Overpromising and Underperforming?: Understanding and Evaluating New Intergovernmental Accountability Regimes

Public reporting has been used experimentally in federal-provincial relations since the mid-1990s as an accountability mechanism to promote policy effectiveness, intergovernmental cooperation, and democratic legitimacy. Our understanding of how well it is working, however, remains limited to very specific policy sectors – even though this information is essential to policy makers in Canada and beyond. Overpromising and Underperforming? offers a deeper analysis of the use of new accountability mechanisms, paying particular attention to areas in which federal spending power is used.

This is the first volume to specifically analyse the accountability features of Canadian intergovernmental agreements and to do so systematically across policy sectors. Drawing on the experiences of other federal systems and multilevel governance structures, the contributors investigate how public reporting has been used in various policy fields and the impact it has had on policy-making and intergovernmental relations.

Peter Graefe is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at McMaster University.

Julie M. Simmons is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Guelph.


Linda A. White is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and the School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto.