Question

what are the effect and implication of globalization on canada's welfare system. Hint answer should be on the impacts of the canadian market

Answer 1

In recent years the impact of globalisation on the welfare state has become a major issue in comparative policy studies. Some empirical studies demonstrate a negative relationship between globalisation and the welfare state, while others show adverse findings or a non-significant relationship. The impact of globalisation, however, can be neither uniform nor unidirectional because of the differences in the political economies of individual welfare states. Welfare regimes reflect qualitative differences in arrangements of welfare institutions and the associated enduring configuration of the welfare nexus, suggesting that welfare regimes may influence the impact of globalisation on the welfare state. We scrutinise the relationship between globalisation and the welfare state by sampling 18 affluent countries from 1980 to 2001 and concentrating on the mediating effect of three welfare regime types. Our study provides a comprehensive examination of the relationship between globalisation and the welfare state using a state-ofthe-art analytical technique – the mixed-effect model. Findings suggest that welfare regimes respond differently to the impact of globalisation and therefore mediate the relationship between globalisation and the welfare state. Globalisation negatively affects the welfare state in a social democratic regime, while it marginally affects the welfare state in liberal and conservative regimes. The recent debate over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the UK’s decision to leave the EU, and the nationalist rhetoric spreading across Europe and the US have all brought the debate over globalization back into the forefront. Certainly an issue as dynamic and far-reaching as globalization is bound to have pro’s and con’s that will remain debatable. However, regardless of where you find yourself on these issues, it is hard to dispute that globalization has had an impact on the sovereignty of the state, particularly the welfare state. First, consider that globalization involves the worldwide integration of cultural, political, and economic elements that creates a link between the here and the there. Second, consider that a welfare state is fundamentally a government that undertakes primary responsibility for the individual and social welfare of its citizenry. The introduction of these new elements poses a challenge to a state’s sovereignty because they challenge the ability of a state to conduct its policies free from outside interference.  The association between globalization and the welfare state is highly complex, and understanding the implications of the ongoing process of economic internationalization for the long-term sustainability of welfare states is a highly relevant topic. Not surprisingly, therefore, there is a huge and ever-growing scholarly literature in the field, which to the unsuspecting newcomer may be frustrating to read in the beginning, because it is full of conflicting and contradictory findings. This article aims to clarify some of the theoretical and empirical contradictions and also to point out a simple fact that is, arguably, not always acknowledged in the pertinent literature: The association between globalization and the welfare state is highly contingent and dynamic, i.e., it changes over time. Depending on which countries and which time periods are studied, scholars might come up with different findings. Also, both globalization and the welfare state are multi-dimensional. Certain aspects of economic internationalization (trade openness, financial liberalization or foreign direct investments to name a few) may be more important than others with regard to welfare state policies. Similarly, the “welfare state” nowadays encompasses and connects a large number of policy fields, and some parts of the welfare state are likely to be affected differently by globalization from others. To provide an overview on the remainder of this bibliographic article: there are listed a number of literature reviews and overview articles on the topic. Three schools of thought that have dominated the scholarly debate in the past decades are introduced: first, the compensation thesis, which claims a positive association between globalization and the expansion of the welfare state, which is juxtaposed to the so-called efficiency thesis, which posits a negative relationship. A third school of thought can be called the globalization skeptics, who claim that effects of globalization on welfare states are weak or even nonexistent, because domestic politics and institutions are more influential. Two brief sections discuss the implications of the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) debate for the future of welfare states in a globalized economy and the relationship between globalization and inequality. More recent debates in the literature concern the topic of policy convergence and diffusion of social policies and the extent to which convergence might be caused by globalization. Furthermore, because the classical literature is concerned with the macro level, recent work studies the implications of globalization on the micro level of individual preferences and attitudes. Finally, although most of the work introduced in this article focuses on advanced industrial democracies, important contributions on the relationship between globalization and the welfare state in the developing world are discussed.