An Analysis of Canadian Federalism

Abstract

The development of explanatory political theory is rendered difficult by the absence of commonly accepted standards of adequacy for persons-public officials, citizens, and social scientists-who must make sense of events in the political world for their daily activities. Such a difficulty is socially harmless if the disputes are confined to social scientists. When public officials attempt to make and remake institutions and formulate policies on the basis of an implied theory, errors in their predictions are, however, likely to be misinterpreted as crises or as conspiracies on behalf of vested or misguided interests. The development of a commonly accepted and reliable theory of political rule is a sine qua non of political well-being. There are no grounds for believing that such a reliable theory about the organization and operation of federalism in Canada has yet been fashioned. This paper will attempt to develop the rudiments of a more reliable theory about the organization and operation of Canadian federalism. It will use the assumptions and logic of a public choice approach to political analysis.' It will begin by contrasting two major assumptions in prevailing scholarship about Canadian federalism, with two differing assumptions of public choice theory on the nature of political order and the competence of public decisionmakers. In a second section, it will build a public choice view of federalism, before in subsequent sections, analyzing the constitutional and institutional arrangements for the provision of collective