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- Title
Radical Institutional Change at a Crown Corporation: the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, 1985-2010.
- Authors
Bird, Malcolm G.
- Abstract
Crown corporations continue to play a significant role in Canada's business sector. While some prominent ones have been privatized over in the last twenty years, a number have staved off privatization and have undergone major organizational transformations. One example of an organization that has undergone such changes is the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO): once a decrepit and inefficient retailer, it is now regarded as a leader in its field. This article draws on a Historical Institutional (HI) framework to help organize its empirical evidence. It will argue that Ontario's history and political culture, the interests of powerful actors and the LCBO's path dependent behaviour, all played significant roles in (re)shaping consumer preferences and influencing the decisions made regarding this Crown corporation's fate at the hands of all Ontario governments, particularly that of the Conservative government of Mike Harris. These province-specific structural factors are what best explain why the Ontario government continues to own and operate a very dynamic retailing entity. The LCBO's internal changes are in line with other efforts to reform or reorganize state institutions through the use of New Public Management (NPM) principles, but for the fact that this entity continues to remain in public hands. The analysis of internal reforms made to or by Crown corporations is a topic that remains relatively unexamined in public policy literature in Canada, and little has been done to link such changes to the development of a Canadian-specific theory explaining institutional change in our contemporary era. This article is a modest attempt to embark on such a dialogue.
- Subjects
ONTARIO; LIQUOR laws; PRIVATIZATION; CONSUMER preferences; NEW public management; LIQUOR Control Board of Ontario
- Publication
Canadian Political Science Review, 2010, Vol 4, Issue 2/3, p1
- ISSN
1911-4125
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.24124/c677/2010156