This research note considers the complex relationship between the electoral and party systems in Canada from 1921 to 1993. By drawing on Douglas Rae's theoretical model, the note demonstrates that the electoral system exerts a powerful influence on the party system and makes the case that important regional information is often washed out in national-level results. Furthermore, a novel approach is taken to the measurement of regional data in a federal election—a comparison of the indices of fragmentation of the regions and the country provide an interesting explanation for some of the stunning changes in parliamentary representation in 1993. In interpreting the 1993 Canadian general election in this framework, the author argues that although the results in parliament seem to indicate momentous changes in Canadian politics, the voting patterns are, nonetheless, consistent with Canadian political history.

This paper studies the prevalence of ballot order effects in two different types of Canadian elections which differ greatly by the strength of party cues they provide to voters. Provincial elections are best described as a typical competition between well established and institutionalized parties, hence providing voters with strong party cues. Alternatively, municipal politics provide voters with much weaker party cues. We use electoral results from recent provincial and municipal elections in Québec and find ballot order effects in municipal elections but not in provincial ones. Although ballot order effects may also be the product of alphabetic preference bias, we argue that in any case these are cognitive biases that are ultimately the product of insufficient cues that voters need in order to cast well-informed votes. The paper, therefore, sheds some light on an understudied type of election in political science.

This article examines the linkages by which time pressure influences national decision makers to initiate wars. It is argued that time pressure matters most significantly as an intervening variable at the decision-maker level in conjunction with system and subsystem level variables, such as changes in relative strike capability and alliance relationships, and state level variables like military strategy and doctrine. Most studies treat time pressure as having relevance during an acute crisis; in this article, time pressure is viewed as having an intermediate-term significance, that is, prior to the escalation phase or during the early phase of a crisis. It is shown that independent variables such as relative capability, alliance relationships and military doctrines are most likely to be associated with war initiation when they are mediated by time pressure. The article also distinguishes between immediate time pressure—that occurs during the escalation phase of a crisis—and intermediate time pressure, which can happen prior to, and at the onset phase of a crisis.

In the wake of wide-ranging municipal amalgamations Ontario, the provincial government promoted the use of community councils, citizen-led boards that would have input in local matters. Community councils were touted as a way of preserving local identity and policy control. However, more than a decade removed from Ontario's restructuring process, few municipalities have community councils in place. Those that have implemented community councils established them with purely advisory functions. This paper asks why community councils were so inconsistently implemented and introduced with such limited powers. Overall, it is found that community councils were victims of restructuring politics. Blocked by city councillors fearing decentralization would dilute their authority and foster political rivals, constrained through a restrictive legislative framework and pushed aside by city officials fearing they would effectively recreate a two-tier system, community councils were either abandoned or installed with a limited mandate.

Abstract. With a focus on NAFTA, we offer an alternative model of trade negotiations that explains why the dominant partner is able to force concessions only on some issues. Key to our model is the concept of scope. The environment side agreement excited wide swaths of society; thus, scope was high and international power asymmetries appear to explain the result. Power asymmetries seemed unimportant, however, when bargaining over issues that affected small portions of society, such as individual tariff levels. Finally, in issues of medium scope, such as the rules of origin for the textile industry, power asymmetries and elements of traditional bargaining models likely account for the negotiated outcomes.

Résumé. Ce texte explique pourquoi, au cours de la négociation d'une entente commerciale, le pays dominant n'a pas en général intérêt à imposer ses préférences aux pays partenaires. Le concept de “ scope ” (ou de portée) sert à distinguer entre les différents enjeux d'une négociation. La négociation du traité de l'ALENA sert ici de cadre pour l'application de notre proposition. Parce que d'importants secteurs de la société jugeaient prioritaires les enjeux soulevés par l'accord parallèle sur la coopération dans le domaine de l'environnement, l'issue des discussions a été imposée au plus haut niveau par les dirigeants américains. En revanche, les taux tarifaires appliqués aux différents produits ne concernent chacun que des groupes restreints. Sur ces enjeux, les rapports de puissance ne jouent pas. Enfin, ce n'est que sur les enjeux intermédiaires, tels que les règles d'origine pour l'industrie textile, que les processus familiers de négociations internationales rendent compte de la réalité de façon satisfaisante.

Social scientists have for some time been interested in the socialization of young people. An increasing number of studies are available which deal with Western Europe, Japan, South America, and the United States. However, little empirical research has been done on the socialization of Canadian children. The purpose of this paper is to consider the development of English- and French-Canadian children's attitudes toward government in Quebec and to determine, in particular, the impact of their cultural membership on their perception of government. The ultimate goal of this research – though not of this paper – is to investigate empirically the development of national identity in Canada, a concept that has been singled out by several scholars as crucial in political development and nation building.

Error from September 2003 issue (36:4) of The Journal (Michael Lusztig, Patrick James, and HeeMin Kim, "Signaling and Tariff Policy: the Strategic Multistage Rent Reduction Game".

