The Canadian Political Science Association, half-way through the second year of the Century of the Common Man, naturally devotes some of its attention to the prospects of democracy in our own country. It is fitting that we should inquire into what has been happening to our party system, for we have had as long an experience as most modern countries in the working of popular political parties as part of the machinery of democracy, and our experience should be of some significance to other peoples as well as to ourselves. How little systematic study has been done on this subject, however, is brought home to a Canadian after he has lived for a time in the United States and has had to try to answer Americans when they ask for books on the principles, organization, and history of Canadian parties, such as they produce so abundantly on their own parties. It might not be a bad idea, therefore, to begin this paper with some reference to recent American discussions of their party system. One can usually derive from a study of American experience the most useful categories of thought in which to arrange our own Canadian experience. And American books on democracy in general and on political parties as one of the techniques of democracy have been pouring from their presses in great profusion in recent years.

American study of the subject of political parties in America has now reached the stage at which text-books digesting for university undergraduates the conclusions of the experts are almost as standardized as American motor-cars. When one reads the new ones that appear with each new publishing season one gets a strong impression that the chief reason for the new publication is not the author's urge to throw fresh light on the subject but simply the reason which produces new text-books in most subjects, namely the urge to supplement a meagre salary by a comfortable income from royalties.

During the last fifteen years carefully prepared population forecasts have appeared for nearly every important country possessed of reasonably adequate vital statistics and census records. With the general recognition of essential differences between the behaviour of bugs in a bottle and homo sapiens “in leaky national containers”, the usual procedure in the more recent studies has been to isolate the principal component factors in population growth, predict the future trend in each, and thus estimate the probable population ten, twenty, fifty, or more years hence. Already the majority of even the more conservative forecasts are proving too high and almost invariably because of over-estimation of the birth-rate.

Errors of this sort are not unexpected in view of the inherent difficulties of the problem. Their number is legion; it will suffice to note three. First, there is the difficulty of foreseeing changes in the social and particularly in the economic environment. Even in so-called normal times, each year brings unanticipated and sometimes substantial modifications in the complex of social forces making for greater or smaller rates of population increase. The duration and severity of such abnormal phenomena as the present depression are, of course, incapable of measurement in advance. Second, the nature and extent of human reactions to environmental change vary greatly both from country to country and from time to time. How a particular people will behave in a new situation is, therefore, usually a matter of considerable uncertainty. This uncertainty is in part at least attributable to a third difficulty. While many excellent studies, especially during the last decade, have contributed materially to a more adequate understanding of the forces controlling population growth, the existing state of knowledge still falls appreciably short of permitting precise quantitative measurement of many important influences on the birth-rate.

The past two decades embrace a period in which Canada has become established (since 1922) as the premier wheat exporting nation of the world; in which wheat prices touched the highest point (September, 1920) and the lowest depth (December, 1932) in Canadian grain trade history; in which centralized co-operative pool marketing of wheat was conducted for several years on a larger scale than that of any farm product in any country; and in which the federal government has experimented with policies in relation to the marketing and price movements of wheat ranging from established regulatory functions to monopoly handling through a government board and minimum price guarantees. These two decades include three periods of favourable prices and active export demand (1917-20, 1924-9, and 1936-7), with the intervening years characterized by distress prices and restricted foreign demand. Amid these fluctuating economic conditions of the wheat industry there has occurred significant experimentation with different marketing systems, involving shifting relationships between the organized producers, the organized private trade, and the provincial and federal governments.

My paper contains no theoretical aspects of physical planning; it merely recounts the progress that is being made in Great Britain in the pursuit of adequate legal and administrative measures to make physical planning a purposeful reality. The principles upon which the statutory instruments of planning have been devised are startlingly different today from the vague and somewhat superficial considerations which underlay the first planning measures enacted in 1909. In that year the purpose of planning was understood to be the preservation of amenity by regulatory control; today, planning is recognized in Great Britain to be one of the main functions of the internal affairs of government whereby the integration of public and private enterprise is to be achieved so as to insure an ordered and balanced national development. Planning is accepted as the matrix of national endeavour; as an instrument whereby positive development in the national interest may be assured.

Of the 38 million acres of land in England and Wales, about 27 million acres were embraced by planning schemes at the outbreak of the war. The schemes ranged from proposals for the safeguarding of great stretches of moorland in the interests of the preservation of natural beauty, to plans for the redevelopment of small areas of urban decay; and varied, too, from proposals of a purely advisory nature to statutory schemes operating under the planning law of the country. The operative schemes covered an area of a little over a million acres.

World events during the past twenty years, the great depression and the war, have challenged economists to improve and enlarge their theoretical framework. The stresses and strains of this period have brought forward vitally important problems which demanded solution. At the same time, these events helped to produce an environment which responded more generously to the social scientist's quest for new data. There can be little doubt that there was an intimate interdependence between developments in economic theory and analysis, and the growth and systematization of quantitative data.

