Building Capacity for Alternative Knowledge

Building Capacity for Alternative Knowledge: The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives __________________________________________________________ WILLIAM K. CARROLL*, DAVID HUXTABLE** University of Victoria

“Abstract” This article presents a case study of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) – the main left-oriented think tank of national scope in Canada. We first recount the development of the organization from 1980 to present, emphasizing the challenges it has faced in building capacity for alternative knowledge production and mobilization. We next locate the CCPA within its neighborhood of online communicative relations, which comprises a region of the broader political field in which neoliberalism has been hegemonic since the 1980s. Against this hegemony, the CCPA’s project has been to expose the problems of neoliberalism, on the basis of applied research, and to advance a project of social-democratization by engaging with the general public and cultivating counterpublics in civil society. The emancipatory project motivating the CCPA has set it on a trajectory distinct from that of conventional think tanks, whose practices and networks facilitate elite policy-planning in and around the state. “Résumé” Cet article présent une étude de cas du Centre Canadien de Politiques Alternatives (CCPA) – le groupe principal de réflexion de gauche d’envergure nationale au Canada. Premièrement, nous retracons les débuts de cette organisation depuis les années quatre-vingts jusqu’à présent. Nous mettons l'accent sur les défis dans le développement et la dissémination de connaissances alternatives. Puise, on localise le CCPA dans le contexte des relations de communication en ligne qui comprend un secteur du plus grand domaine politque dans lequel le néoliberalisme domine depuis les années quatre-vingt. En contre-partie de cette hégémonie, le projet de la CCPA a exposé les problèmes du néolibéralisme, en recherche appliquée, et fait progresser la socialdémocratie, en engageant le grand public et en encourageant les critiques de la société civile. Le projet galvinisateur du CCPA l’a amené dans une trajectoire differente de celle des groupes de réflexion conventionnels dont les practiques et les réseaux facilitent la planification de la politique de l’élite dans et autour de l’état. 93

William K. Carroll, David Huxtable Introduction: Think Tanks and the CCPA Over the course of the twentieth century think tanks gained increasing importance in capitalist democracies as places where research and policy development could occur, independently of direct control by states and corporations. James McGann (2011) has identified 6480 currently extant think tanks, worldwide, 30% of which are in North America, although there is a great discrepancy between the number of think tanks in the US (1816) and the number in Canada (97). As is well documented, think tanks have generally been funded by and inclined toward the principal propertied interests – the corporate sector – reflecting the structural power that resides in capitalist control of both productive economic enterprise and financial resources (Carroll 2004; cf. Brownlee 2005; Burris 2008; Domhoff 2014). Think tanks furnish ‘a crucial infrastructure and increasingly professional transfer capacity for their class based constituencies’ (Fischer and Plehwe 2013: paragraph 10), combining expertise in research, consulting, lobbying and advocacy, in a multifaceted practice of political and social ‘knowledge shaping’ (Bonds 2011). In Canada, Carroll and Shaw (2001) have traced the development of a ‘neoliberal policy bloc’, composed of several key policy-planning groups, whose boards of directors form a dense network of interlocks with each other and with the boards of the largest corporations in Canada. Particularly significant has been the rise of ‘advocacy think tanks’ (Abelson 1995) such as Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, which have played influential roles in championing the neoliberal policy agenda ‘market-driven politics’ (Leys 2001). Neoliberalism is an evolving and variegated paradigm, yet at its centre is ‘the project of imposing market-disciplinary regulatory forms’ (Brenner et at 2009:183) upon political and social life – thus the priorization of free markets, privatized assets, the free flow of capital, ‘consumer choice’ and even the ‘right to work’, in preference to public programs, goods and investments, regulations on business, and the collective rights of workers. But regardless of whether they are strident advocates of neoliberalism or more moderate voices, think tanks of the right and centre-right contribute to the hegemony of corporate capital – its prestige, perceived legitimacy and the credibility of procorporate policies. These groups function as embedded elements of a social network, within which neoliberal business activism has taken shape and form. Ties between the corporate world and the world of policy groups – and the direct participation of corporate directors in policygroup work – enable a continuing conversation in which political frames can be aligned and adjusted, effecting a moving consensus between capitalists and their organic intellectuals (Carroll and Shaw 2001). The field of policy formation, however, has not been entirely monopolized by business interests. Alternative policy communities of practice have also developed, nationally and transnationally, as labour movements, left intellectuals and critical social movements have created capacity not only for collective action but for the frameworks of knowledge that might enable such action to go beyond immediacies of protest and resistance (Carroll 2014). In Canada, it was in the Great Depression of the 1930s that a community of alternative thinking and practice emerged in the League for Social Reconstruction. Founded in 1931, the League was a formation of left intellectuals mainly in Montreal and Toronto whose work helped establish the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). Indeed, the CCF’s founding document, The Regina Manifesto (1933) was authored by some of the League’s core members (Horn 1980). But the League, and groupings of its kind, were distinct from think tanks – they lacked formal organization, budgets, physical plant, etc. – though they sometimes produced similar products (as 2013/2014, No. 70

