The Citizens' Constitution Theory, formulated by Alan Cairns, provides a powerful explanation of the changes in Canadian politics during the 1980s. It tackles a research question that has far-reaching implications for the fundamental dynamics of Canadian political life—namely, how does constitutional change affect political participation? Cairns's thesis has gained widespread acceptance in the relevant Canadian literature, but the linkages between attitudes and behaviour at the core of the theory have never been subjected to systematic tests with attitudinal research data. The purpose of this investigation, then, is to make operational the Citizens' Constitution Theory and to evaluate the empirical support for it. The authors outline the central elements of the Citizens' Constitution Theory and discuss how Cairns relates the core concepts to each other. They then suggest that the same concepts and their linkages might also be explained by an alternative theoretical perspective that comes from one variant of New Politics Theory. The empirical section of this analysis uses recently collected survey results to mount three different tests of the two theories. In the first instance, the focus is on the question: how well do both theories predict each set of linkages that can be found in the Citizens' Constitution Theory? The second test treats both theories comprehensively, as causal models, and examines the empirical support for them using path analysis. The final section evaluates the generalizability of both theories. The main finding is that New Politics Theory provides as good an explanation—and by some standards, a better explanation for recent changes in the patterns of Canadian political participation than does the Citizens' Constitution Theory.

Perhaps the most important concept in wide use by social scientists for the analysis of political attitudes and behaviour has been the left-right dimension. Not surprisingly therefore, the terms “left” and “right” themselves have been used in survey research on public opinion in Canada, and have subsequently been central to the data analysis of several recent articles on Canadian politics. Important to these papers has been the assumption that the terms “left” and “right” are understood by the average Canadian in such a manner that data gathered in response to questions using these terms will be valid. This paper argues that this assumption is mistaken.

It is widely held in the Northwest Territories that consensus rather than partisanship may be the most appropriate principle to guide the anticipated restructuring of the Territories' government. This note argues to the contrary that the social basis for consensus politics is absent in the NWT and that present practice in the Legislative Assembly of the NWT owes more to nonpartisanship than to consensus and does not predict a consensual future. However, this practice also does not necessarily point to a parliamentary system in the future; this study identifies four alternative systems as possibilities. It argues that, whatever the format of the Assembly, consociationalism, including significant devolution of power to local governments, represents the most promising direction to explore because it reflects the Territories' social structure and addresses the fundamental concerns of the cultural communities of the NWT.

This article examines the relationship between Canada's development assistance policy and its welfare state institutions. Through an analysis of the Canadian experience, the article argues that the differences between the social policies of developed countries help to understand the nature of their participation in the international aid regime. Although this hypothesis is not entirely new, it is here refined with the help of the comparative literature on the welfare state, and assessed systematically for Canada. Through this case study, the article explores the extent to which values and principles institutionalized at the domestic level influence foreign policy and the international order.

Drawing on the literature on the process of cabinet appointments and on ministerial careers and the types of mobility that they involve, this article examines the hypothesis that the rate of ministerial promotion and demotion within a cabinet differs for women and men. To verify this hypothesis, we compiled a database that integrates the several hundred individuals who served as ministers in the Quebec Executive Council between 1976 and 2012. The quantitative analysis consists of descriptive statistics and negative binomial models; it takes into consideration a number of variables, including age, education, and past political mandates. Our results show that the ministerial careers of women and men follow a similar trajectory. Specifically, women and men begin their ministerial careers with minor portfolios, but as their ministerial experience accumulates, ministers of both sexes take on portfolios of increasing importance. In other words, the ministerial careers of women do not lag behind those of men. This observation negates the idea that the ministerial careers of women are less illustrious than those of their male counterparts.

Canada has long claimed the Northwest Passage as its “internal waters,” while the United States and other countries argue it is an “international strait.” The latter “free sea” position originates in Hugo Grotius, often styled the “father of international law.” However, Grotius later qualifies his own position by granting to coastal states the right to regulate maritime traffic. Grotius's works also inspire the English School of International Relations: an “international society” approach that Canada has historically followed in its overall foreign policy. Hence, a twenty-first-century Grotian vision might suggest a compromise amenable to Canada: Canada would grant passage to conforming American vessels, thus facilitating international trade, but Canada would also gain powers of effective jurisdiction, allowing it to secure and conserve the fragile environment. Canada might thus re-envision sovereignty not as a zero-sum contest for status symbols but as the exercise of functional jurisdiction for the common good of international society.

This study of urban building and real estate activity in Canada is concerned primarily with housing. It is part of a broader project stimulated by Silberling's thesis that among the various components of durable capital formation in the United States only investment in housing and in transportation have acted as prime movers determining the general level of economic activity. This paper falls into two parts, the first dealing with the nature of building and real estate cycles in selected cities in Canada, and the second relating these fluctuations to the growth and movement of population. Basic tables and brief notes on sources are included in an appendix.

The top section of Chart 1 is an index of urban building activity in Canada from 1866 to 1946. This index reflects four and a half major cycles in the eighty years since the Dominion was established. The cycles are similar in many respects to those found by American students. This Canadian index, like those used to illustrate the long cycles in American building, is based on building permits issued in major cities, and has been adjusted to eliminate the influence of changes in the cost of construction. Table I compares upper and lower turning points in the index with those reflected in Mr. J. R. Riggleman's index of deflated values of urban building permits per capita in the United States.

Abstract. The dominant theory of international liberal norm-dissemination argues that states will tend to move from rejection of international norms to internationalization through gradual, predictable stages. The presumption is that the mass public consistently presses the state (in partnership with international norm carriers) for greater liberalization. This theory is shown to have serious weaknesses when applied to mature democracies. A study of the UK's response to adverse rulings from the European Court of Human Rights indicates that policy elites respond differently depending on the norm, the security context and public opinion. Further, the public does not consistently advocate liberalization, but sometimes the reverse.

Résumé. Une théorie principale sur la propagation des normes libérales internationales avance que les États ne passent que graduellement du rejet des normes internationales à leur adoption, en passant par plusieurs étapes prévisibles. Elles présument que le grand public (en conjonction avec les créateurs des normes internationales) exerce des pressions continuelles sur les États pour plus de libertés civiques. En fait, cette théorie n'explique pas l'évolution des attitudes vis-à-vis les libertés civiques dans les démocraties avancées. Une étude du Royaume-Uni, par exemple, démontre que, lorsque la Cour européenne des droits de l'homme dénonce une violation de la Convention, les élites politiques réagissent différemment en fonction de la norme en cause, des questions de sécurité et de l'opinion publique. En outre, le public n'est pas toujours en faveur de la libéralisation, au contraire.

Scholars of the political left-right divide often see equality as the core issue of contention, with the left seeking greater equality than the right. Though partially agreeing with this consensus, I propose a modified left-right conceptualization that offers three novel contributions. First, while accepting the idea of a single fundamental dimension underlying conflict in global politics, I argue the key issue is not necessarily equality but rather the diffusion or concentration of power within and across nations, communities and individuals. Second, given the inescapable complexity of politics, I argue in favour of distinguishing between those who seek to de-concentrate power and broaden inclusion (the left) from those advocating for a concentration of power (the right) in specific issue domains. Third, I illustrate the utility of this “one dimension, multiple domains” theoretical framework through a comparative analysis of eight contemporary political parties across the domains of economic, foreign and social policy.

Drawing upon Walter Benjamin's “principle of montage,” this article excavates the political salience of what is referred to herein as the residential school system's “pan-territorial ideal.” The pan-territorial ideal materialized in 1930 with the opening of the Shubenacadie Residential School in the Maritimes, the system's final frontier. It was envisioned, forged and secured, in part, with the overt understanding that so called Indian education could be used as a vector of violence to control Indigenous peoples and their lands. This history clashes with dominant narratives that interpret residential school system violence as the product of mismanagement and neglect. From the early days of Confederation to its almost full legal autonomy from Britain in the early twentieth century and beyond, the Dominion's pursuit of the pan-territorial vision involved the selective harnessing of the residential school system as a field of state-sanctioned force to quell Indigenous resistance. In this, residential school violence cannot be reduced to a deviation from the norm. In crucial respects, it was an inherent feature of the system and Canadian modern statehood itself.