In recent years numerous critics, generally those with strong nationalist inclinations, have attempted to demonstrate that Canadians are no longer autonomous in cultural and educational pursuits. Whether or not such autonomy ever existed to any substantial degree, especially for non-French Canada, might itself be disputed. Indeed, a good case can be put forward for the proposition that the gradual diminution of British practices, norms, and expertise in many facets of Canadian education, if not in Canadian culture generally, was accompanied by a concomitant increase in American practices, publications, and personnel rather than by any emerging period of distinctly Canadian expression. That most of the substantial Americanization in postsecondary education and many other areas was occasioned by Canadian invitation tends, however, to be widely ignored. Be that as it may, most critics now prefer to focus on the actual state of affairs and the continuing trends rather than on historical causes.

At the end of the 1970s, the corporatism growth industry in political science passed from its competitive stage (articles in journals) to its organized stage (articles collected in books). In the founding text of the new stage, Trends Towards Corporatist Intermediation, Philippe Schmitter explained that corporatism was not itself a theory capable of generating explanations and predictions. Rather, it was a phenomenon that had to be theorized within one of the major competing paradigms of social structure and social change, which he identified as those associated with Durkheimian and Parsonian “structural differentiation,” the historical materialism of Weberian and Marxist-revisionist “organized capitalism,” and the Marxist political economy tradition wherein he located the theories of the state popular at the time. Yet, it was perhaps inevitable, given the accumulation of academic capital associated with growth industries in the social sciences, that Schmitter's (and others') sound advice would be ignored and that grandiose claims would be made for corporatism as a theory in its own right.

The purpose of this research is to confirm that there are different conceptions of equality in the United States, English Canada, and French Canada.

Beginning with the Aristotelian distinction between numerical equality and proportional equality, the article establishes first a typology for the concept of equality. A review of the literature on the subject reveals that Americans and English Canadians can be said to be partial to proportional equality while French Canadians favour numerical equality.

It is then demonstrated that Von Neumann's and Morgenstern's theory of games can be interpreted as an egalitarian theory since the non-discriminatory solution proposed by Von Neumann and Morgenstern corresponds exactly to a proportional division of the stakes according to the strategic importance given to each of the players by the characteristic function of the game.

A series of tests conducted in Quebec and the US and utilizing a three-party game invented by Riker reveals that French Canadians take a numerical-egalitarian stance while Americans and English Canadians play according to a proportional-egalitarian model.

Finally, the results are analysed to try to find the possible reasons for the difference.

Why has Australia not followed Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom in adopting a formal bill of rights at the national level? We argue that the Australian Constitution has made the difference. The Constitution has underpinned a comparatively strong parliamentary check on the executive, weakening the rationale for a bill of rights and impeding legislative initiatives towards this end; thwarted the drive for a constitutional bill of rights; and helped delegitimize statutory approaches to a bill of rights in general and the “dialogue model” in particular. The article ultimately questions the notion that a common approach to rights protection can apply across Westminster democracies.

Cet article étudie les attitudes des Québécois à l’égard des personnes assistées sociales. Il s'intéresse à la variation du niveau d'aide mensuel que les Québécois sont prêts à leur accorder en fonction du profil de prestataires. L'article vise plus spécifiquement à étudier l'influence de l'aptitude au travail en tant qu'heuristique de mérite structurant l'opinion des Québécois. Nos résultats indiquent que les Québécois sont d'avis que les prestataires de l'assistance sociale devraient recevoir des soutiens mensuels inférieurs à ce qu'ils considèrent être le revenu minimum nécessaire pour couvrir les besoins de base. L'opinion des Québécois quant au niveau adéquat d'aide devant être offerte aux personnes assistées sociales est aussi fortement structurée par la question de l'aptitude au travail et par la perception que les individus sont en contrôle de leur situation. Finalement, la notion d'aptitude au travail se distingue clairement d'une variété d'autres caractéristiques individuelles pouvant influencer les opinions des Québécois.

Cette note de recherche a deux objectifs. Premièrement, nous présentons l'index relatif de confiance (IRC), une nouvelle mesure du potentiel de croissance et de la solidité du vote basée sur la probabilité exprimée par les électeurs de voter pour l'ensemble des partis dans leur circonscription. Nous nous penchons en détail sur les avantages de l'IRC et montrons qu'il permet d’évaluer le potentiel de croissance et la solidité du vote des partis politiques au niveau des circonscriptions et au niveau provincial. Deuxièmement, nous appliquons cet index au cas du Parti québécois à l'aide d’échantillons de grandes tailles récoltés pendant les campagnes électorales québécoises de 2012, 2014, et 2018. Cela nous permet d'illustrer et de tirer des constats sur le potentiel de croissance du Parti québécois.

This article examines the presence of geographically targeted spending in the allocation of infrastructure projects in Canada. Building on formal models of distributive politics, we expect government districts, core government districts and swing districts to be advantaged in terms of infrastructure projects. We also investigate whether characteristics of Members of Parliament (MPs), such as seniority or holding a cabinet position, influence the distribution of infrastructure projects. Empirically, we analyze the amount of funding allocated by Infrastructure Canada across non-urban federal electoral districts between 2006 and 2018. Our results indicate that non-urban governmental districts receive, on average, more money than opposition districts, and that this is even more the case for core government districts. In contrast, we found little evidence that cabinet ministers or senior MPs are able to attract more funding to their constituencies compared to other representatives.