D. Saint-martin - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by D. Saint-martin

Research paper thumbnail of Is the European Union still sui generis? Signals from the White Paper on European Governance

Research paper thumbnail of La politique de la cohésion sociale et l'occultation des différences socioéconomiques : Mondialisation et cohésion sociale

Economie Et Solidarites, 2000

Cet article effectue une comparaison des discours sur la cohesion sociale dans differents context... more Cet article effectue une comparaison des discours sur la cohesion sociale dans differents contextes nationaux. Il montre comment, en important d'Europe l'idee de cohesion sociale maintenant en vogue dans les milieux politiques et parmi les tenants de la « troisieme voie », le gouvernement canadien n'a, en fait, importe qu'une moitie de la discussion et escamote tout le debat sur l'exclusion sociale qui, en Europe, a precede celui sur la cohesion sociale. Deux risques decoulent de cette situation. Premierement, les decideurs risquent de surevaluer les qualites positives de la cohesion sociale et d'oublier que la cohesion est aussi generatrice d'exclusion. Deuxiemement, l'idee de cohesion sociale, avec sa facon binaire de concevoir la societe en termes « d'inclus » et « d'exclus », a pour effet de masquer la multitude des differences qui existent a l'interieur de la categorie des « inclus » et de faire, dans un contexte de restrictions financieres, de l'aide aux « exclus » le seul but legitime de la politique sociale

Research paper thumbnail of Governing without a majority. What consequences in Westminster systems?

Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 2011

This special section showcases four papers first presented at a conference organised in November ... more This special section showcases four papers first presented at a conference organised in November 2010 at the Université de Montréal. The conference’s point of departure was simple: given the political context in several countries with Westminster-style parliamentary institutions, and especially the UK since May 2010, Canada from 2006 until 2010, and Australia in 2010, we asked participants to explore the consequences of minority or coalition Parliaments for the political process. The four articles published here all provide an answer to this question. Contrary to popular impressions and media presentations, experiences with minority and coalition government have been relatively frequent in systems governed by the rules and norms of Westminster. Nonetheless, the embedded notions of politics dominated by the Government and the Opposition mean that such moments in political time are often feared, with minority governments termed ‘hung Parliaments’ in British political discourse. They certainly provoke media attention, sometimes leading to the cliffhanger style of analysis so familiar in Canada that continually asks, ‘will Parliament fall today?’ Surprisingly, however, the consequences of minority and coalition governments in these Westminster systems have not, with a few notable exceptions, attracted sustained attention from political scientists and political sociologists. There is a long tradition and a huge literature, for example, of positing a link between proportional representation and parliamentary outcomes, including those with Westminster-style institutions. Others analyse effects on the strength or stability of government (for example, Cairney, 2011), including the factors that can make minority governments work (Hazall & Paun, 2009,

Research paper thumbnail of Les frontières du social : nationales, transnationales, mondiales ?

Lien social et Politiques, 2001

Research paper thumbnail of Changing citizenship regimes: social policy strategies in the investment state

Research paper thumbnail of The formation of the new entrepreneurial state and the growth of modern management consultancy

Research paper thumbnail of The Watergate Effect

Conflict of interest and public life: cross-national …, 2008

two The Watergate Effect Or, Why Is the Ethics Bar Constantly Rising ... Yet countries such as Ca... more two The Watergate Effect Or, Why Is the Ethics Bar Constantly Rising ... Yet countries such as Canada and Britain, as well as a growing number of sub-national jurisdictions, have been moving in the past few years toward systems that include some external form of ethics regulation ...

Research paper thumbnail of The Watergate Effect: Path Dependence and Self-Reinforcing Processes in the Regulation of Ethics in Politics

Research paper thumbnail of Institutional Friction and Change: The Development of Ethics Rules and the Declining Legitimacy of Congress' Power of Self-Discipline

... These measures were part of the new “ethics edifice” (Mackenzie, 2002: 83) or the “anticorrup... more ... These measures were part of the new “ethics edifice” (Mackenzie, 2002: 83) or the “anticorruption apparatus” (Anechiarico and Jacobs, 1996: 12) created in the aftermath of Watergate. ... Everyone was for ethics, the more the better” (Mackenzie, 2002: p.34). ...