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in the League’s Social Planning for Canada (1935) and Democracy Needs Socialism (1938), and its stewardship of the monthly Canadian Forum). In general, alternative policy groups (APGs) – think tanks of the left – have been slow to emerge – reflecting the difficulties in moving from subalternity to counter-hegemony – and have tended to focus on national theatres of political contention. In the United States, for instance, conventional think tanks began to form early in the 20th century, but it was only in 1963 that two refugees from the Kennedy administration founded the first APG. The Institute for Policy Studies1 has been a leading source of alternatives ever since, and was instrumental in the founding of the Transnational Institute in 1973, a key APG that operates globally from its offices in Amsterdam.2 In Canada, it was not until 1980 that an APG with a broad national mandate formed that could be considered comparable in any sense to well established conventional think tanks such as CD Howe or the Fraser Institute. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has since developed as the main APG in Canada. In the process, it has made significant contributions to the formation of what we will term a social-democratic community of practice, committed to reforming and possibly transforming Canada into a more just, ecologically sustainable society. Analytical Framework This paper is part of a larger project examining the role of the CCPA as a contributing force to the social democratic community of practice in Canada. Future papers will examine in more depth the challenges that face APGs such as the Centre face in contesting the hegemony of neoliberalism. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the CCPA and offer an initial analysis of its development. This case study relies on documents, interviews with staff, and Internet hyperlinks to locate the CCPA first within a historical narrative and then within the wider political field. Our research is framed within a neo-Gramscian perspective that complements Carroll and Shaw’s (2001) analysis of right-of-centre policy groups and neoliberal hegemony, mentioned earlier. To examine how the CCPA has intervened in the struggle against neoliberal hegemony and for an alternative paradigm, we make use of several interdependent concepts: · Community of practice – a diverse formation of people and groups who share common perspectives, methods and objectives in their political and cultural work, · Social democratization as a complex political, economic and cultural process, · General public and alternative counterpublics. Our research objective is to explore how the CCPA has dealt with the unique challenges posed for think tanks of the left, in striving to develop a social-democratic community of practice, through engaging with the general public and cultivating counterpublics. The CCPA can be viewed as contributing to a process of social democratization, as theorized by Mouzelis: a Left political project for “the deepening of democratization – understood here as both the further spread of rights downwards, and as the progressive decolonization of social and cultural spheres by the economic one” (Mouzelis 2001, 454) – a project that reaches well beyond the constituency of organized labour and the institutional apparatus of the welfare state (Carroll and Ratner 2005). The challenge facing the CCPA is to produce and mobilize alternative knowledge3 in ways that strengthen social democratization. We would argue that this means more than the momentary securing of advantage within the mass media spotlight or the political arena, and we have identified at the CCPA a long-range, Canadian Review of Social Policy/Revue canadienne de politique sociale 95

William K. Carroll, David Huxtable two-pronged process of community development that attends both to the political mainstream and to the margins - a dual strategy, if you will, that our interview data suggests the CCPA staff are very conscious of. The latter – progressive social movements and cultural currents of various sorts – ought not to be seen as permanently marginalized. Indeed, advocacy of policy alternatives often means promoting ideas that may seem marginal today so that over time they become mainstream. Still, it is often within activist communities, which tend to occupy positions on the margins, that alternative political thinking is most coherent. In this regard, it is helpful to distinguish, from the mainstream general public, a field of alternative counterpublics, consisting of “parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs” (Fraser 1990, 67). In pursuing what we have identified as a twopronged process of mainstream outreach and counterpublic community development, the CCPA seeks to maintain and to strengthen their standing within the mainstream of public opinion (including communicative ties to media, universities and other knowledge institutions), and the interlinked counterpublics on the margins – the labour movement, other movements for social justice and ecological sustainability, progressive teachers and students and alternative media. Such a dual strategy enables them to simultaneously have a conversation with the general public and foster a social democratic community of practice.. This means developing communicative relations with a host of movements and alternative media – nurturing a network within civil society that is fundamentally different from the elite policy networks of conventional think tanks, in constituency, social vision and participatory praxis. Through engagement with the general public and with counterpublics, APNs like the CCPA create space, in civil society and within state organizations, for alternatives to a neoliberal paradigm which has become well entrenched in popular culture and policy circles, despite manifest shortcomings. Putting socialdemocratization at the centre of the project implies methodologies that are empowering and participatory, that enlarge the sphere of democracy across a whole range of contexts, that foster an engaged, informed citizenry and a vibrant public sphere, and that build common ground across the specific concerns of movements striving for social and economic justice and for ecological health. As an organization of organic intellectuals promoting social democratization, an APG like the CCPA faces unique challenges in producing and circulating the texts that carry alternative political discourses to mainstream and counterpublics. A Brief Analytical History of the CCPA A Fledging Start In May 1980, a group of progressive academics and union activists met to discuss how the rise of the new right could be countered. Its founding convention in December of 1980 mandated the Centre to “undertake and sponsor critical analysis of existing… policy…[regarding] the social, economic, and cultural needs of the Canadian people…” and to “work closely with like-minded bodies” while establishing its research priorities and disseminating its reports (CCPA 2005, 1213). It is clear from recollections of those involved that the CCPA was initially a defensive project, designed to counter the neoliberal project by making the case to retain the basic terms of the post-World War II accord between capital and labour, which were institutionally condensed in the Keynesian welfare state. To meet these goals, the CCPA employed traditional methods of knowledge production and mobilization to combat the neoliberal program. It organized 2013/2014, No. 70

