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The politics of loss imposition : health care reform in Ontario and Alberta

University of British Columbia

Why are some provincial governments more successful at imposing loss than others? This thesis deals with interprovincial differences in loss imposition strategies by examining health care reform in the 1990s. To explain this variance, this thesis argues that loss imposition capacity is affected by the strength of opponents and how skilful a government is in neutralizing opponents. To test this hypothesis, it analyzes the health care reform experiences of the Ontario Progressive Conservative and the Alberta Progressive Conservative governments. It emphasises how the two provincial governments used different political strategies to deter opposition to its health care reform policies. Further, it describes why the opposition each government faced was so inherently different. A comparison of the two cases reveals that the Alberta government was much more successful at imposing loss. The empirical findings presented here have several implications for future study of provincial public policy and ‘the politics of loss imposition’.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-09-30

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/13386

Political Science

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/