Multiculturalism and the State: Globalization, National Protection, and the Role of Social Policy in Québec and Canada

This dissertation is an historical comparative examination of economic globalization (i.e., global market integration) effects on state political economic capacities in Québec and Canada. The central goal of the project is to understand how global market integration has altered the policy capacities of state institutions. Specifically, this dissertation examines Canadian multiculturalism and Québec interculturalism as social policy responses to ethno-cultural diversification resulting from increased global market integration. I argue that increased global market integration decreases state capacity to enact economic protections, but not the demand for protections from national populations. The result of these changes (ethno-cultural diversification and decreased economic policy capacity) is a shift in social policy capacity toward control and management of national cultural definitions, symbols, and structures of meaning. That is, as state capacity to meet national protectionist demands through economic policy decreases as a result of global market integration, the state must seek out alternative means of meeting national protectionist demands. These means are found in the management and control of national culture. The dissertation further concludes that this political re-orientation enables national populations to increases their relative power with respect to the state. This has placed the state in a precarious position between the powerful demands of global market proponents and the increasingly powerful demands of national populations for protections from the adverse affects of market integration.