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conferences, published pamphlets, booklets and reports written by volunteer researchers, and attempted to attract media attention through press releases. Political debate in the late 1980s and into the 1990s was dominated by the efforts of the ruling Progressive Conservatives to establish “free trade” agreements, first with the US, and subsequently with the both the US and Mexico. This process of reorienting the Canadian state’s macroeconomic policy framework toward an outward-facing continentalism had been underway for some time (McBride and Shields 2007). In 1985 the Foreign Investment Review Agency was converted into Investment Canada (McBride and Shields 2007); similarly, the federal areas of air transport, finance, energy, and telecommunications all underwent forms of deregulation political projects of policy harmonization necessary for continental integration.4 The debates over free trade helped crystalize the CCPA’s project and form its earliest alliances. Free Trade was always about much more than trade; such agreements act as a critical component in what Stephen Gill refers to as the “new constitutionalism of disciplinary neoliberalism” (Gill 1998). Many Canadians understood that investment and policyharmonization provisions would push Canadian public policy toward weaker social programs and trade union rights while enhancing the structural power of capital. The massive and wideranging threat posed by Free Trade brought the CCPA into alliance, beyond the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), with left-nationalist groups such as the Pro-Canada Network, and the Council of Canadians. However, the Centre’s ability to support these groups was hampered by its limited operation of one office staffed by only an executive director, and entirely dependent upon funding from several CLC affiliates. By 1987, it was close to collapse, both financially and organizationally, and a sub-committee of the board tabled a report that foresaw closure unless massive funding could be found (CCPA, 102). Diane Touchette remembers that her most important task as administrator in the late 1980s was deciding which bills could go unpaid each month (CCPA 2005,14). In the early 1990s new leadership at the Centre successfully pushed unions to increase their grants and convinced a number of non-union organizations to take out memberships, enabling a stabilization of finances (CCPA 2005, 14). This growth in membership, as well as sales of publications, and union donations allowed the CCPA to hire its first in-house researcher, Bruce Campbell, in 1991. It is not unreasonable to suggest that the bruising, and unsuccessful struggle for organized labour and its allies over free trade was a motivating factor in a renewed commitment to the CCPA. Building Capacity Table 1 tracks three key indicators that highlight the development of the CCPA as a site of alternative knowledge production and mobilisation across three decades – the 1980s (comprising neoliberal ascendance and the CCPA’s fledging appearance on the political scene), the 1990s (neoliberal consolidation and the CCPA’s own consolidation as a viable alternative policy group) and 2000s (a time of gathering crisis for neoliberalism and of elaboration and innovation for the CCPA and its allies, as movements of opposition proliferated). Over the decades, sheer volume of CCPA documents included in the Summons database increased steadily. The most significant factor in the growth of major projects appears to be enhanced structural capacity, particularly in the development of provincial offices, beginning in 1996. The returns on these efforts appear most dramatically in the third period, when the structural developments of the 1990s enabled Canadian Review of Social Policy/Revue canadienne de politique sociale 97

William K. Carroll, David Huxtable substantial expansion in initiatives on a diverse range of issues. The Table reflects more than a quantitative increase in intellectual output, but an increasing diversity of concerns. The growing breadth of projects in turn signals a number of new partnerships and coalitions with other organizations concerned with social justice, and thus, the expansion of a social democratic community of practice in which the Centre plays a leading intellectual role. Table 1. Development of the CCPA across three periods of neo-liberalism Indicator Volume of knowledge production (change over the decade)

Ascendancy of neoliberalism (1980s)

Consolidation of neoliberalism (1990s)

Gathering opposition and crisis of neoliberalism (2000ff)

10-19 (1981/82-1991/92)

19-44 (1991/92-2001/02)

44-114 (2001/02-2011/12)

Major ongoing publications and projects

Currents quarterly newsletter Focus on distributing research produced by affiliated academics

The Monitor (1994) (online in 1996) Alternative Federal Budget (1995) Education Project (1996, (Education Monitor) Behind the Numbers (online, 1998) Trade & Investment Research Project (1999)

Our Schools/Our Selves becomes a CCPA publication (2000) Nova Scotia Alt. Prov. Budget (2002) Economic Security Project (2004-09) Growing Gap (2006) BC Poverty Reduction Coalition (2008) Climate Justice Project (2009) Labour Matters (2011) BC Living Wage for Families Campaign (2011) MB Transforming Innercity and Aboriginal Communities Project (2008)

Structural capacity

CCPA founding meeting (1980) Single office and staff person Minimal funding from CLC affiliates

st 1 staff researcher hired (1991) Individual memberships/ expansion of fundraising (1994) Website (1995) Provincial offices: BC (1996), Manitoba (1997), Nova Scotia (1999)

Saskatchewan office (2001) Ontario office (2012) National office lists 15 staff; five provincial offices list a total of 20 staff (July 2013) National office lists 46 research associates (July 2013)

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Volume of knowledge production: The number of books, articles, and conference proceedings cited in a search of the “Summons” search engine at the University of ____, in July, 2013. Newspapers articles, government documents, and dissertations were excluded. This search was conducted in ten year increments: 1981-82, 1991-92, 2001-02, 2011-12. Such a search does not reflect the full catalogue of CCPA documents, and should be seen as a heuristic, rather than fully descriptive, device. Similar searches were conducted through the library websites of Carleton University and the University of Ottawa, in an attempt to assess possible bias in the local library. The results were a very close match. Major ongoing publications and projects: Data were gathered through interviews, the 25th Anniversary commemorative publication (CCPA 2005), the CCPA website, and older versions of the CCPA website accessed through the “Wayback Machine” maintained by the Internet Archive (archive.org). Structural capacity: This includes the organizational resources to produce and mobilize knowledge. It highlights the expansion of the CCPA in terms of membership, offices, and staff. Source: Authors’ compilations.