Research paper thumbnail of Rationalism and public policy: Mode of analysis or symbolic politics?

Policy and Society, 2011

This article takes up the distinction between incremental analysis and incremental politics as el... more This article takes up the distinction between incremental analysis and incremental politics as elaborated by Lindblom in his 1979 article. We argue that while rationalism as a mode of analysis has lost much of its prominence, rationalism as symbolic politics is still very much alive and might even be more present today than it was back when Lindblom wrote his famous 1959 article. The recent shift to new modes of governance whereby elected officials are increasingly delegating decision-making powers to independent bureaucracies-what Majone calls the "regulatory state" or what the British describe as "agencification" or quangoisation"-has created an important legitimacy deficit for those non-majoritarian institutions that exercise political authority without enjoying any direct link to the electoral process. In such a context-and in addition to growing public distrust towards partisan politics-rationalist politics is likely to become more rampant as independent bureaucracies lack the legitimacy to publicly recognize the fundamentally incrementalist-and thus values-laden-nature of their decision-making processes. To develop these ideas, the article looks at the case of "supreme audit institutions". We argue that rationalist politics is a mean for SAIs to legitimize their shift from classical financial auditing to performance auditing. In comparison to other independent bureaucracies, they are particularly prone to rationalist politics not just because of their institutional independence, but also because of the tradition of financial auditing and the rise of new public management.

Research paper thumbnail of Half a century of “muddling”: Are we there yet?

Policy and Society, 2011

Half a century after the publication of Lindblom's seminal article "The Science of Muddling Throu... more Half a century after the publication of Lindblom's seminal article "The Science of Muddling Through", we revisit the heritage of incrementalism in this special issue, analyzing its legacy in public policy and public administration. The articles discuss the extent to which recent theoretical developments have transformed the original idea, reinforced it, or possibly rendered it obsolete. In this introductory article, we provide a short overview over the core elements of incrementalism and assess how the concept is used in scholarly publications and research today. We thereby focus on incrementalism as an analytical concept rather then a prescriptive theory. We argue that even after a half a century of "muddling", we are not yet through with incrementalism. Some of the ideas that underpin the concept of incrementalism continue to drive research, often in combination with more recent theoretical approaches to the policy process. After half a century, incrementalism is still part of the policy scholar's tool kit.

Research paper thumbnail of Is Europe still sui generis? Signals from The White Paper on European Governance

Research paper thumbnail of The New Managerialism and the Policy Influence of Consultants in Government: An Historical-Institutionalist Analysis of Britain, Canada and France

Governance, 1998

Following the rise of the New Public Management (NPM) in the 1980s, policymakers increasingly mob... more Following the rise of the New Public Management (NPM) in the 1980s, policymakers increasingly mobilized management consultants from the private sector in the course of reforming their bureaucracies. To describe this situation some coined the term "consultocracy", assuming that the emergence of the NPM created a growing demand for business management expertise in government circles that allowed consultants to penetrate the state and become powerful policy actors. Rather than taking these matters as given, I ask how has it been possible for consultants to become (or not) influential players in the process of administrative reform. It is argued that Britain, and to a lesser extent Canada, have been more likely than France to give rise to a "consultocracy" when implementing NPM reforms in the 1980s because in these two countries, management consultancy emerged earlier and is more strongly developed than in France because of its historical link with accountancy. Whereas French consultants only began to enter public administration in the 1980s, British and Canadian consultants have been involved in the last 30 years in the construction of the state's management capacities. Through their participation in these institution-building processes, they established networks of expertise with the state and acquired the experience of work in government. Over the years, this created opportunities for consultants to make their voices heard in the inner circles of decision-making and made possible the exercise of influence that they are now said to have on policy. The 1980s witnessed a renewed emphasis on reforming the management structures and processes of most Western states (Caiden 1990). These reforms are said to be part of a revolutionary change in public administration that involves a "paradigm shift" from the Weberian model of bureaucracy, dominant for most of the century, to the "new public management" (NPM) or the "new managerialism" (Aucoin 1995; Hood 1991; Zifcak 1994). These are loose terms used as shorthand names for the group of ideas imported from business management that dominated the bureaucratic reform policy agenda of OECD countries since the 1980s (Pollitt

Research paper thumbnail of Expertise

Research paper thumbnail of Building Blocks for a New Welfare Architecture: From Ford to LEGO TM?

