A Historical Institutional Perspective on Public Policy and Employment Insurance in Rural Newfoundland

• Main Author: Adam Vickers
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Canada; Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.660.4723; http://journals.library.mun.ca/ojs/index.php/MP/article/viewFile/191/135/

Why does Employment Insurance play such a dominant role in rural Newfoundland communities? This article gives readers a brief overview of the history of public policy making in rural Newfoundland and Labrador and how it has contributed to the dependence of E.I. It looks at the Smallwood Era of development, a history of the fishery with regards to E.I development, and a brief overview of the failed decentralized decision making model for rural Newfoundland and Labrador during the 1990s. Using Historical Institutionalism the article shows how the evolution of the institution of employment insurance and how it transformed to become an income supplement program instead of its original purpose of an employment insurance program. This essay will use historical institutionalism to analyze the development of public policy in rural Newfoundland over the last sixty years. Through the development of institutions such as Employment Insurance, “make-work ” projects, and various expansion mechanisms used for the fishery, the Governments of Canada and Newfoundland and Labrador have created an informal structure of social behaviour that has prevented the development of rural communities by