The COVID-19 pandemic offers a critical opportunity to assess the extent to which Canadians can be considered reliable defenders of democratic norms and institutions. In the face of such a serious threat to their physical and economic well-being, how willing are Canadians to condone the loosening of restraints on the power of the executive? This article addresses this question by drawing on the terror management and threat literatures. Combining a cross-sectional regression analysis with a vignette experiment and a candidate-choice conjoint experiment, it tests two hypotheses: that people experiencing debilitating anxiety about COVID-19 are more likely to favour weakening checks on the executive and that people will be willing to trade off legislative checks for the sake of their preferred lockdown policy. Both hypotheses are confirmed. In the face of an unprecedented health crisis, COVID-related anxiety and a desire for protective policies may trump respect for democratic norms.

Several phenomena which have been separately observed in Canada are linked: namely the diffusion of power within the executive-administrative branch, the proliferation and expanded role of pressure groups, and the increased attention parliament has been receiving from interest organizations. Suggesting that this last may reflect fundamental changes in the policy system as a whole, it is argued that a tendency toward bureaucratic pluralism has led agencies to develop extra-governmental support at the interest group level; and that both interest groups and agencies have found it useful to exploit the legitimating and publicizing capacities of parliament. In so doing they have contributed to the enhancement of parliament's role in the policy process.

The present period is one in which emphasis on the need for rendering economic theory “dynamic” is widespread. Yet there is little reference in the literature to the concepts and measures of time which are appropriate for the economist. Indeed one is sometimes at a loss in examining certain dynamic theories to know precisely what notion of time is held by the authors. It is this situation which has prompted the present writer to ask a few questions concerning the problems posed for the economic theorist who would treat time specifically.

The literature on economic sanctions consists of a series of studies assessing whether sanctions ''worked'' or not. Very little has been written on the factors that make economic sanctions more effective at achieving their intended purposes. This article examines the threatened 1979 Arab world boycott of Canada after Prime Minister Joe Clark announced the government's intention to relocate its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. After determining that sanctions played a contributing role in motivating a Canadian policy reversal, it generates hypotheses from this misunderstood case about the political and economic factors that can contribute to the success of economic sanctions.

The Constitution Act, 1982 recognized certain rights for aboriginal peoples. These rights were to be identified and defined subsequently. Ten years later, after several rounds of negotiations, the question of the recognition and definition of an aboriginal right to self-government remains unresolved. Many specialists claim that the problems faced during these negotiations result from the incompatibility between the main philosophical traditions guiding the actors. Through an analysis of the relationship between the cosmology underlying the aboriginal demands on the one hand and three of the main trends in contemporary Canadian liberal political philosophy on the other hand, this article tries to shed some light on the philosophical incompatibility thesis. While a strictly individualist liberalism rejects outright the notion of collective rights and Will Kymlicka's revisionist liberal individualism limits considerably the scope of an aboriginal right to self-government, communitarian liberalism, like that of Charles Taylor, seems to provide a favourable framework for the integration of cultural co-existence with the First Nations, without repudiating its attachment to fundamental individual rights and freedoms.

This article surveys the first five decades of the Journal/Revue, with particular emphasis on patterns of change and continuity. The article presents a quantitative analysis of the articles published in the Journal/Revue, looking at, among other things, the balance of articles published in English and in French, the proportion of articles authored by women, the location and institutional affiliation of authors and the subject matter of published articles. Significant continuities emerge from the data, such as the predominance of Canadian-based authors writing on aspects of Canadian politics and the dominance of authors from large research-intensive universities. Yet change is also evident, for example in the number of women publishing in the Journal/Revue and in the emergence of articles in subfields not found in the Journal/Revue’s earlier days, most notably Aboriginal politics, gender and politics, and race and ethnicity.