Developing a mass membership In 1994, under the leadership of newly-appointed executive director Bruce Campbell, the CCPA launched a campaign of individual memberships and financial appeals, a renewal strategy that would dramatically increase the Centre’s capacity. The income streams from burgeoning individual memberships decreased dependency on union funding, as new resources were channeled to public outreach and to communication with an expanding membership base. With a secure resource base, the CCPA gained capacity to intervene in public policy debates and to nurture the growing formation of counterpublics that were re-shaping social democratic politics in Canada. The CCPA’s main means of communicating with its members has been the monthly Monitor, also established in 1994, an accessible source of facts and analysis pulled from reports produced by CCPA staff, research associates and various progressive media. Its intended target is the non-academic activists or organizations that may use the knowledge produced by the Centre to campaign and lobby for progressive policy. The Monitor was the first initiative of the CCPA to develop a social democratic community of practice, reaching thousands of progressively minded Canadians and providing them with accessible analyses that criticize existing policy while also advocating alternative approaches. Early projects of alternative knowledge production and mobilization (KPM) As the CCPA became less dependent upon union funding, support from labour grew more focused. In the 1990s, the CCPA established two of its core projects, the Alternative Federal Budget (AFB) and the Education Project – the latter strongly supported by teachers’ associations, the former supported by labour both as funders and as direct participants. A full analysis of these, and other important projects of the CCPA is beyond the scope of a single paper, but for now, it is important to outline how these early core projects helped transform the CCPA from a primarily defensive knowledge producer to an innovative and proactive centre of alternative knowledge through collaborative work with various counterpublics. In 1995, the Centre produced its first AFB with Winnipeg-based CHO!CES. The AFB is a collaborative project, wherein the leadership of various civil society groups participate in setting social and economic priorities for the country. It serves as a vehicle of communitydevelopment for a social democratic left in civil society and a tool for public outreach and popular education. Initially, this collaboration was largely with organized labour, and unions Canadian Review of Social Policy/Revue canadienne de politique sociale

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William K. Carroll, David Huxtable continue to be a critical partner in the project; however, the AFB would later come to involve a wider range of counterpublics concerned with various issues of ecological and social justice. According to our respondents, the AFB was critical in establishing the CCPA as a credible source of research and analysis, “legitimizing the CCPA... in the eyes of the mainstream... national media...,” as one respondent told us. This increase in legitimacy reflects the rigour with which the AFB was developed and the accuracy of its forecasts, which have often been more “on target” than those put forward by the federal Finance Department. Even Paul Martin, then Minster of Finance, expressed public support for the AFB’s quality, even if he did not support its conclusions. In recent years, other think tanks, such as the C.D. Howe and Fraser institutes have begun to acknowledge the significance of the AFB by producing their own alternative budgets In 1996, a $35,000 grant from the Canadian Teachers’ Federation (CTF) launched the Education Project, which initially produced the Education Monitor, a quarterly publication, and then, in 1999, Missing Pieces, An Alternative Guide to Canadian Post-Secondary Education in response to the success of MacLean’s magazine’s and the Fraser Institute’s education “ranking” projects. Missing Pieces’s ranking invited readers to consider issues of post-secondary education within an alternative frame to the competitive individualism inscribed within the MacLean’s/Fraser exercises. The relationship with the CTF would deepen in 2004, with a major survey project on the growing commercialization of public schools, the first national project of its kind. This partnership, which came to include provincial teachers’ associations, was not simply a unionfunded research project, but a collaborative initiative that involved teachers in data collection and analysis. Much of the Education Project’s work, particularly in its early years, reflected a similar set of traditional social democratic concerns: funding for education, concerns for professional autonomy and academic freedom, critique of commercialization. However, there is some evidence to suggest that the range of issues covered by the project have broadened. For example, Our Schools/Ourselves Spring 2012 issue offered a series of reflections by young activists on youth leadership in community activism. Reflected in this expansion of issues and of counterpublics is the Centre’s developing capacity within a broader community of practice that includes progressive teachers and youth activists. Responding to neoliberal consolidation The growth in organizational capacity brought on by the new funding model of individual memberships allowed the CCPA to better engage the neoliberal project locally and internationally through the establishment of provincial offices and the Trade and Investment Research Project (TIRP), co-founded in 1999 with the Canadian Environmental Law Association and housed in the Nova Scotia office. The FTA (1989) and NAFTA (1994) were only the beginning of the Federal government's use of trade deals as a tool of disciplinary neoliberalism (pending agreements with China and the EU, as well as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, are exemplary). Yet few citizens understand either the negotiations or the potential consequences. Beyond the continuing stream of critical analyses in The Monitor, the CCPA’s key response to the new constitutionalism, enshrined in trade related treaties, has been the TIRP. As Project Director Scott Sinclair told us, TIRP comprises a network of “fifteen to twenty NGOs and trade unions from Canada [which] 2013/2014, No. 70

