to achieve policies and actions in keeping with their goals and aspirations. To effect change from within, sociologists have to be willing to learn the art of politics in this sense.
In the larger, longer-term scheme of things, it is also about conflicting ways of thinking. In reflecting on my time in government, I believe that bringing the sociological imagination to bear on a whole range of issues was one of the most important contributions of the Economic Recovery Commission.
As originally formulated by C. Wright Mills, the 'sociological imagination' involves examining social phenomena and personal experience from the point of view of three fundamental questions: What is the structure of this particular society as a whole? Where does this society fit in human history? And: What varieties of men and women now prevail in this society at this period? (Mills, 1959: 6-7). In a more general sense, the sociological imagination or sociological perspective has come to mean a way of thinking about society and human experience that focuses on describing and explaining social behaviour within its historical and social context (see Berger, 1966). It is a way of thinking that
5. We had to be "policy entrepreneurs" ready to take advantage of "policy windows" whenever they opened (Peters, 2002:13). Back to text
482 Canadian Journal of Sociology
distinguishes sociologists from, say, economists and most others involved in public service and politics.
My use of the term 'sociological imagination' here is in this sense of a distinct orientation or way of thinking, but it also attempts to add an applied dimension to the sociological imagination, at least as it informed the work of the two commissions that I chaired. The 'integrated approach' was an attempt to apply the sociological imagination to the practical issues related to economic development in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Integrated Approach. Why should governments be interested in hiring sociologists and others imbued with the sociological imagination? [6] I would argue that the approach entailed by this way of thinking is more democratic, more people-oriented, more flexible and less bureaucratic than the established way of doing things in government. Both the Royal Commission on Employment and Unemployment and the Economic Recovery Commission adopted an "integrated approach" to social and economic development (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1986). This approach was inimical to the established way of doing things in the provincial government, which had become highly compartmentalized into separate departments, each one often acting as a distinct silo jealously protecting its territory. In insisting on the integration of social and economic development, for example in terms of the importance of educational change to support regional economic development, the ERC challenged this fundamentally.
Not only fundamentally, but also, to a significant degree, successfully. The integrated approach has since become part of the rhetoric of governance in Newfoundland and Labrador. Most notably, in publishing its nationally acclaimed Strategic Social Plan in 1998, two years after the ERC had closed down, [7] the provincial government adopted the Commission's approach of "building on community and regional strengths" and "integrating social and economic development" (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1998:9).
While there is still a long way to go before the integrated approach is implemented effectively throughout the provincial public service in Newfoundland and Labrador, its influence in moving things in this direction was perhaps the most pervasive and enduring impact of the Economic Recovery Commission.
6. The sociological imagination is not the sole preserve of professionally trained sociologists. The Economic Recovery Commission also included commissioners and professional staff trained in a variety of other disciplines, including anthropology, community development and resource management, who also exhibited a similar way of thinking. Back to text
7. Although the ERC closed down in 1996, some of its employees carried on working in government. Two former employees, one with a Ph D in sociology and the other with a degree in community development, worked within the system to influence the framing of the Strategic Social Plan. Back to text
Note on the Discipline/Note sociologique 483
Community and Development. Adopting the sociological imagination also focuses attention on the importance of community, and of incorporating people at the community level in the process of bringing about their own development. In developing its initiatives in this area, the ERC was heavily influenced by the earlier work of Memorial University's Institute of Social and Economic Research and its publications on rural communities and regional development. An important part of the ERC's credo was the decentralization of power and decision-making to the regions of the province. It established Enterprise Newfoundland and Labrador Corporation to play a lead role in business and community development, with decision-making decentralized to five regional offices. [8] It supported the formation of the Enterprise Network to bring modern telecommunications technology and expertise to rural areas. Through a task force on community economic development, it initiated the establishment of twenty regional economic development boards (1995).
Unfinished Business: Government Reform and Social Partnership. Despite the progress towards a more integrated and community-inclusive approach to governance, there has been some revisionism and slippage in recent years. The old guard approach is still prominent within the provincial corridors of power. While lip-service support has been paid to notions of public management reform, this has been mainly in the narrow, fiscal meaning of this term, focusing on greater efficiencies and cut-backs, rather than the more democratic, inclusive and empowering approach to public sector management implied by the sociological imagination and the integrated approach.
In a similar vein, the provincial government is now espousing the concept of "social partnership," ostensibly based on the Irish model. But, whereas social partnership in Ireland constitutes an innovative form of governance for implementing an integrated approach to development (House and McGrath, 2004), in Newfoundland and Labrador it plays only an advisory role to government. It is noteworthy that a leading figure in the recent evolution of the Irish model is a sociologist who has worked in Canada (O'Connor, 2002). Newfoundland and Labrador still has a way to go until it achieves the kind of progressive public management reform and social partnership that have proven so successful in Ireland (Sweeney, 1998).
