A Different Kind of State?: Popular Power and Democratic Administration

by Greg Albo (Editor), David Langille (Editor), Leo Panitch (Editor)

A Different Kind of State? An introduction to a form of democratic administration which would reform the Canadian system of government so as to enhance public participation, improve the design of programmes and the delivery of services, and ensure a better working environment within the public sector. Full description

254 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection largely focuses on the experiments of social-democratic governments in response to social movements demanding participation and control over government policy. The two main cases are the Labour Greater London Council government and the provincial NDP governments in Canada. The authors mostly lay out the many difficulties that movements and bureaucracies have faced without suggesting there is some magic solution. Most do suggest that the representative state is itself presently a limit on the development of socialism, or at least on the imagination of social-democratic parties. The most interesting part to me were the attempts of some left-Labour politicians to stretch the possibilities of representation.