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pool research resources on trade and investment policy issues.” TIRP also maintains a network of international contacts, such as Our World is Not for Sale, the Seattle to Brussels Network, Third World Network, Common Frontiers, and Focus on the Global South, putting it into contact with major transnational agencies of counter-hegemony. Teleconference guests have been invited from Brussels and Washington, for example, to discuss their perspectives on the TransPacific Partnership with TIRP activists. The advent of such a transnational network illustrates the development of a more internationalist perspective than that taken in the 1980s and early 1990s by the left-nationalist coalition that fought the free trade battles of that era. That said, while involvement in the TRIP network shows a stronger interest in transnational relationships, internationalism is not a strong component of the CCPA's work, which likely reflects both resource constraints and a lack of interest in internationalism within the broader social democratic community in Canada. Trade agreements have been only one aspect of neoliberal policy, albeit a strategically crucial one. Concomitant with the push for “free trade” has been the effort to shrink the economic scope of Canadian state activity, particularly in the field of social welfare and employment programs, and to reduce taxes on business. Legitimating this austerity was a discourse of “international competitiveness,” presenting “international class dominance as national economic necessity” (Bryan, 1995, 190). The push by think tanks such as the Fraser Institute and CD Howe Institute to replace the Keynesian welfare state with a Schumpeterian “competitive workfare state” (Jessop 1993) used trade agreements as a lever to effect “the downward harmonization of policies and standards, as political jurisdictions competed for investment capital” (Carroll and Shaw 2001, 38). In Canada, this aspect of neoliberalism was ramped up in 1995, when the federal government drastically reduced revenues for health, education and social assistance earmarked for provinces by folding the Canada Assistance Plan and Established Programs Financing into the Canada Health and Social Transfer. In Canada’s federal system, provinces are responsible for welfare, education and health.5 Thus, CCPA’s establishment of provincial offices during the period of neoliberal consolidation was crucial to its ability to document the consequences of disciplinary neoliberalism and challenge the new constitutionalism through policy alternatives framed at the provincial level, allowing the Centre to connect its research and advocacy to subnational publics and issues. By 2002, provincial offices had been established in British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan. Provincial offices are also sites where the CCPA expands and deepens its ties to social movements.6 An early example was the establishment of the Resource Economics Desk in B.C. Opposition to neoliberalism in BC was highly fractured during the later 1980s and 1990s, particularly over environmental issues. A steady decline in once-dominant resource extraction industries and a number of high profile anti-logging campaigns brought struggling rural working class communities into a “war in the woods” with the environmental movement. Later in the 1990s, a group of labour and environmental leaders approached the CCPA “looking for help… [in] getting past the “jobs vs. environment” dichotomy,” as BC Director Seth Klein told us. What resulted was the Resource Economics Desk, which involved an advisory board made up of labour, environmental and First Nations leaders. Not only did this establish the BC office as a “bridge-builder” within a fractured left; it would have long term consequences for the CCPA’s institutional legitimacy and public credibility. Canadian Review of Social Policy/Revue canadienne de politique sociale

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William K. Carroll, David Huxtable As its credibility has grown, the CCPA has been able to attract both public and private funding, further enhancing its capacity. The Growing Gap project is largely funded by an anonymous donation; the Climate Justice Project has received funding from Vancity Credit Union and the Vancouver Foundation. Several collaborative projects with ‘research associates’ (who comprise an extensive network of progressive academics) have been funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). The Climate Justice Project and the Economic Security Project (both based in BC) were principally funded by SSHRC’s Community University Research Alliance program. The work of the Manitoba Research Alliance for Transforming Inner-city and Aboriginal Communities, of which the CCPA is a core participant, has also attracted SSHRC funding. A number of these research projects have also birthed broadbased coalitions, particularly the Poverty Reduction Coalition and the Living Wage Campaign, which emerged out of the Economic Security Project. The Transforming Inner-city and Aboriginal Communities project, in which the Manitoba office is a leading force, also involves a range of academic and community organizations. Such collaborative research and community advocacy projects instantiate a broad community of social democratic practice, and a transition from traditional think tank practices to more democratic forms of alternative KPM. In part, the CCPA’s increased capacity to produce and mobilize knowledge for and with counterpublics has been facilitated by developments in communications technology. However, we would suggest that the CCPA’s programmatic shift to a more broadly based community of practice – a community comprised of First Nations, organized labour, as well as environmental and anti-poverty groups – has been crucial. Such networks root the CCPA in local communities, as research partnerships produce solid, socially-grounded and community-based research. In turn, community partners, feeling ownership in these projects, function as a network of activistintellectuals, mobilizing the knowledge, beyond policy circles and the media mainstream, into broader communities, movements and counterpublics. The result is a communications network quite different in composition from the elite policy networks in which conventional think tanks move. Situating the CCPA within the political field To situate the CCPA within its communications network (conceptualized as a subset of the larger field of policy formation and political contention), we first examined the composition of its Board of Directors, which has ultimate responsibility for strategy and direction. Categorized by their organizational affiliations, as of June 2013, the 27-member board included 11 trade unionists (seven with public-sector unions), seven university professors, four independent consultants, three members of other progressive think tanks and two women active in youth/student politics. Categorized by profession, the board was comprised of nine labour activists, eight academic social scientists, eight (non-academic) writer/researcher/educators and two youth activists.7 The board can be seen as interfacing between the labour movement, the left academy and activist intellectuals active in other domains of civil society, including youth politics. Board-level ties to Edmonton-based Parkland Institute, Ottawa-based Polaris Institute and Montreal-based IRIS connect the Centre to three sister think tanks whose efforts at progressive KPM converge closely with the CCPA’s. For any policy group, the Internet provides an increasingly important means of reaching diverse and potentially vast publics. In 2011, CCPA reports were downloaded from its website 2013/2014, No. 70

