This study makes use of ministerial portfolios to analyze the scope of government activity. It shows that in comparison with expenditure and employment measures, portfolios have a number of advantages in terms of stability, absoluteness, and in identifying when new activities attract sustained government attention. Portfolios are used to investigate whether there has been any convergence in the scope of government activity across state governments in Australia over the century since 1890, and, also, whether partisanship has had any consistent impact on government activity. Neither hypothesis is confirmed. Rather, long-term patterns of activity are complex and appear to be driven by a wide range of forces.

The purpose of this note is to examine the voting behaviour of Edmonton city councillors from 1966 through 1972 in order to determine whether members who campaign together on local slates and parties vote together on council. In short, are local electoral slates and parties able to function as cohesive legislative organizations?

Edmonton's form of government is similar to the governmental structure in the majority of Canadian cities in that it does not lend itself to “responsible government.” The city operated under an at-large electoral system for councillors until 1968 when a plebiscite forced the council to adopt a ward system. With a council reluctant to give up the advantages of an at-large system, four multimember strip wards of equal size were created. By establishing four wards completely heterogeneous in terms of socioeconomic composition, the council in effect provided four at-large elections at every municipal election.

Political theorists have long argued that political participation has been a minimal requirement of democratic political systems. More recently, social scientists have turned their attention to understanding the factors that impede or promote participation. This paper examines several such hypotheses which lie within the framework of personality and social-psychological theory. Briefly stated, this author's contention is that: (1) each individual has a need to have sufficient control over relevant aspects of his life-space, which, under specified conditions, includes the political system; (2) the attempt to satisfy this need in the social world generates basic assumptive beliefs about personal control; and (3) these beliefs have important implications for political participation and the support of regimes.

To examine these contentions more fully, we first must consider the concept of political efficacy, especially as it relates to the motivation to participate in political life. It will then be possible to present a theory that links feelings of personal control in the political arena with more basic psychological needs that help to organize the personality system. Finally, we will present some exploratory data on the relation between beliefs in personal control and political participation. While these data do not directly contradict previous empirical studies, they do suggest the possibility that a substantial reorganization of the way in which political efficacy is conceptualized may be in order.

In his examinations of the ecological parties of Belgium and West Germany, Herbert Kitschelt argues that he has found a new form of political representation that defies patterns of behaviour outlined for political parties by all previous scholarly work. These parties, which Kitschelt calls “left-libertarian,” are unique because they lack the organizational structures common to traditional parties, and include in their membership constituencies that are normally more comfortable in social movements. This article compares the political platforms of these parties and the sociological characteristics of their activists with those of the Montreal Citizen's Movement (MCM) and concludes that the MCM is indeed a left-libertarian party. However, an examination of the MCM reveals that although Kitschelt has found a new form of political representation in the left-libertarian party, this new form does not actually defy the developmental patterns outlined by the classical studies of political parties.

This note examines the impact of changing economic conditions on the popularity of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation-New Democratic party from 1954 to 1984. Using a form of aggregate analysis to test hypotheses developed from the literature, the study finds considerable variability over time periods, especially in the effects of income and inflation. It is suggested this may be a result of the brokerage party system and the minority status of the CCF-NDP in that system. More consistent results were evident for unemployment but the impact of unemployment was negative and therefore contrary to that hypothesized. The importance of this factor in NDP popularity, however, seems to have declined in the last decade.

This article reconsiders findings that emphasize the importance of governments' abilities to impose losses on powerful groups, while arguing that loss imposition is more problematic under separation of powers systems. The author argues that empirical evidence to this effect is thin, that more leverage can be obtained by comparing the policy decisions of subnational jurisdictions in the United States and Canada and that automobile insurance reform is an especially appropriate issue to study. Drawing on both aggregate analysis and case studies, the author presents findings suggesting that the Westminster-style parliamentary system in Canada indeed makes loss imposition easier than does the separation of powers system in the United States.

