Focusing on four jurisdictions where abortion facilities and providers faced violent attacks following the Morgentaler decision of 1988, this study compares provincial government responses to core feminist demands in the area of women's reproductive health: enhanced hospital access, public funding of clinic abortions and safe zone protections. Consistent with previous research on childcare and anti-violence policies, the study finds that in neoliberal times, the presence of left governing parties in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario generally favoured abortion rights interests while conservative regimes disadvantaged them. The article contributes valuable new insights in revealing (1) the importance of centrist leaders in Ontario and at the federal level to pro-choice policy changes, (2) the significance of feminist critical actors to these outcomes, and (3) major variation among New Democratic Party provincial governments on abortion policy. The conclusion discusses implications of these results and proposes directions for further research.

L'article évalue l’état de la représentation substantive des femmes, des individus moins éduqués, moins fortunés, des jeunes ainsi que des allophones en politique provinciale québécoise. La représentation des citoyen(ne)s par les partis politiques est conceptualisée selon trois types de congruence idéologique: 1) le parti étant idéologiquement le plus proche des citoyen(ne)s; 2) le parti pour lequel les citoyen(ne)s ont voté; et 3) le système partisan. Nous évaluons ces formes de représentation face à cinq dimensions structurant la politique québécoise, permettant ainsi une approche multidimensionnelle à la représentation : l'axe souverainiste-fédéraliste, l'axe gauche-droite, les dépenses sociales, les dépenses en environnement, ainsi que l'immigration. Nos résultats présentent un portrait complexe de la représentation. Bien que certains groupes apparaissent moins bien représentés (en particulier, les femmes et les individus moins éduqués) aucun groupe ne l'est de façon systématique, et certains groupes sont parfois même avantagés (en particulier, les jeunes).

This article clarifies the intellectual origins of Canadian parliamentary government by situating Confederation within a specific strand of liberal political thought. My argument is that the Fathers of Confederation adhered to the political theory of parliamentarianism. Though liberal constitutionalists, the Fathers of Confederation expressly defended a parliamentary political framework that they considered superior to the American system of checks and balances—one characterized by a powerful elected assembly restrained by an unelected upper house, responsible ministers serving in Parliament, and a constitutional monarch. In elucidating the theory of parliamentarianism that underlies the political project of Confederation, my goal is not only to examine a problem in nineteenth-century Canadian political thought but to ground our current political situation within a larger historical perspective.

In Canada, there is renewed attention to the violence experienced by Indigenous peoples in residential schools, by police, through hyper-imprisonment and child removal, in hospitals, and in the contemporary education system. All of these issues are interlinked and outcomes of the carceral state—defined as the policing, monitoring, surveillance, criminalization and imprisonment of people, especially Indigenous and other racialized peoples. In this article, I define and illustrate what the carceral state looks like in Canada. I articulate the current approach to studying the carceral in political science, note the paucity of research in the Canadian context and show where attention has been cast previously. I describe an improved approach to studying the carceral, arguing that a decolonized approach to studying the carceral must be relational and abolitionist, seeking to reduce and eliminate the use of carceral interventions.

The article addresses ongoing debates in the study of political knowledge and voting behavior. The article identifies significant divergences in previous work which may explain why such debates persist, including in the measurement of political knowledge and the inclusion of confounding variables. The article remedies these issues in an observational study examining how political knowledge affects the impact of spatial considerations and cognitive shortcuts on the vote. The article also contributes the first randomized experiment on this research question in the literature. Using the framework of conjoint analysis, the experiment evaluates how political knowledge affects the impact of spatial considerations and cognitive shortcuts on the vote. The article hypothesizes that political knowledge will increase the impact of spatial considerations on the vote but will not modify the impact of cognitive shortcuts. This expectation is supported in both the observational and experimental results.

Cet article aborde les relations sino-africaines dans le cadre de l'analyse comparative des politiques étrangères. Il propose une analyse constructiviste des stratégies diplomatiques du Niger et du Burkina Faso dans leurs relations avec la RPC et Taïwan depuis les années soixante. En s'inspirant d'une démarche éclectique combinant d'une part, agents et structures et de l'autre, facteurs domestiques et facteurs systémiques, il explique les stratégies fluctuantes de reconnaissance diplomatique des deux États à l’égard des deux « Chine » par la construction sociale de l'intérêt national. Les résultats corroborent les postulats du constructivisme sur le poids des idées et des contextes dans la fabrique de l'intérêt national.