Perhaps the most significant of these developments has been in the field of national accounts. The purpose of this paper is briefly to describe and illustrate this development in Canada, as follows: (1) summary of work on national income in Canada, 1918-41; (2) some principles involved in the new departure of national accounting; (3) the work of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics in preparing national accounts for Canada; (4) some illustrative applications of national accounts to economic analysis and policy; (5) problems of concepts and statistics involved in national accounting; and (6) lines of future development.

A Summary of Work on National Income in Canada, 1918-41. When it was decided in 1944 to undertake the preparation of a new set of national accounts, in line with Canadian needs and developments elsewhere, we were fortunate in having at our disposal a great deal of pioneer work on national income in Canada.

Mobilisant un sondage avec un devis expérimental, cet article cherche à comprendre l'effet que peuvent avoir les heuristiques numériques d'acceptabilité sociale sur la capacité de convaincre. L'expérience expose les répondants à un article de nouvelle sur les réfugiés syriens et irakiens et, selon le traitement, à un fil de discussion comprenant différentes heuristiques numériques d'acceptabilité sociale. L’étude démontre que la présence d'un fil de discussion modifie l'effet à court terme que peut avoir l'article d'actualité initial et démontre également et surtout la façon dont les heuristiques numériques d'acceptabilité sociale ont un effet d'amplification sur la capacité de convaincre et les émotions évoquées par les commentaires. Chaque unité d'heuristique ou chaque recommandation n'augmente pas nécessairement d'autant le pouvoir de convaincre des commentaires associés et, pour les commentaires que les individus ne sont pas prédisposés à appuyer, servent plutôt à consolider les attitudes préexistantes et à polariser.

En matière de règle électorale, la recherche, d'approche « institutionaliste », s'est longtemps attardée sur les effets des différentes règles électorales sur les systèmes de partis, négligeant peut-être un peu les modes de confection et de modification de ces règles ainsi que leur usage politique.

For institutions as well as for people, turning 50 invites reflection on what's gone before and what's to come. This special 50th anniversary issue looks at Canadian political science and the profession—past and present—from a number of perspectives and explores ways in which they might or should change.

Depuis 1995, la question de la nation en science politique a été ramenée à celle de la reconnaissance et de l’égalité des nations. La période contemporaine se distingue par cette impulsion dominante de la période des années 1960 et 1990, alors que les études se tournaient vers l’émancipation et la liberté de la nation. Une transition paradigmatique a eu lieu par le biais de trois genres d’études qui feront l'objet de cette recension. La position la plus discutée propose une synthèse du fédéralisme et du nationalisme d’émancipation autour de l'idée du fédéralisme multinational, qui met de l'avant l'impératif d’égalité. Une seconde position cherche à renouveler la tradition fédéraliste ou nationaliste de l'intérieur, afin de répondre aux défis politiques et aux innovations conceptuelles du moment. Enfin, une troisième position, souvent mais non exclusivement d'inspiration postmoderne et postcoloniale, refuse la matrice collectiviste qui sous-tend et le fédéralisme et le nationalisme pour se tourner vers l'expérience personnelle et interpersonnelle de la politique, parfois même pour la repenser à l'encontre de la nation et des ratés de la reconnaissance.

This article follows Hobbes's distinction between man as the artificer of a commonwealth and man as the material of the commonwealth, by exploring the meaning of natural right and consent from the perspective of an artificer or potential sovereign. From this perspective, natural rights are transformed from alleged attributes of humans into decisions by a victor in war to treat the defeated as if they had natural rights. Similarly, consent is transformed from actions of subjects or citizens into a decision by a victor to recognize the defeated as if they had a right to consent and to treat them as if they had consented. Moreover, Hobbes's concept of a commonwealth by institution is understood as a definitional standard for the creation of commonwealths by force or acquisition, rather than as a possible historical event. Hobbes sought to explain and substantiate this view of natural right and consent by comparing the emergence of political authority from victory in war to the emergence of authority of a mother over her infant in a state of nature. According to Hobbes, just as maternal authority rests on a mother's recognition of the right of her infant to consent, political authority rests on the victor's recognition of the right of the defeated to consent. The practical policy thrust of Hobbes's thought emerges from his comparison of the authority of mothers and conquerors.

As I use the term, philosophy is critical thinking about fundamental matters, where “critical” includes identifying and evaluating justifications for beliefs about fundamental matters or proposing and defending such justifications. Like the notion of philosophy itself, what counts as fundamental is also contestable, but Phillip Hansen's characterization of its being “about how humans ought to live, about what is good for them” is an apt example. Macpherson certainly does attend to this and similar topics and he castigates his contemporary political scientists for neglecting them.

In this paper, we initiate a discussion within the Canadian political science community about research openness and its implications for our discipline. This discussion is important because the Tri-Agency has recently released guidelines on data management and because a number of political science journals, from several subfields, have signed the Journal Editors’ Transparency Statement requiring data access and research transparency (DA-RT). As norms regarding research openness develop, an increasing number and range of journals and funding agencies may begin to implement DA-RT-type requirements. If Canadian political scientists wish to continue to participate in the global political science community, we must take careful note of and be proactive participants in the ongoing developments concerning research openness.