Luc Juillet (University of Ottawa)
Governments continue to be confronted with complex problems requiring multifaceted responses predicated on coordination across multiple agencies. Such horizontal initiatives are challenging even under the best of circumstances, as siloed departmental structures and vertical lines of accountability create disincentives and barriers to collaboration. While research has identified key obstacles and potential solutions to interdepartmental coordination (e.g. Bardach 1998; Peters 2015; Aoki et al. 2024), we have few empirical studies examining the structure, management and performance of horizontal initiatives at the federal level in Canada.
The proposed paper would help partly address this research gap by comparing the structure and performance of recent federal horizontal initiatives. Using a template derived from the public administration literature, the paper extracts, synthesizes and compares the findings of the program evaluations of ten horizontal policy strategies in a range of fields, including climate change, ocean protection, drug addiction, industrial innovation, official languages and cybersecurity, undertaken between 2019 and 2025. Based on the findings derived from this unexplored source of data, we then consider the strengths and limitations of the Horizontal Initiatives Framework currently guiding the implementation of formal large-scale interdepartmental initiatives.