In this article, we study how political parties located on the right of the political spectrum adapt to changing electoral and political constraints. Drawing on the concept of policy feedback, we turn to the politics of social policy in the province of Quebec to show that the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), a right-wing party, embraced a more centrist strategy than the preferences of its electoral base would suggest. The CAQ has rejected the austerity policies associated with the previous government and has favoured social policy expansion rather than tax cuts or a quicker return to balanced budgets. We then explore the reasons for this move toward the centre. Our evidence suggests that self-reinforcing feedback effects from existing policies shape public opinion and electoral strategies, which contribute to moderating the actions of this right-wing governing party.

As Canada’s population continues to age, social isolation among older people is a growing concern and national-level priority. Although much is known about individual-level risks and negative health outcomes associated with social isolation in later life, the impact of life course trajectories and the more collective experiences are seldom considered. Current definitions and program responses tend to rely on individualized approaches to social isolation. Here, we argue that the conversation be extended to consider the social and cultural aspects of social isolation among older people. Specifically, we suggest that definitions and approaches consider three particular dimensions: temporal factors, spatial factors, and the relationship between social isolation and exclusion. Doing so, we argue, would result in a more inclusive approach to social isolation in late life, and the development of capacity to address social isolation among a wide range of older people, particularly the needs of vulnerable or marginalized groups.

This article presents some conclusions from a research program initiated in 1995 and aimed at analysing the early exit from the workforce of workers 45 years of age and older, especially through long-term unemployment. This early exit process is envisaged as a result of complex interactions between firms' policies and practices, public policies concerning retirement, workforce training and welfare, and individual workers participating in active social networks and able to develop strategies of resistance or adaptation. Research results show how the issue of early exit from the workforce is poorly recognized by firms and State policies as well. As a result, making individuals carry the responsibility for their own employability.

This article is an essay, based on the attempted assessment ofresearch in the social sciences on aging in Canada and in Quebec during the last 20 years. It endeavours o t understand this area as based on institutional factors, including linguistic, cultural and political divisions between English Canada and Quebec, and the role of some major forces. Canadian research on aging is profoundly based on a social democratic vision of the role of the State that establishes the basic concept of citizenship, rights, liberties, justice and equality. It consequently contributes to maintaining the protective, redistributive, regulatory andcorrection ofinequalities that the State carries out through its social and fiscal policies. In the space of 20 years, the social sciences of aging in Canada have gone from a representation of aging characterized by decline, unavoidable physical and often psychic deterioration of capacities, impoverishment, and exclusion to a much more qualified vision of aging distinguished by the search for autonomy, adaptation, and growth in which seniors do not succumb passively to their condition but rather become responsible for their own development. At the same time, researchers, as well as experts and decision makers in the area ofaging, have turned progressively from an analysis of aging centred on social problems and the programs aimed to meet these problems, which encouraged the development of the state as provider, to an analysis of the forces and resources which seniors have or could obtain to rekindle family or community solidarities with the goal of maximum promotion of the autonomy of older persons.