Contested federalism: The intergovernmental struggle for regulatory control of the petroleum marketplace in the United States and Canada, 1945--1981

This dissertation studies the way in which the institutional structures of central governments shape alterations in relative power between the central and constituent unit governments of federal systems. The insulated policymaking structures in Ottawa are linked in this work to decentralizing trends in Canada and compared to the linkage between the fragmented perviousness of the legislative branch in Washington and the centralization of the American federal system. The analysis applies the historical institutionalism approach to the topic in the context of the two postwar disruptions to the petroleum sector that simultaneously confronted the United States and Canada: the soft market problem of the 1950s and the oil crises of the 1970s. The use of a single sector emphasizes the reconfiguration of the state's regulatory framework for the sector after a disruption to the established patterns of interaction among participants, showing the sequence through which a state increases its powers via a national program. A theoretical contribution is made to the historical institutionalism literature by putting sectoral alterations into this broader context, showing changes in relative powers between government levels of the federal system as the state expands. The model argues that the central government institutions shape how regional interests, which are necessary for the successful implementation of a national program, are absorbed into the policymaking process. The government actors, serving as brokers of regional interests, carry dual functions insofar as they simultaneously represent the governments of either the central or the constituent unit governments. The historical evidence shows how the policymaking institutions of Washington drew negotiations over into the legislative branch, allowing the central government to create and impose a national program, resulting in a centralization of relative power. In contrast, Ottawa was forced by institutional constraints to create ad hoc sites for hosting the contentious debates over national policies, drawing in the provincial governments as regional representatives. Having entered the policymaking process, the provinces ensured that Ottawa's expansion of regulatory controls was either limited in scope or entailed implementation through intergovernmental cooperation. As a result, the imposition of these national programs did not have centralizing effects upon the Canadian federal system.