LIST OF PANELS

The general objectives of this open panel proposal are as follows: 1) To identify and engage with researchers outside of known networks who are interested in and conducting research into the key questions this panel is concerned with; 2) provide a forum in which ongoing work aligned to the themes of this panel can be presented and identify possibilities for collaboration; 3) based on the foregoing assess possibilities for research collaboration through grants applications, edited book, and/or a special issue of a journal. The key research questions posed are: What do the historical activities of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in economic  development teach us about the public purpose and public capacities? To what extent have SOEs supported local and municipal level public programs and services (transit etc.)? How can (new or existing) SOEs best support Canadian competitiveness and innovation (SOEs as entrepreneurs, risk takers, and innovators)? What is the appropriate scope for enhanced SOE involvement in advancing the public interest?Which sectors are ripe for enhanced SOE involvement (innovation, manufacturing, high tech, clean energy, etc.)? To what extent have municipalities recaptured/ remunicipalised previously privatized services and amenities? What factors drove such initiatives?What can be learned from historical and contemporary case studies where there has been an agenda to democratize the state whether sub-national or national?In practical terms, how have the ideas associated with participatory democracy be applied to the policy work and program implementation functions of the administrative state? How have citizens as end-users, public sector unions, and civil society organizations (stakeholders) contribute to co-creation and co-production of public services and public goods? What knowledge/expertise is valued in policy work and program delivery? Is there an opportunity to pursue a democratization of expertise? What strategies allow civil society organizations to participate in concertation/partnership/co-construction without losing their democratic or representative functions? What ways of articulating the public interest are related to the success and/or failure of contemporary campaigns to expand the public sphere? The scientific relevance of the proposed panel and the broad array of research questions are intended to interrogate how state capacities can be designed and employed toward de-commodification in the economic sphere and democratization in the political sphere. 

Forty years of neoliberal restructuring and retrenchment have eroded the capacity of public sector institutions and have cemented a view that the common interest is best forwarded by efficient private actors subject to market discipline. The promotion of states as robust actors embodying a broader public interest in social and economic development was seen as both naïve and counterproductive. Yet the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008 and the 2020 COVID-19 crisis upended these established expectations and activities, at least in the short-term, while exposing the impact of fiscal restraint and privatization through eroded public capacity.  In the case of the GFC, an initial surge of state intervention and stimulus was quickly replaced by years of austerity set amid popular demand for the renewal of projects like industrial policy, labour market regulation, and environmental protection. The enormity of the impact of the pandemic crisis on the human condition, and its economic consequences, demands a further refining of such ideas. Decades of privileging private and individual purposes has produced compelling reasons to re-build a sense of the public purpose and to create the institutions necessary for operationalizing such ambitions. As a result of these crises, demands are now being made to “bring the state back” in ways that are sensitive to the problematic of unbridled individualism and marketization, and the attendant political economic consequences.

This Panel aims to understand the opportunities and limits of contemporary projects to rebuild states in the twenty-first century. The key objectives are threefold. First, to identify the new policy options, found both in academic thinking and policy experimentation that demonstrate promise in building state leadership. Second, a fundamental re-articulation of the state’s role in economic development will require the development of new administrative capacities. Toward this end, papers are invited which address any of three broad themes:1)Catalyzing the State: rebuilding the state’s leadership role; 2) Reimagining the State: the work of the public service and public services; and 3) Supporting a Pro-Public Politics: the forms and strategies needed to produce and protect a re-built public sector.