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2.14 million times, according to Seth Klein. Based on recent monthly estimates, Bruce Campbell projected that number to climb to 4 million for 2012. A policy group’s Internet presence can be thought of as an ego-centred social network or ‘neighbourhood’, with “incoming ties” that indicate very roughly its “visibility” among other online actors and “outgoing ties” that connect it (through a hyperlink that may be embedded in an online document) to other organizations/websites. An earlier study which used a related though distinct methodology (McNutt and Marchildon 2009) compared the CCPA with 15 other Canadian think tanks ranked the CCPA second to the Canadian Policy Research Networks (CPRN) in overall popularity within the “broader policy community” in Canada, but ranked the CCPA in the lower half of the pack in its prominence within the “core policy network” of decision-makers and policy groups – wherein the Fraser Institute claimed second place to the CPRN.8 This suggests that much of the CCPA’s value lies (a) in its visibility and standing within the broad public that is organized to some degree around mainstream media and (b) in its cultivation of counterpublics, animating progressive social movements and sustained to some extent by alternative media, which turn to the CCPA as a credible source of alternative knowledge. To gain a sense of the Centre’s online neighbourhood, we employed standard statistical cybernetic techniques, thereby identifying all websites that had at least two hyperlinks with the CCPA website, as of November, 2012.9 We consider first incoming ties. In all, as of early November 2012, 109 distinct web domains maintained two or more hyperlinks to the CCPA website. In Figure 1, we can see that many of the groups directing hyperlinks to the CCPA are alternative media (fourteen groups, six more than mainstream media), social movements (21 groups), organized labour (11) and academic institutions (12). Only five state bodies hyperlink to the Centre (including the government of Canada and US-based National Institutes of Health), and among conventional policy groups only the Fraser Institute shows such a tie. Clearly, the CCPA’s popularity on the web is an effect of its implantation within the counterpublics that live within and across organized labour, other movements, academe (where the Centre has cultivated many relations through its scores of Research Associates) and alternative media. This is not to say the mainstream is entirely detached: state and media organizations have hyperlinks pointing to the CCPA, as do four publishing houses. It is also noteworthy that a good many web resources (encyclopaedias, informational sites such as www.policy.ca), web hosting sites (wordpress, blogspot, etc.) and blogs10 refer readers to the CCPA, suggesting that efforts in the past decade to enhance the Centre’s standing via social media have borne fruit. Overall, CCPA seems more important as a source of knowledge for oppositional actors in civil society – movements, counterpublics and academe – than for the state and the politico-cultural mainstream.

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Figure 1. Percentage distribution of websites with hyperlinks pointing to CCPA, November, 2012 Websites tabulated in Figure 1 contained 1832 links pointing readers to the CCPA, but they varied considerably in the number of distinct references to the CCPA. For instance, among alternative media, the BC-based Tyee had 81 hyperlinks to the Centre and Rabble.ca 65, while Toronto-based Basics News and the Milwaukee-based e-journal Rethinking Schools each had two. Among labour organizations, the Canadian Auto Workers had 30 and the BC Teachers’ Federation 25, while the Telecommunications Workers Union and the Canadian Association of Social Workers had two each. As for outgoing ties, the CCPA reached out to a total of 227 distinct web domains. For more than half of them (59%), the tie from the Centre was a “weak” one, consisting of a single hyperlink. The 94 websites to which the CCPA directed multiple ties (one of them attracting as many as 65 hyperlinks) are core members of the CCPA’s outgoing neighbourhood, accounting collectively for 81% of all 696 outgoing ties. They exhibit the profile shown in Figure 2, where we see that the CCPA references the mainstream media extensively. It also links heavily to alternative media (which are dwarfed by behemoths like the CBC (recipient of 37 hyperlinks), Globe and Mail (22) and Toronto Star (19). In total, mainstream media comprise 32% of the core neighbourhood while state bodies comprise 13%. A wide range of social movements take another 13%, followed by alternative media (12%), other media (11%), educational institutions, labour and alternative policy groups (five percent each). This profile illustrates the Centre’s dual strategy, connecting both to a mainstream public that is organized through dominant media and to counterpublics, movements and other sites of alternative knowledge and politics.