… , Working paper 4, Annual meeting of …, 2002

Working Paper #4. Building Blocks for a New Welfare Architecture: From Ford to LEGO TM ? Jane Jen... more Working Paper #4. Building Blocks for a New Welfare Architecture: From Ford to LEGO TM ? Jane Jenson. and. Denis Saint-Martin. Département de science politique. Université de Montréal. jane.jenson@umontreal.ca. denis.saint-martin@umontreal.ca. ...

Research paper thumbnail of New Routes to Social Cohesion? Citizenship and the Social Investment State

Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, 2003

... to respond to life risks encountered by citizen-workers, such as sickness, unemployment and .... more ... to respond to life risks encountered by citizen-workers, such as sickness, unemployment and ... force; security promised social protection for the shortfalls Representation of State Interests Major ... that cannot compete in challenge for states global markets and a society facing threats ...

Research paper thumbnail of Between Regulation, Promotion and Consumption: Government and Management Consultancy in Britain

Research paper thumbnail of Management Consultants, the State, and the Politics of Administrative Reform in Britain and Canada

Administration & Society, 1998

Research paper thumbnail of New Routes to Social Cohesion? Citizenship and the Social Investment State

Canadian Journal of Sociology, 2003

... to respond to life risks encountered by citizen-workers, such as sickness, unemployment and .... more ... to respond to life risks encountered by citizen-workers, such as sickness, unemployment and ... force; security promised social protection for the shortfalls Representation of State Interests Major ... that cannot compete in challenge for states global markets and a society facing threats ...

Research paper thumbnail of Governing without a majority. What consequences in Westminster systems?

Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 2011

This special section showcases four papers first presented at a conference organised in November ... more This special section showcases four papers first presented at a conference
organised in November 2010 at the Universite´ de Montre´al.1 The conference’s
point of departure was simple: given the political context in several countries
with Westminster-style parliamentary institutions, and especially the UK
since May 2010, Canada from 2006 until 2010, and Australia in 2010, we
asked participants to explore the consequences of minority or coalition Parliaments
for the political process. The four articles published here all provide an
answer to this question.

Research paper thumbnail of Is the European Union still sui generis? Signals from the White Paper on European Governance

Research paper thumbnail of La politique de la cohésion sociale et l'occultation des différences socioéconomiques : Mondialisation et cohésion sociale

Economie Et Solidarites, 2000

Cet article effectue une comparaison des discours sur la cohesion sociale dans differents context... more Cet article effectue une comparaison des discours sur la cohesion sociale dans differents contextes nationaux. Il montre comment, en important d'Europe l'idee de cohesion sociale maintenant en vogue dans les milieux politiques et parmi les tenants de la « troisieme voie », le gouvernement canadien n'a, en fait, importe qu'une moitie de la discussion et escamote tout le debat sur l'exclusion sociale qui, en Europe, a precede celui sur la cohesion sociale. Deux risques decoulent de cette situation. Premierement, les decideurs risquent de surevaluer les qualites positives de la cohesion sociale et d'oublier que la cohesion est aussi generatrice d'exclusion. Deuxiemement, l'idee de cohesion sociale, avec sa facon binaire de concevoir la societe en termes « d'inclus » et « d'exclus », a pour effet de masquer la multitude des differences qui existent a l'interieur de la categorie des « inclus » et de faire, dans un contexte de restrictions financieres, de l'aide aux « exclus » le seul but legitime de la politique sociale

Research paper thumbnail of Governing without a majority. What consequences in Westminster systems?

Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 2011

This special section showcases four papers first presented at a conference organised in November ... more This special section showcases four papers first presented at a conference organised in November 2010 at the Université de Montréal. The conference’s point of departure was simple: given the political context in several countries with Westminster-style parliamentary institutions, and especially the UK since May 2010, Canada from 2006 until 2010, and Australia in 2010, we asked participants to explore the consequences of minority or coalition Parliaments for the political process. The four articles published here all provide an answer to this question. Contrary to popular impressions and media presentations, experiences with minority and coalition government have been relatively frequent in systems governed by the rules and norms of Westminster. Nonetheless, the embedded notions of politics dominated by the Government and the Opposition mean that such moments in political time are often feared, with minority governments termed ‘hung Parliaments’ in British political discourse. They certainly provoke media attention, sometimes leading to the cliffhanger style of analysis so familiar in Canada that continually asks, ‘will Parliament fall today?’ Surprisingly, however, the consequences of minority and coalition governments in these Westminster systems have not, with a few notable exceptions, attracted sustained attention from political scientists and political sociologists. There is a long tradition and a huge literature, for example, of positing a link between proportional representation and parliamentary outcomes, including those with Westminster-style institutions. Others analyse effects on the strength or stability of government (for example, Cairney, 2011), including the factors that can make minority governments work (Hazall & Paun, 2009,

