Even if “functionalism” is a relative newcomer to the study of politics, its theoretical roots are in the classics of political science. Thus it is ironic to note that the political theorists who have reintroduced the notion of functionalism have relied upon models inspired by anthropological and sociological theory.

Every functionalist approach is fundamentally holistic and system-oriented. Functionalist theorists may be in error when they deny their common origin, whether direct or metaphorical, in biology. If “the great curse of functionalism is its ‘ism,’ the least of its weaknesses is its plural.” There is more than one functionalism. With respect to political science alone, the author considers the contributions to functional theory of Ernst Haas, Karl Deutsch, David Easton, Gabriel Almond, and Amitai Etzioni.

An outline of the author's own research is then presented in the light of the works considered. He argues for a more rigorous functionalism – a “functionalism of functions” which would be derived from specifically political behaviour, rather than cross-disciplinary borrowings from other sciences that are theoretically more fertile. The ideal would be the development of a polito-logique of the emergence of political from social phenomena which would depart from the core or nerve centre of political functioning: the interplay of the four essential functions of government, legislation, administration, and adjudication.

Although they are usually differentiated, political and social systems overlap and are interdependent. It is useful to consider them as a single organism, responsive to internal as well as external exigencies. With the notions of function, level, perspective, and field of analysis, the author indicates how one can move from a model of the functions of the State (Fonctionnement de l'état) to a dynamic conception of the state in operation (L'état en fonctionnement). Finally, the author emphasizes the importance of not denying the political, but of remaining at the level of the political, in order to achieve the greatest theoretical success.

The problem of the nation in French Marxism gives rise to many difficulties. Most of the Marxist scholars, in spite of all their efforts, have not been able to explain the nation coherently in Marxist terms. Most frequently the attempt is made to integrate the nation into Marxist ideology by equating it to a social class. But this identification is impossible: (1) The nation and the social class are not treated on the same level in Marxist sociology. For Marxism, social class and nation have an unyielding content that prevents the reduction of one to the other. (2) The classes in a society play a dysfunctional role whereas the nation is an integrative factor that overcomes the divisions. (3) Finally, the class struggle, according to Marx, leads to social revolution, while a national struggle can only produce a political revolution. This analysis shows that it is impossible to integrate the nation in Marxist theory, if one grants to the nation an absolute value in the social order.

Marxism treats the nation as a secondary reality of the social order. It is the category of “partial-totality” which provides the key to this integration. Society is the totality, but not an empty one. It is a totality which gathers together other totalities linked in an essentially dynamic relationship. Marxism defends the concept of nation as a partial totality, that is as an “historic entity,” but in so doing deprives it of any absolute and definitive character and of formal autonomy. It is as a partial totality simultaneously determined by “the” totality (as goal) and by concrete behaviour or praxis (which constructs totality) that Marxism retains and defends the nation not only as a strategic and momentary element but also as a support for specific values which are integrated into the universalism of the civilization of free men.

Thus the French Marxists, faithful to their principles, have not only accepted the nations, but have even defended them as “partial totalities” and as the medium of praxis. It is by a distortion that some French Marxists such as Aragon, Casanova, Cogniot, Leduc, etc., have been able to surround the nation by a halo as if it had an eternal value in itself. More coherent are those who like Henri Lefebvre or Maxime Rodinson have seen in the nation a reality attached to historical development, setting loose in the development of humanity those values which are durable acquisitions in themselves, but whose forms are subject to time and to the renewal of praxis.

It is thus that neither the identification, nor even equality, but the simultaneity of national culture and socialist humanism can be explained. The specific can take the form of the universal.

As Lévi-Strauss puts it, social facts are primarily communication facts. From this point of view political communication is not characterized by the objects it bears upon, but by its praxeologicial character; it is concerned with the effectiveness of communication, and more precisely with power relations and with strategies. So, political communication is to be analysed as a game structure, and not as a network structure or a code structure. It is shown by an example that political communication really presents a game structure, after which some distinctions are made between mastery and control, and then between material, informational, symbolic, and juridical means of power. Like the other structures, game structures are characterized by the laws which govern them. Three of them are specified: the law of equilibration, the law of connectedness, and the law of communal closure. Finally, after reviewing briefly the different orders (practical, institutional, and ideological) where a structure can be seen in operation, three positive aspects of such a game analysis are noted: it is concerned with the inner part of human action, it is well-suited to overcome the limits of functional and systems analysis, and it has the virtue of isolating a truly political dimension in human action.

