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While there are broad differences between the health-care systems in Canada and the United States, sub-national variation is significant in both countries (though more notably among American states), both in terms of the role of government in the provision of health-care as well as outputs of the health-care system such as access and cost-control. Although this variation is rarely considered in comparisons of health-care policy in the two countries, the value of using the United States as a comparative reference in contemporary policy debates in Canada would be considerably greater if such variations were utilized to augment the analytical leverage resulting from such comparisons. Alors que les differences entre les systemes de soins de sante au Canada et aux Etats-Unis sont importantes, l'ecart infranational est considerable dans les deux pays (bien que plus notoire parmi les Etats americains) aussi bien en ce qui concerne le role joue par le gouvernement dans la prestation des soins de sante, que les extrants du systeme de soins de sante comme l'acces et le controle des couts. Meme si cet ecart est rarement pris en compte dans les comparaisons de la politique de soins de sante des deux pays, le fait de recourir aux Etats-Unis comme point de reference comparatif dans les debats actuels sur la politique au Canada aurait beaucoup plus de valeur si un tel ecart etait utilise pour accroOtre le levier analytique resultant de telles comparaisons.

In conjunction with the image of Alberta's Department of Federal and Intergovernmental Affairs (FIGA) as a strong, interventionist central agency, the argument that federal-provincial matching cost-sharing pits provincial line departments against central agencies raises the expectation that Alberta's position regarding reform of cost-sharing for welfare and social services in the 1970s was likely the result of bureaucratic wrangling. However, relations between FIGA as a central agent and Social Services, the respective line department, were highly cooperative. There are two possible explanations which both point to difficulties in employing the bureaucratic politics model. First, Social Services, for reasons specific to the Alberta context (i.e., Alberta's fiscal strength and the strong political leadership under Lougheed), did not perceive matching cost-sharing to be in its interest. This demonstrates the tenuous assumptions about the interests of central agencies and line departments made by Canadian students of intergovernmental relations and the broader problem of how to conceive of departmental interests. Secondly, broadly shared institutional norms acted to constrain self-serving departmental behaviour. In the Alberta context of shared norms governing intergovernmental relations (i.e., a commitment to an 'Alberta first' strategy), the assumption of bureaucratic parochialism underlying the bureaucratic politics model was not valid. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Two interesting patterns emerge when the provision of higher education in the Canadian provinces is compared to that in the American states. First, the differences in higher education in Canada and the United States are not as stark as one would expect. Most notably, the role and level of public provision of higher education varies widely among American states and, in many states, is more significant both in terms of funding and enrolment than in the Canadian provinces. Second, where significant differences do emerge, they often run contrary to what might be expected based on the conventional wisdom regarding the differences between the two countries. The clearest difference is found in greater rates of participation and, by implication, higher levels of accessibility to university-level education in the United States. These two patterns pose a significant challenge to arguments that the existence of a private tier of higher education is necessarily associated with an anemic public postsecondary education system or limited access to university education.