Research paper thumbnail of Les frontières du social : nationales, transnationales, mondiales ?

Lien social et Politiques, 2001

Research paper thumbnail of Changing citizenship regimes: social policy strategies in the investment state

Research paper thumbnail of The formation of the new entrepreneurial state and the growth of modern management consultancy

Research paper thumbnail of The Watergate Effect

Conflict of interest and public life: cross-national …, 2008

two The Watergate Effect Or, Why Is the Ethics Bar Constantly Rising ... Yet countries such as Ca... more two The Watergate Effect Or, Why Is the Ethics Bar Constantly Rising ... Yet countries such as Canada and Britain, as well as a growing number of sub-national jurisdictions, have been moving in the past few years toward systems that include some external form of ethics regulation ...

Research paper thumbnail of The Watergate Effect: Path Dependence and Self-Reinforcing Processes in the Regulation of Ethics in Politics

Research paper thumbnail of Institutional Friction and Change: The Development of Ethics Rules and the Declining Legitimacy of Congress' Power of Self-Discipline

... These measures were part of the new “ethics edifice” (Mackenzie, 2002: 83) or the “anticorrup... more ... These measures were part of the new “ethics edifice” (Mackenzie, 2002: 83) or the “anticorruption apparatus” (Anechiarico and Jacobs, 1996: 12) created in the aftermath of Watergate. ... Everyone was for ethics, the more the better” (Mackenzie, 2002: p.34). ...

Research paper thumbnail of Rationalism and public policy: Mode of analysis or symbolic politics?

Policy and Society, 2011

This article takes up the distinction between incremental analysis and incremental politics as el... more This article takes up the distinction between incremental analysis and incremental politics as elaborated by Lindblom in his 1979 article. We argue that while rationalism as a mode of analysis has lost much of its prominence, rationalism as symbolic politics is still very much alive and might even be more present today than it was back when Lindblom wrote his famous 1959 article. The recent shift to new modes of governance whereby elected officials are increasingly delegating decision-making powers to independent bureaucracies-what Majone calls the "regulatory state" or what the British describe as "agencification" or quangoisation"-has created an important legitimacy deficit for those non-majoritarian institutions that exercise political authority without enjoying any direct link to the electoral process. In such a context-and in addition to growing public distrust towards partisan politics-rationalist politics is likely to become more rampant as independent bureaucracies lack the legitimacy to publicly recognize the fundamentally incrementalist-and thus values-laden-nature of their decision-making processes. To develop these ideas, the article looks at the case of "supreme audit institutions". We argue that rationalist politics is a mean for SAIs to legitimize their shift from classical financial auditing to performance auditing. In comparison to other independent bureaucracies, they are particularly prone to rationalist politics not just because of their institutional independence, but also because of the tradition of financial auditing and the rise of new public management.

Research paper thumbnail of Half a century of “muddling”: Are we there yet?

Policy and Society, 2011

Half a century after the publication of Lindblom's seminal article "The Science of Muddling Throu... more Half a century after the publication of Lindblom's seminal article "The Science of Muddling Through", we revisit the heritage of incrementalism in this special issue, analyzing its legacy in public policy and public administration. The articles discuss the extent to which recent theoretical developments have transformed the original idea, reinforced it, or possibly rendered it obsolete. In this introductory article, we provide a short overview over the core elements of incrementalism and assess how the concept is used in scholarly publications and research today. We thereby focus on incrementalism as an analytical concept rather then a prescriptive theory. We argue that even after a half a century of "muddling", we are not yet through with incrementalism. Some of the ideas that underpin the concept of incrementalism continue to drive research, often in combination with more recent theoretical approaches to the policy process. After half a century, incrementalism is still part of the policy scholar's tool kit.

