Description
After years of negotiation, the territory of Nunavut was established in Canada’s Eastern and Central Arctic on April 1, 1999. Made in Nunavut provides the first behind-the-scenes account of the planning that led to this remarkable achievement. The authors, leading authorities on the politics of the Canadian Arctic, pay particular attention to the Government of Nunavut’s innovative organizational design – especially the decentralization of offices and functions to communities across the territory. They explain how this new government was designed and implemented, and critically assess whether decentralization has delivered “better” government for Nunavut.
Contributor Notes
Jack Hicks is a social research consultant and a university and college lecturer. He has worked in a range of senior positions in Nunavut, and has written and presented widely about public policies across the circumpolar Arctic (especially Greenland and Nunavut). His primary research interests are the social determinants of mental health and suicide behaviour among Indigenous children and youth, the negotiation and implementation of Indigenous rights agreements, the political economy of the governments and other institutions arising from such agreements, and the comparative analysis of the political economy of non-renewable resource development across the circumpolar Arctic.
Graham White is a professor emeritus in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He has written widely on Canadian politics, mostly about governmental institutions such as legislatures and cabinets at the provincial/territorial level. He has been writing about the politics of the Canadian Arctic since the late 1980s. He is the author or editor of a dozen books, including Cycling into Saigon: The Conservative Transition in Ontario (co-authored with David R. Cameron) and Cabinets and First Ministers. He is a former president of the Canadian Political Science Association and is currently English co-editor of the Canadian Journal of Political Science.
Awards
- Short-listed, Donald Smiley Prize, Canadian Political Science Association
Editorial Reviews
Made in Nunavut fills an important gap. Up to now little has been written about the process through which the new territory was formed, in the period from 1993 to 1999, and on the extent to which the hopes and aspirations for that territory have been realized in the years following its establishment. This is the subject matter of Made in Nunavut, with a particular focus on the decentralization of certain functions of the Nunavut government to various communities across the territory. It is a work well suited to students of political science, public administration, and northern studies, primarily at the university level, but for some at a college level as well: it provides an enormous information base. It is written in a non-technical manner, and in this sense is also suited to the general reader.
— Arctic
Made in Nunavut is meticulous and beautifully researched. It recounts an experiment in governance in the strangest place on earth, a territory of 1.9 million square kilometres flung across three time zones … Made in Nunavut is the definitive analysis of the nation’s most ambitious trial in home rule.
— Blacklocks Reporter
With stories and details gathered together for the first time, Made in Nunavut … provides a behind-the-scenes view, a critical evaluation and a solid historical account.
— Northern News Service