Politique agricole et résultats électoraux en milieu agricole au Québec

The purpose of this article is to assess the degree to which the agricultural policy of the Quebec government influences the provincial vote in rural areas. More precisely, does the pro-government vote shift as a result of the short-term economic impact of agricultural policy? This general hypothesis is broken down into four specific hypotheses. The unit of analysis is the agricultural locality, that is, one in which at least 50 per cent of the population lives on a farm. The analysis bears on the voting shifts in the elections of I960, 1962, 1966, 1970 and 1973.

Two of the hypotheses are clearly invalid. The other two are confirmed for the election of 1966 but not for the election of 1973. The agricultural policy of the provincial government seems, therefore, to have an electoral impact only under certain conditions. It becomes clear that only policy changes effected a short time before an election, and that involve programmes with a highly visible economic impact, can strongly influence the vote.

In addition, we find that the pro-government vote varies according to the very short-term rise and fall in the price of the main product found in each locality. The federal policy of price support for agricultural products is equally a voting determinant in certain elections; in fact, some unpopular decisions of the federal government are turned against the provincial government. In summary, electoral results are strongly influenced by very short-term economic circumstances, whether the government is responsible for them or not.

This article is a study of the first recorded text of political philosophy, the Debate on the Regimes in Book III of the untitled work by Herodotus. The central methodological postulate of this study is that the Debate must be approached as one approaches the other stories in the work: the reader has to reflect on the arguments made here in light of the dramatic context in which they are made. In particular, the author suggests that the Debate is essentially a story about democracy since the discussion takes place within the framework of what are clearly democratic institutions: there is a sort of assembly where resolutions are debated and decision are taken by majority vote. The drama surrounding the Debate thus conveys to us Herodotus' own thoughts about the character of democracy.

This study explores two conceptions of justice and their radically different implications for mandatory retirement. The author argues that the case against mandatory retirement rests on a conception of justice which ignores the fact that a society is composed of different generations. Yet the neglect of this seemingly trivial fact leads to serious problems of intergenerational justice; and the note considers both how these problems can be accommodated within a theory of liberal justice, and the implications of that theory for mandatory retirement. The note then considers which of these two conceptions of justice is embodied in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It argues that to ignore considerations of intergenerational justice in mandatory retirement cases amounts to a denial of the equal protection and the equal benefit of the law guaranteed by the Charter.

Social choice theory demonstrates that interesting and nonobvious perversities can result when majoritarian methods are applied to the selection of a single alternative from among more than two alternatives. The “voters paradox” is a well-known example of this phenomenon. This note demonstrates that the outcome of the 1983 federal Conservative party leadership convention is another example of the interaction of a decision rule and preferences producing a nonoptimal outcome.

This article considers John Rawls's recent turn to “political liberalism.“ Rawls has revised his argument from A Theory of Justice in order to establish a more realistic account of a “well-ordered” society; that is, creating legitimate political stability amidst a plethora of conflicting yet reasonable conceptions of the good. The aim here is to consider the extent to which Rawlsian theories are at once open to the deep diversity of late-modern political communities, and yet seek to manage and constrain the liberty of “difference” for the purposes of maintaining a distinctive liberal political order. This involves trying to persuade people to comply with liberal norms despite themselves. But it has been the claim of Rawlsian liberalism that citizens be presented, without pretence, with reasons they can accept and live by in the course of establishing a well-ordered society. The drive for transparency here—through seeking out agreement on first principles of justice—obscures the “arts” of political liberalism and prevents us from thinking about the diversity of political communities in other ways.