Research paper thumbnail of Is Europe still sui generis? Signals from The White Paper on European Governance

Research paper thumbnail of The New Managerialism and the Policy Influence of Consultants in Government: An Historical-Institutionalist Analysis of Britain, Canada and France

Governance, 1998

Following the rise of the New Public Management (NPM) in the 1980s, policymakers increasingly mob... more Following the rise of the New Public Management (NPM) in the 1980s, policymakers increasingly mobilized management consultants from the private sector in the course of reforming their bureaucracies. To describe this situation some coined the term "consultocracy", assuming that the emergence of the NPM created a growing demand for business management expertise in government circles that allowed consultants to penetrate the state and become powerful policy actors. Rather than taking these matters as given, I ask how has it been possible for consultants to become (or not) influential players in the process of administrative reform. It is argued that Britain, and to a lesser extent Canada, have been more likely than France to give rise to a "consultocracy" when implementing NPM reforms in the 1980s because in these two countries, management consultancy emerged earlier and is more strongly developed than in France because of its historical link with accountancy. Whereas French consultants only began to enter public administration in the 1980s, British and Canadian consultants have been involved in the last 30 years in the construction of the state's management capacities. Through their participation in these institution-building processes, they established networks of expertise with the state and acquired the experience of work in government. Over the years, this created opportunities for consultants to make their voices heard in the inner circles of decision-making and made possible the exercise of influence that they are now said to have on policy. The 1980s witnessed a renewed emphasis on reforming the management structures and processes of most Western states (Caiden 1990). These reforms are said to be part of a revolutionary change in public administration that involves a "paradigm shift" from the Weberian model of bureaucracy, dominant for most of the century, to the "new public management" (NPM) or the "new managerialism" (Aucoin 1995; Hood 1991; Zifcak 1994). These are loose terms used as shorthand names for the group of ideas imported from business management that dominated the bureaucratic reform policy agenda of OECD countries since the 1980s (Pollitt

Research paper thumbnail of Expertise

Research paper thumbnail of Building Blocks for a New Welfare Architecture: From Ford to LEGO TM?

… , Working paper 4, Annual meeting of …, 2002

Working Paper #4. Building Blocks for a New Welfare Architecture: From Ford to LEGO TM ? Jane Jen... more Working Paper #4. Building Blocks for a New Welfare Architecture: From Ford to LEGO TM ? Jane Jenson. and. Denis Saint-Martin. Département de science politique. Université de Montréal. jane.jenson@umontreal.ca. denis.saint-martin@umontreal.ca. ...

Research paper thumbnail of New Routes to Social Cohesion? Citizenship and the Social Investment State

Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, 2003

... to respond to life risks encountered by citizen-workers, such as sickness, unemployment and .... more ... to respond to life risks encountered by citizen-workers, such as sickness, unemployment and ... force; security promised social protection for the shortfalls Representation of State Interests Major ... that cannot compete in challenge for states global markets and a society facing threats ...

Research paper thumbnail of Between Regulation, Promotion and Consumption: Government and Management Consultancy in Britain

Research paper thumbnail of Management Consultants, the State, and the Politics of Administrative Reform in Britain and Canada

Administration & Society, 1998

Research paper thumbnail of New Routes to Social Cohesion? Citizenship and the Social Investment State

Canadian Journal of Sociology, 2003

... to respond to life risks encountered by citizen-workers, such as sickness, unemployment and .... more ... to respond to life risks encountered by citizen-workers, such as sickness, unemployment and ... force; security promised social protection for the shortfalls Representation of State Interests Major ... that cannot compete in challenge for states global markets and a society facing threats ...

Research paper thumbnail of Governing without a majority. What consequences in Westminster systems?

Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 2011

This special section showcases four papers first presented at a conference organised in November ... more This special section showcases four papers first presented at a conference
organised in November 2010 at the Universite´ de Montre´al.1 The conference’s
point of departure was simple: given the political context in several countries
with Westminster-style parliamentary institutions, and especially the UK
since May 2010, Canada from 2006 until 2010, and Australia in 2010, we
asked participants to explore the consequences of minority or coalition Parliaments
for the political process. The four articles published here all provide an
answer to this question.