Slow‐Moving Welfare State Change in Quebec and “Movements From Below”

ABSTRACT Recent discussions of policy change in political science have been heavily influenced by historical institutionalist typologies of gradual institutional change and of the ideal‐typical agents producing them. The key agents are those within the state who implement and interpret the rules, while the agency of social movements is treated as largely contextual. One way of enriching these accounts is to consider the offensive and defensive strategies of “social movements from below” contesting the dominance of the “social movement from above” over time. This is illustrated by the case of Quebec, where the shift away from a liberal welfare state in the 1990s is explained in part by the social movement project of the women's and community movement.