In Bureaucratic Manoeuvres, John Grundy examines profound transformations in the governance of unemployment in Canada. While policy makers previously approached unemployment as a social and economic problem to be addressed through macroeconomic policies, recent labour market policy reforms have placed much more emphasis on the supposedly deficient employability of the unemployed themselves, a troubling shift that deserves close, critical attention.

Tracing a behind-the-scenes history of public employment services in Canada, Bureaucratic Manoeuvres shows just how difficult it has been for administrators and frontline staff to govern unemployment as a problem of individual employability. Drawing on untapped government records, it sheds much-needed light on internal bureaucratic struggles over the direction of labour market policy in Canada and makes a key contribution to Canadian political science, economics, public administration, and sociology.

"Grundy’s patient empiricism could be put to good use in classrooms to critically explore with students the circulation of particular orientations or sensibilities through institutions and cultures over time, and to bring home the importance of taking a long view on where we are within longer histories of problematization and intervention. The readability of the book also recommends it for classroom use. Overall, Bureaucratic Manoeuvers makes an important and interesting contribution to social and employment policy and related studies in the Canadian context, and to comparative policy studies more broadly. I highly recommend it."

John Grundy is Faculty Awards Specialist in the College of Engineering at Purdue University.