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Figure 2. Percentage distribution of websites receiving hyperlinks from CCPA, November, 2012 Given the tendency for the CCPA to link profusely though selectively to mainstream media, it is not surprising that these organizations are even more prominent in the distribution of the 563 hyperlinks initiated by the Centre and directed to members of its core neighbourhood. Thirty-four percent of all these links lead from the CCPA to mainstream media, compared to 23% linking to other media (book publishers, other web sites), 13% to alternative media, 11% to state bodies, nine percent to movements, four percent to educational institutions, and only two percent to labour. The CCPA’s incoming and outgoing hyperlinks form part of a larger social network. Figure 3 provides an overview of the CCPA’s neighbourhood, comprised of websites with two or more hyperlinks to the CCPA. In this sociogram, the CCPA appears, coincidentally, in the centre-left region of the core; we have represented it as a large node. The “spring-embedded” algorithm we have used to map the network into a two-dimensional space ensures that points (which represent the websites) near each other within the actual network appear close together in the sociogram. We can see the thick, multi-link ties that knit together several of the mainstream media organizations, but that also hook other knowledge producers such as University of Manitoba and York University into a dense network of KPM. Also prominently placed in the vicinity of the mainstream organizations, with many ties extending to other groups, are key counterpublic sites such as the Council of Canadians (canadians.org), rabble.ca, the Tyee and both the Canadian and US Huffington Post websites. The 1173 ties that link these organizations not only to the CCPA but to each other indicate that the Centre’s neighbourhood is quite well integrated: its members have many mutual affinities.

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Figure 3. The CCPA’s neighbourhood of incoming and outgoing hyperlinks, November 2012 If mainstream organizations tend to inhabit the centre-right of the social space in Figure 3, many of the more oppositional groups are located to the left (or “west” if we use geographical coordinates) and on the network’s margins. The latter include two alternative policy groups (Polaris Institute, Social Watch – located to the north), feminist and health groups (to the north and west) and anti-poverty groups (to the south-west). The CCPA’s partner, the Manitoba Research Alliance, appears on the far west; its ally in alternative knowledge production, progressive-economics.ca, is ensconced on the south side, in the proximity of such labour groups as CUPE, NUPGE, the CAW, OPSEU, TWU and two labour councils. The network diagram depicts the CCPA’s neighbourhood as a shared space, incorporating the mainstream public sphere, the blogosphere and a number of counterpublics that take up issues of economic and social justice. Although it is unclear to us as to why, it is intriguing to note that that organizations with a strong ecological focus are largely absent from the neighbourhood. A more stringent criterion for membership in the Centre’s neighbourhood is a strong reciprocated tie, consisting of at least two incoming ties to the CCPA along with at least two outgoing ties (Figure 4). Here we see the groups at the core of the Centre’s neighbourhood on the Internet. They are a subset of the groups just mentioned – two alt policy groups and the progressive economics forum, the alt media sites rabble.ca and Tyee, two bloggers (CCPA research associate Marita Moll and CCPA-affiliated journalist Asad Ismi) and several antipoverty and health-oriented movement groups. Nearly all of the reciprocated ties involve movements, alt media and policy groups and progressive bloggers (the major exceptions are the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, newswire.ca and the Government of Canada). 2013/2014, No. 70

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To summarize this analysis, the CCPA has developed a distinctive online neighborhood that includes media (mainstream, alternative and social), movements, unions, a few state bodies and other policy groups. Our findings indicate that although Centre has established its own neighbourhood within the broad policy field its connections with state-centred policy-making are weak. The network of hyperlinks describes an organization prominent in a social-democratic community of practice, linking to a variety of movements opposing neoliberalism and advocating alternatives. While many outgoing ties point to the politico-cultural mainstream, the pattern of incoming ties and of reciprocated ties shows the CCPA to be particularly important as a source of knowledge for oppositional actors in civil society.

Figure 4. The CCPA’s neighbourhood of reciprocated hyperlinks, November 2012 Conclusions In the 1980s the CCPA emerged as a fledging organization intent on defending the Keynesian welfare state against an insurgent neo-liberalism, through traditional methods of knowledge production and mobilization, and focused on state-centric policy circles. It now engages in alternative forms of knowledge production and mobilization, targeting the general public and various counterpublics. Such a focus has allowed the Centre to contribute to public debates, even as it exists on the margins of mainstream policy circles. Canadian Review of Social Policy/Revue canadienne de politique sociale

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William K. Carroll, David Huxtable The Centre’s network has grown from a small group of activist scholars and labour leaders, to one with a much broader base and wider reach. As its network expanded, so too did the breadth of issues analyzed by the CCPA. While its early work centred on issues of primary concern to organized labour, recent initiatives address wide-ranging matters of social and ecological justice in addition to these traditional social democratic concerns. Certainly, some of this transition can be attributed to broad historical developments. Social democracy in Canada has changed: left-nationalism has become rather passé, and the left has become more cosmopolitan; technological developments have greatly enhanced the Centre's capacity to engage in alternative KPM, often by-passing the mainstream media. However, there is more to the story than this. The CCPA's current role as a critical Canadian hub of alternative KPM came about through a process of increasing capacity through the strategic engagement with various counterpublics. Its initial “growth spurt” was the result of a move to engage progressive communities through individual memberships. As resources grew, new provincial offices enabled closer engagement with grassroots activists and communities across the country in the process of knowledge production organically tied to movement-building. At the same time, the Centre gained capacity, within the mainstream media spotlight, to engage with the general public. At a certain level of abstraction, one can discern a resemblance between the CCPA and conventional think tanks. In both instances, an organization of organic intellectuals produces and mobilizes knowledge within communicative networks, with the intent of shaping policy and practice. Yet the emancipatory project motivating the CCPA has set it on a trajectory distinct from that of conventional think tanks, whose practices and networks advance elite policyplanning in and around the state. The CCPA’s network is centred in movements, counterpublics and alternative media, wherein it seeks to build solidarities, through dialogue, around socially just and ecologically healthy alternatives. In the difference (itself grounded in deeper social and economic divisions) lies the impetus for a continuing war of position over neoliberal capitalism and its alternatives. Notes 1

