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Abstract
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B. Timothy Heinmiller and Matthew A. Hennigar, Aiming to Explain: Theories of Policy Change and Canadian Gun Control (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022), 260 pp. Cased. $85. ISBN 978-1-4875-4232-0. Paper. $36.95. ISBN 978-1-4875-4233-7.
Gun control has been a controversial political issue in Canada for decades, particularly since the 1989 Montréal Massacre. A smattering of historians, public health scholars, and criminologists have considered firearm regulation, but political scientists have given it relatively little attention. In Aiming to Explain: Theories of Policy Change and Canadian Gun Control, Brock University political scientists B. Timothy Heinmiller and Matthew A. Hennigar add considerably to our knowledge of firearm regulation and demonstrate the value of thinking about public policy theory in considering the development of gun control.
Heinmiller and Hennigar assert their work is a book 'about gun control policy that is not really about gun control' (p. 3). They explain that their goal is to 'test competing theories on relatively equal ground, identify where they succeed and fail, and in this way learn important lessons about these theories as ways of understanding Canadian policy-making' (p. 3). They describe each theory and then evaluate them using quantitative and qualitative methods. They do not claim to prove which theory is 'right' or 'wrong', in part because they say that multiple theories can be supported at the same time, with different theories explaining different aspects of Canadian policy making.
Aiming to Explain begins with two chapters that respectively survey the history of gun control and the Canadian policy environment, such as the constitutional and parliamentary contexts. The authors then offer five chapters exploring five theories of public policy change: rational choice institutionalism; social construction framework; advocacy coalition framework; multiple streams framework; and the punctuated equilibrium theory. Within each chapter, Heinmiller and Hennigar explain the theory to be applied and then test the theory against major policy changes, including the gun control legislation passed by the government of prime minister Brian Mulroney in 1991, the subsequent reforms of prime minister Jean Chrétien (which included the controversial long-gun registry), and prime minister Stephen Harper's destruction of the long-gun registry in 2012. In their conclusion, Heinmiller and Hennigar summarise the results of their theoretical investigations and consider the implications for public policy theory...
Language: en |