POL382H1S L0101

Topics in Canadian Politics

Diversity and the Welfare State: Canada in Comparative Perspective

Themes

The Faculty of Arts and Science have decided that all Summer 2020 F and Y courses will be offered remotely rather than in person. A final determination of the delivery mode for S courses will be made by June 13.

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This course explores this intersection of diversity and the welfare state. How does diversity matter, if at all, for welfare state spending and attitudes toward welfare state spending? Do diverse places redistribute less than homogenous places? Is support for redistribution lower in diverse versus homogenous places? Do people prefer to redistribute more to others who are like them? How do different types of diversity matter differently? Finally, how does the partisan political arena fuel and/or respond to attitudes toward diversity and the welfare state?
In the first half of this course, we ask these questions in the comparative context; in the second half, we situate Canada as a particular case. The goal of this course is to give students the understanding needed to identify comparative patterns in how diversity affects welfare state spending and attitudes toward the same, and to identify in which ways Canada does and does not conform to those patterns.

Texts

TBA

Format and Requirements

TBA