http://www.ips-dc.org/

2

http://www.tni.org/

3

By alternative knowledge we mean analyses, strategies and social visions that challenge predominant ideas about how our lives are organized and lived, and that point to and advocate alternative practices, values and institutions. Alternative knowledge often takes the form of critique of current policies and practices, but it may also take a prefigurative form, advancing proposals for a transformed future. See Carroll 2014. 4 On deregulation of air transport, see Strick (1990). On finance see Harris (1998). On national energy policy see McBride and Shields (1997). On provincial efforts at deregulation of electrical energy, see Cohen (2002). On telecommunications see Rideout (2003).

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Not surprisingly, some of the sharpest struggles around neoliberalism have occurred within provinces, from the 1983 “restraint program” that spurred the Solidarity Coalition in British Columbia to Ontario’s 1995 “common sense revolution” 1995 that led to mass Days of Action. 6 The provincial offices are autonomous from but well connected to the National Office and range in size, BC being the largest operation. In Quebec and Alberta, the CCPA has refrained from opening its own offices, in view of complementary already being done by progressive think tanks based in those provinces – l’Institute de recherché et d’informations socio-économiques (ISIS) and the Parkland Institute, respectively. See http://www.irisrecherche.qc.ca/ and http://parklandinstitute.ca/. 7 Note that CCPA Vice President and Secretary-Treasurer Heather-jane Robertson, an independent consultant on education issues, is categorized in terms of her directorship with the Parklands Institute, and that Jim Turk, also a member of the CCPA Executive Committee, is categorized as a leader in a public-sector union and an academic social scientist. Formerly in the Sociology Department at the University of Toronto, Turk is CCPA Research Associates Chair, but his main affiliation is with the Canadian Association of University Teachers, where he is president. The CCPA board at the time of these observations included 15 men and 12 women. 8 The de-funding of CPRN by the hard-right Harper Government in 2006 led to its demise in 2009, presumably improving the position of the Fraser Institute within the core policy network. 9 To identify websites with hyperlinks pointing to the CCPA website we used SocSciBot 4 (Statistical Cybernetics Research Group. 2012a); to identify websites to which the CCPA website points via a hyperlink we used Webometric Analyst 2.0 (Statistical Cybernetics Research Group. 2012b). We are grateful to JP Sapinski for assisting with this part of the study. 10

In particular, the blogs of Asad Ismi (a US-based alternative journalist allied with CCPA), Marco Campana, and Gilles Séguin’s Canadian Social Research Links. References Abelson, D. E. 1995. "From policy research to political advocacy - the changing role of think tanks in American politics." Canadian Review of American Studies 25:93-126. Brenner, Neil, Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore. 2009. “Variegated neoliberalism: geographies, modalities, pathways.” Global Networks 10:182-222. Bonds, Eric, 2011. ‘The Knowledge-Shaping Process: Elite Mobilization and Environmental Policy.’ Critical Sociology 37 (4), 429–446. Brownlee, Jamie. 2005. Ruling Canada: Corporate Cohesion and Democracy. Halifax: Fernwood Books. Bryan, Dick. 1995. The Chase across the Globe. Boulder: Westview Press. Burris, Val. 2008. “The Interlock Structure of the Policy-Planning Network and the Right Turn in U.S. State Policy.” Research in Political Sociology 17:3–42.

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McGann, James. 2011. “The Global ‘Go-To’ Think Tanks” 2010. Final United Nations University Edition, January 18. International Relations Program, University of Pennsylvania. Available at http://www.yale.edu/graduateschool/careers/forms/ThinkTankIndex.pdf, accessed 22 September 2011. McNutt, Kathleen and Gregory Marchildon. 2009. “Think tanks and the Web: measuring visibility and influence.” Canadian Public Policy 35: 219-36. Mouzelis, Nicos. 2001. “Reflexive modernization and the Third Way: the impasses of Giddens’ social-democratic politics.” Sociological Review 49: 436-56. Rideout, Vanda. 2003. Continentalizing Canadian Telecommunications: The Politics of Regulatory Reform. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Shaker, Erika and Denise Doherty-Delorme (eds.). 2004. Missing Pieces V, An Alternative Guide to Canadian Post-Secondary Education. Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Social Planning for Canada. 1935. Issued by the Research Committee of the League for Social Reconstruction. Toronto: Thomas Nelson & Sons Limited. Statistical Cybernetics Research Group. 2012a. SocSciBot 4. Wolverhampton (UK): University of Wolverhampton. Retrieved August 15, 2012 (socscibot.wlv.ac.uk). Statistical Cybernetics Research Group. 2012b. Webometric Analyst 2.0. Wolverhampton (UK): University of Wolverhampton. Retrieved August 15, 2012 (lexiurl.wlv.ac.uk).

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