ABSTRACT

Contemporary interest in and debate over horizontal policy and management emerged in Canada in the wake of the June 1993 restructuring of the federal government, the Program Review announced in the February 1994 Budget, and significant cuts in programs in the February 1995 Budget (Paquet and Shepherd 1996). The resulting staff reductions, program eliminations, and search for alternative ways to deliver services led to considerable interest in horizontal governance. In 2002, I wrote:

The challenge of working across the traditional boundaries of government to deliver public services has seized the attention of political and administrative leaders across Canada. This encompasses designing and delivering a wide variety of programs across agencies, levels of government, and with partners in other sectors. Many different phrases are invoked to describe the challenge and purported solutions: horizontal government, collaborative government, ‘joined-up’ government, and public—private partnerships. The term ‘horizontal’ arguably now challenges ‘strategic’, ‘performance’, ‘cost effective’, and ‘results’ as the top adjective for describing the directions for public sector reform, and is often invoked as a noun — ‘horizontality’ — in effect, a condition, desired state, or mind-set for those working in the public sector.

(Lindquist 2002: 153)