Public Policy Researcher Active at All Levels
Professor Robert Young
As one of the foremost experts on municipal governance, Robert Young is leading a seven-year exploration into policy-making in municipalities. It is a natural extension of the body of work he has created during his career at Western since coming to teach here in 1981.
The current project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for $2.5 million - the largest grant available in the social sciences. At the same time as he and his team were compiling the comprehensive grant submission, Young was honoured as a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Multilevel Governance in recognition of his leadership, research and excellence within this field.
For the SSHRC study, Young is leading a collective of over 80 researchers from almost every Canadian university, who are looking at more than 70 cities and smaller municipalities across Canada. Additional team members from seven other countries have brought in outside views on inter-governmental relations.
In total, about 110 case studies are being developed to see what conclusions can be drawn. The group is seeking to answer two main questions at the municipal level: do inter-governmental negotiations make for better policy, and does business dominate municipal decision-making?
“Our goal is to better understand alternatives and trends, particularly because our cities are now taking on more functions than ever before,” says Young. “We trust that our findings will be able to provide municipalities with information to improve policy-making processes.”
Young began his career in research in the early 1970s while doing master’s studies at McGill. “The talk was all about the sovereignty movement, which was in its early days,” Young explains. “It occurred to me that if Quebec would separate, the future would depend on how English Canada handled the situation, so I wrote my thesis on ‘The Prospects for Quebec Independence: A Study of National Identification in English Canada’.”
Following doctoral work completed at Oxford University, he returned to Canada and accepted a position at Western. “Western offered a collaborative atmosphere that was responsive and flexible,” says Young. “If you have a good idea, you can find people here to support it. I found that one could take off with an idea and make fast progress, like tossing the long bomb in football.”
Among the many new ideas that the Department of Political Science supported was the development of its undergraduate diploma in local government into a Masters of Public Administration. “We had a visionary leader in the person of Allan O’Brien, Western was supportive, and we got seed money from the province. Since welcoming the first students in 1990-91, Western has become the best place in the country to study local government administration, with the strongest faculty complement in Canada.”
As for his own research directions, Young did a lot of research and public speaking on the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement in the late 1980s. After that, he revisited Quebec secession and ended up writing an extensive book on what would happen if there was a “yes” vote in a Quebec referendum.
“One of the most prized possessions that I have from that time is a copy of my own book on Quebec secession with two signatures that I was not expecting.” – Robert Young, D.Phil.
“There was a tremendous amount of propaganda, so my research was able to inform the public on both sides of the issue, in a balanced way,” he recalls. “In fact, one of the most prized possessions that I have from that time is a copy of my own book on Quebec secession [The Secession of Quebec and the Future of Canada] with two signatures that I was not expecting.
“The book had been translated into French and I was in Montreal for the night of the referendum in 1995 as an invited commentator for Radio-Canada. I was chatting with Bernard Landry, who was the PQ government’s Deputy Premier, and he signed my book, saying very kind things. Then I turned around and there was Claude Ryan, a former Quebec Liberal Party leader and strong Federalist; he also signed my copy with a flattering comment. I was very pleased that both sides of this hotly debated issue viewed my work as credible and valuable.”
Now with secession rearing its head again, potentially impacting Canada and also a topic within many other countries, Young remains in demand as a world renowned expert. “I’ve spoken to dozens of political parties, business groups, and academics on this topic in a number of countries,” Young mentions. “Most recently, I was invited to be part of an expert review panel in the UK to help determine the recipients of large research grants on Scottish independence offered by the British equivalent of SSHRC.”