In recent years a significant beginning has been made in the investigation into the processes of recruitment of authorities within the Canadian political system. The focus of these studies has been on elective offices at the federal and provincial levels and on party activists. Only limited research has been devoted to the processes by which local decision-makers are recruited. Other than the partial analysis of local leadership selection by Harold Kaplan in his study of Toronto politics and the cursory treatment of this subject by J.G. Joyce and H.A. Hosse in their general survey of city councillors throughout Canada, empirical data about the recruitment of Canadian local decision-makers is confined to the level of social back ground analysis. The remainder of our information about local leadership selection tends to be in the form of hypotheses derived from data generated by the more extensive research on the recruitment of city councilmen in American cities. Although these propositions are useful because of certain shared structural characteristics between Canadian urban political systems and their American counterparts, they remain largely untested in the Canadian urban context and we run the risk of ignoring possible differences in the recruitment processes caused by factors endemic to each system.

Recognizing Aboriginal Title: The Mabo Case and Indigenous Resistance to English-Settler Colonialism, Peter H. Russell, Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 2005, pp. xii, 470.

Peter Russell's insightful book on Aboriginal land rights in Australia weaves together two tales, that of Indigenous crusader Eddie Koiki Mabo and the slow and arduous struggle of Torres Strait Islanders and mainland Aborigines to have their native land rights recognized by Australian governments in the hope of forging a new, post-colonial relationship. Along the way, Russell places these stories in the context of the push and pull of international events and movements that affected Australia's domestic politics and assesses the political progress of Indigenous peoples in Canada, the United States and New Zealand.

La participation des Autochtones aux institutions démocratiques canadiennes (que ce soit par le vote, le fait de se présenter à une élection ou d’être député ou sénateur) fait l'objet d'un grand débat dans la littérature décoloniale. Certains auteurs considèrent ces actions comme étant incompatibles avec les mouvements d'autodétermination pendant que d'autres les encouragent en considérant que la participation peut bénéficier aux mouvements d'autodétermination. Par un état des lieux de la littérature décoloniale sur ce sujet, cet essai critique constate que cette mésentente entre les auteurs concernant la compatibilité ou non de la participation avec les mouvements d'autodétermination vient d'une acception différente des contours que devraient prendre l'autodétermination des nations autochtones et le processus devant y mener. Ainsi, il existe une première catégorie d'auteurs, que nous qualifions de « tenants de l'autodétermination incompatible ». Ces derniers établissent que l’État colonial d’établissement est totalisant ; il est donc impossible de le changer de l'intérieur. En outre, les sociétés allochtones et autochtones ne partagent pas les mêmes systèmes de valeurs et de pensées. Il en résulte que les mouvements d'autodétermination doivent se concentrer exclusivement sur la résurgence des sociétés autochtones en dehors des institutions de l’État colonial d’établissement. En conséquence, la participation ne peut faire partie du répertoire d'actions pouvant mener à cette résurgence. Cela pourrait même l'empêcher. À l'inverse, une autre catégorie d'auteurs que nous qualifions de « tenants de l'autodétermination relationnelle » considère que c'est justement parce que l’État colonial d’établissement est totalisant qu'il faut prendre en compte ses effets sur les sociétés autochtones. Dès lors, les sociétés autochtones et allochtones, bien qu'ayant des systèmes de valeurs différents les unes des autres, ne sont pas incompatibles : elles peuvent s'influencer. Par conséquent, la participation à ses institutions peut être compatible avec les mouvements d'autodétermination dans certaines conditions.

Au cours des dernières années, plusieurs recherches ont été menées sur un phénomène relativement récent en Occident: l'accès plus important des femmes à des charges publiques électives. Ces recherches ont porté soit sur les caractéristiques des femmes qui sollicitaient un mandat électif et qui parvenaient à se faire élire, soit sur les obstacles qui jonchaient leur route vers le pouvoir, soit sur certaines de leurs attitudes et opinions et sur certaines perceptions, notamment quant au rôle des femmes en politique . Ces études ont été effectuées à tous les paliers de gouvernement, bien que le palier municipal ait été quelque peu négligé, reflétant peut-être un désintérêt plus large de notre discipline pour cette instance décisionnelle.