Specific Initiatives. The resistance of the old guard prevented the ERC's efforts at progressive reform on several fronts, including environmental stewardship, income security reform and Aboriginal development. Nevertheless, the Commission did achieve success in many specific initiatives which are consistent with the sociological imagination and its operationalization in the integrated approach.
8. Subsequent to the Commission's demise, this agency was "re-centralized" as a Department of Development and Rural Renewal, but it still had five regional offices. Back to text
484 Canadian Journal of Sociology
Within their wider sociological perspective, the two commissions focused mainly on strengthening the capacity, not only of economic institutions as such, but also of key social institutions in which the economy is embedded. In keeping with the ERC's new opportunities for growth initiative, the economy has become more diversified, with sectors such as information industries, environmental industries, adventure tourism and non-resource-based manufacturing emerging as important growth sectors. Small business support services, both financial and non-financial, have been strengthened and made more readily available to people in all regions of the province. Telecommunications infrastructure, and the capability of rural residents in particular were strengthened through the efforts of the Enterprise Network, under the leadership of a sociologist who was a commissioner with the Economic Recovery Commission.
There have also been marked improvements in education and training, at both school and post-secondary levels. Entrepreneurship is now part of the school curriculum; the regional colleges offer courses in new growth sectors such as aquaculture and tourism; Memorial University operates a centre for technology commercialization and a centre of fisheries innovation. All of these changes are in keeping with the approach and the recommendations of either or both of the Royal Commission and the Economic Recovery Commission. In many ways, the two commissions have been a catalyst that helped make things happen.
In 1986, The Royal Commission on Employment and Unemployment made 242 recommendations. Over the course of the succeeding sixteen years, about half of these recommendations have been implemented. Rather than the government officially adopting the Royal Commission's report and explicitly implementing its recommendations, the process has been more gradual, more subtle and more indirect. It is as though many of the ideas have had to filter their way into the system, be taken up by others, and then eventually implemented through the normal process of the way government and other bureaucratic institutions work. In August of 1999, for example, Memorial University and the provincial government jointly announced the establishment of a Centre for Small Rural Schools, noting that this was an idea originally proposed by the Royal Commission on Employment and Unemployment thirteen years earlier.
Many of the Royal Commission's recommendations were taken up as key initiatives of the Economic Recovery Commission. The way in which they were implemented is informative about the way in which government operates and how the ERC had to learn to "play the system." For example, the Royal Commission recommended that: "The provincial government should establish a Young Newfoundland Conservation Corps which would provide training and meaningful work experience for successive groups of young Newfoundlanders (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1986: 47). No action was taken on this recommendation until 1990, when I asked one of our commissioners to
Note on the Discipline/Note sociologique 485
take the lead in working on it. Initially, we approached the federal government's Green Plan, but were told that our proposal for a conservation corps seemed like a good idea but it unfortunately failed to meet the criteria of any of the 77 programs under the Plan! We then went directly to the Premier and Minister of Development who expressed cautious interest. With that tacit approval, we went ahead and used some of our own limited budget to start up the conservation corps in a small way.
Effecting change from within is largely a matter of strategies and tactics, and of taking advantage of opportunities when they arise. I spent much of 1991 and 1992 on a committee of senior provincial officials working on a strategic economic plan for the province (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1992). Asked to draft a section of the plan on income security reform, I took advantage of the opportunity to include as an action item that government would direct the Economic Recovery Commission to establish a Newfoundland and Labrador Conservation Corps. The ERC was thereby directed to do exactly what it wanted to do in the first place. The Conservation Corps is still flourishing today. This case shows how, by working assiduously from within, constructive social change can be effected.
Trying to effect change from within the system is at times frustrating and discouraging. One cannot always get one's way. While the "batting average" of the Economic Recovery Commission in getting its initiatives through was high compared to other government departments and agencies, I naturally wish that it had been higher. One thing is certain: you have to join the fray if you want to accomplish anything at all.
The discussion thus far has been from the point of view of someone who moved into a senior government position without having pursued a career in the public service. Reporting directly to Premier Wells, I was in as good a position as almost any provincial public servant to be able to have an influence on policy direction and program implementation. It is not surprising, therefore, that I was able to bring my sociological knowledge and perspective to bear to bring about at least some change from within the system.
But what about younger sociologists who might decide to pursue long-term careers within the federal or a provincial public service in Canada? Any single individual's opportunity to effect change is minimal in junior level positions. Most of one's time and energy go into carrying out directives and administering programs according to criteria that are already established by others who are more senior. Nevertheless, there is some freedom of movement in terms of interpretation of guidelines and ways of dealing with clients even at junior-level positions; and some opportunities to have a modest input into a department's
486 Canadian Journal of Sociology
policies and programs. While the impact of any single individual at this level would be small, the cumulative impact of having many more junior public servants with a sociological orientation would be significant.
