Rethinking retrenchment: North American social policy during the early Clinton and Chretien years

This article addresses social policy decision making during the initial man dates of United States President Bill Clinton and Canada's Prime Minister J ean Chretien with reference to three streams of comparative argumentation: power resources explanations that stress the role of partisan and trade uni on interests; retrenchment propositions that emphasize electoral, budgetary and institutional influences; and feminist critiques that underline patter ns of inequality in welfare state development. The study concludes that par allel trajectories in both countries after 1993, including considerable cha nges in social assistance policy, offer support for a revised retrenchment thesis which would take account of significant gender, class and minority d imensions of welfare state contraction.