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.

This article examines the effect of racial attitudes on the electoral performance of the New Democratic Party (NDP). Since 2017, the NDP has been led by Jagmeet Singh, the first non-white leader of a nationally competitive Canadian political party. Voters’ racial attitudes and the race of party leaders have a significant effect on vote choice in the United States. Less is known about whether similar effects exist in Canadian elections. I show that NDP vote choice polarized on the basis of racial attitudes following Singh's ascension to party leader. Voters with cold feelings toward racial minorities were less likely to vote for the NDP in 2019 and 2021 than in comparable historical elections. In contrast, there is no significant difference between 2019/2021 and prior elections in support for the Liberals and Conservatives among such voters. These results suggest that racial attitudes are salient in Canadian elections and that national parties may face an electoral penalty when selecting non-white party leaders.

The stability of divided societies is an important and recurring concern in political science research. It has been suggested that distinctive socialization processes in the different regions of divided societies will lead to diverging trends in public opinion. Therefore, we investigate trends in public opinion on key political issues and attitudes in three divided societies: Canada (Quebec), the United Kingdom (Scotland) and Spain (Catalonia). Using over two decades of survey data, we show that these distinct communities indeed have a particular ideological profile but also that there is no indication these differences become larger over time. In other words, we do not observe any evidence for an increasing lack of public opinion coherence in these divided societies. We conclude with some observations on why divergence could not be observed at the level of public opinion but might still be present at the level of party elites.

A growing body of comparative public policy research examines the effects of delegated delivery of public services and the related emergence of what is labelled a submerged state that obscures the role of government in the provision of public services. Data limitations have constrained investigations of these dynamics in Canada, including for K–12 education. In this research note, we draw on charitable tax records and provincial and federal spending data to present the evolution of provincial and federal financial support for independent schools over time, drawing on the case of British Columbia (BC). By factoring in indirect support through various tax mechanisms, we establish that BC independent schools have seen increasing financial support from both the federal and provincial governments in recent decades, primarily via tax expenditures tied to their charitable status—a “not hidden but not visible” shift in public expenditure that has substantial political, distributive and accountability implications.

With the patriation of the Constitution in 1982, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) inherited extraordinary political powers. In response to the Court's expanded power of judicial review, there was a sizeable increase in the number of political actors “intervening” in SCC cases. Scholars of Canadian law and politics are deeply divided on whether civil society participation in the courts—particularly as intervenors—is democratically legitimate. This important debate cannot be settled without an empirical evaluation of who intervenes. This research note provides an analysis of all the Charter cases heard by the SCC between 2013 and 2021. In contrast to the field's dominant theory on interest-group legal mobilization—the Court Party thesis—the findings reveal that equity-deserving interest groups, such as those representing women, have an irregular presence in Court. Instead, powerful actors such as governments and legal associations make up a majority of the “repeat player” intervenors. While further research is warranted, the research note concludes that without the maintenance of sufficient support structures, intervention may be unable to perform a democratizing function.

Depuis l'annonce du rachat de Twitter par Elon Musk, les risques quant à l'avenir du réseau social laissent entrevoir l'avènement d'un « Frankenstein 2.0 » – une notion qui fait référence aux grandes entreprises de technologie dont le contrôle échappe à leurs créateurs. Derrière cet événement se pose la question des dérives technologiques et de leurs impacts sur la société. C'est une occasion pour les gouvernements et en particulier celui du Canada, qui encourage l'ouverture des données et les politiques en faveur des technologies, de redéfinir les règles du jeu. En ce sens, quelques recommandations sont proposées en vue de consolider l'encadrement normatif des technologies au Canada. La loi sur l'intelligence artificielle et les données (LIAD), actuellement en discussion au sein du Parlement, devrait en effet aller plus loin concernant la transparence des systèmes automatisés et renforcer ses exigences en matière de gouvernance des données « algorithmiques ».