Furthermore, as one's career progresses into middle-level management positions, opportunities to have a real impact increase accordingly. Those who reach senior positions, as directors, assistant deputy ministers, deputy ministers, CEO's of crown agencies, and, at the very top, "secretaries" to cabinet, treasury board and intergovernmental affairs, come to hold very influential positions. Senior public servants have developed several effective techniques to have a profound influence on public policy formation and implementation (House, 1999: 80-88). One of the ERC's biggest difficulties was that the culture of the old guard was inimical to our efforts. Most of them had been trained in the conventional wisdom of economics and political science in the 1960s and 1970s. The hold that mainstream, neo-liberal economics had on their thinking was particularly strong. They were not open to the alternative, more wideranging and more sociological perspective of the Economic Recovery Commission.
If there had been some sociologists and anthropologists within the old guard, they would have been more supportive of our efforts. If more sociology students entered the public service to balance off the current preponderance of those trained in economics and political science, it could eventually change the thinking of the old guard itself. As they moved up in their careers into senior public service positions, sociologists could indeed have greater influence in effecting change from within the system. This is not the dramatic road to social revolution envisioned by my generation of sociologists during the 1960s. But it is a realistic alternative and, in the final analysis, a more likely way to make a real difference.
One of the ways in which the discipline of sociology can be relevant to the concerns of the twenty-first century is for more of our graduates to become active participants within the federal, provincial and territorial public services that run the affairs of our country. This would both provide challenging careers for sociologists and contribute to moving the public policy agenda in a more balanced, more progressive direction. It would not, however, be enough in itself to ensure progressive change. This would require that a complementary effort be made to be more directly involved in the political arm of government.
The most fundamental practical lesson that I learned during my time in government seems obvious enough when baldly stated. In order to really effect change, one has to have power. While it is true that even the premier and senior ministers are less powerful than their formal positions might indicate — they are
Note on the Discipline/Note sociologique 487
constrained not only by the machinations of their officials and others, notably party insiders, but also by the contingencies of events beyond their control (such as the groundfish crises and moratoria during the Wells years) — they are nevertheless the individuals who are most strategically located to bring about constructive change if they have the will to do it. Premiers, senior ministers and their closest advisors can make things happen, as the Lougheed era in Alberta and the McKenna years in New Brunswick, for example, attest.
Unfortunately, in Canada, our political system operates in such a way that many progressive-thinking people, including those with sociological knowledge and a sociological imagination, eschew direct involvement in politics. Politics is seldom seen as an honourable vocation, in Max Weber's famous term (Weber, 1978 ). But, ultimately, in order to effect change from within you have to hold power within the system; and, in order to hold power, you have to get yourself elected to office and selected as premier or a senior minister. Nonelected, close advisors or senior bureaucrats can be quite influential, but the power-wielding in the final analysis is done by politicians. The most effective situation, I believe, is when there is a close partnership between a political leader with a clear vision for change and a trusted lieutenant able to push that change through the bureaucracy. A recent Canadian example was Frank McKenna and Frances McGuire in New Brunswick (Lee, 2001). I had hoped to play a similar partnership role with Clyde Wells but that was not his style.
Like it or not, it is those who are able to capture the state, the small group of people who mobilize support from within a political party and then turn that into electoral success, that are best positioned to accomplish constructive change from within. Needless to add, most such power elites within Canada today are not of that ilk. Perhaps the closest is Premier Pat Binns of Prince Edward Island, who has a background in community economic development. We need more people with the sociological imagination within the corridors of power as politicians as well as public servants. It is not enough simply to sit on the sidelines and criticize the current establishment. We need to join battle within the political arena.
In this reflective essay, I have argued the case for a greater involvement of sociologists working in government for two important reasons. The first is that such involvement itself can serve as a practical method of sociological investigation. It is a kind of praxis or scholarship of application that offers a way to acquire knowledge that can complement standard sociological methods. My experience using such an approach supports a social actionist view of the state and its relations to economic and other social institutions. This is not a benign version of social actionism, but rather one that acknowledges sharp
488 Canadian Journal of Sociology
power differences between actors and views political life very much as a struggle between competing groups with different values and different vested interests.
The second important reason to advocate for more involvement of sociologists in government is to bring about more progressive change from within the corridors of power themselves. The dominant contemporary ideology is neoliberal economics, tempered by pragmatic political considerations. This is largely because there are more people from this kind of background who choose careers in the public service than those who are guided by the sociological imagination. We need more involvement of those with this perspective at all levels within government to help steer the ship of state in a more socially progressive direction. Ultimately, we also need more sociologists, or at least citizens who have adopted the sociological perspective, to heed the call of politics as a vocation.
Note on the Discipline/Note sociologique 489
490 Canadian Journal of Sociology
