Cardus, Policy in Public (CPiP) is the Cardus occasional journal of Canadian political and policy analysis.
Why another journal on politics in Canada? In the last several decades Canadians have been deferring to fewer and fewer institutions to solve our common problems. If you're on the left, you look to the government to create public solutions. If you're on the right, you defer to the market and private individuals to problem-solve. It's the old seesaw debate: government or market? What's missing is everything in the middle that makes it work.
CPiP looks at the fulcrum, at what we call the social architecture that informs and underwrites our politics and our markets. Every now and then the government folk or the market folk get a better share of our political power, but that doesn't solve the systemic problems of our political ecosystem. The cruel irony of the liberal democratic state is that it cannot legislate those virtues by which it continues to thrive. And the market cannot sell them.
We have never been more ignorant of - and depended more profoundly upon - the health and vitality of our mediating institutions, like family, voluntary associations, places of worship and more.
We invite you into this conversation and debate by contributing your reactions, critique, and comments to our editor, Robert Joustra.
Paul Williams was appointed the second incumbent of the David J. Brown Family Chair of Marketplace Theology and Leadership at Regent College in August 2005. He is also a Director...