Analysis of the Canadian political system has suffered from a relative paucity of competing interpretations of the same phenomena. Too many interpretations of our polity have gone unchallenged, probably on the assumption that our scarce academic resources should not be wasted on internecine controversy while virgin fields remain untapped. Professor Lovink's article is a hopeful indication that this stage of disciplinary immaturity is ending. His sophisticated dissection of my previous article is a helpful contribution to the discussion of the effects of the electoral system on the party system. These comments, by concentrating on some of the problems raised by Lovink, are designed to contribute to a further clarification.

Initially, it can be noted, that the disagreement between us is not over the data dealing with votes and seats, but with the interpretation to be given the data. It was perhaps in the very nature of a somewhat polemical article attacking the “conventional wisdom” that I stressed the effects as I saw, or deduced, them, and in the nature of Lovink's rejoinder that the possible effects are minimized.

This difference is noteworthy in our respective treatment of the electoral system's systematic bias against Conservative Quebec voters. The data indicate that the ratio of 5.6 Liberals to 1 Conservative mp resulted from a ratio of 1.9 Liberals to 1 Conservative voter. This struck me as pregnant with consequences for the party system, some of which I tried to suggest.

Elections as the Product of Collective Decision: Federal Elections from 1957 to 1965 in Quebec

Is it fruitful to consider electoral results as the product of collective decisions, as suggested by Vincent Lemieux in his study of provincial elections in Quebec? In order to answer this question, the authors applied the same approach to new data, the results of federal elections in Quebec from 1957 to 1965. It is first noted that the operational concept of collective decision should be linked to a theoretical one. It is suggested that this theoretical concept would be more meaningful if a structural approach was adopted: it could be an “inconscient collectif” influencing the ridings in one way or another. In this sense the ridings are facing many choices: they may tend to choose a certain party, to vote for the party in government (or the contrary), or they may wish to re-elect the same party (or the contrary); finally, there might be a tendency to vote like the majority of the ridings (or, once again, the contrary). The comparison between expected and actual frequencies of the different sets of partisan choices argues in favour of the importance of party loyalty. The cleavage between the socio-economic characteristics of the traditionally Liberal, Social Credit, and Conservative ridings is also evident. The analysis of the other choices raises many problems, however. The same electoral result may refer to many different sets of choices and the relationships between these choices make it almost impossible to measure the influence of eac structural mechanism controlling for all the others. It becomes almost impossible to discover which structural law does in fact govern the ridings’ behaviour. On the whole, then, structural and causal studies are faced with the same basic methodological problem: when one wants to measure the sole impact of a particular causal factor or structural mechanism which interacts with many others, it is necessary to make some assumptions, like linearity and additivity, which exclude any complex interaction.

In his study of the spatial symbolism of primitive societies, Robert Hertz noted that the left was the side associated with weakness and evil, the right being on the contrary linked to purity, strength, and religion. The works of I. Wile and V. Fritsch, among others, have confirmed this privileged – though not universal – association of right with the positive side of the dichotomies which together with left-right form symbolic constellations used to interpret the social as well as the physical environment.

These studies – based on the comparison of religious rituals, social customs, and languages – have not considered or considered only incidentally the use made of the left-right classification for the ordering of one's political landscape. This article is a partial attempt to do so from the answers of American, French, French-Canadian, and English-Canadian respondents to a questionnaire administered in 1967–8. The respondents were asked to locate selected religious and profane concepts in an extreme left to extreme right visual scale.

The hypothesis that the students interviewed, like the primitives studied by Hertz, would see religion on the right was verified for the concepts God, religion, and clergyman but not for Jesus Christ which tended to be located on the left. The deviance of Jesus Christ, rather than taken as ground for rejecting the hypothesis, is explained by the non-religious, the man-like rather than God-like qualities associated with that concept.

Dans l'étude du comportement des groupes d'intérêts, il est courant d'analyser les processus par lesquels les demandes de ces groupes atteignent ceux qui détiennent le pouvoir de décision politique; on tient aussi compte de la formulation de ces demandes et de leur influence sur les actions gouvernementales. Cette perspective d'approche se fonde implicitement sur le postulat suivant: pour tel groupe donné, les demandes les plus importantes expriment les besoins et les aspirations des membres de ce groupe. En d'autres termes, plus telle demande répond essentiellement aux besoins du « membership » d'un groupe, plus on suppose qu'elle constitue une variable importante de l'analyse du comportement de ce groupe d'intérêt.

La présente étude se propose d'examiner si, dans le cas des groupes considérables et bureaucratisés, les pressions qu'ils exercent, en réponse aux besoins de leurs membres, ne sont pas subordonnées aux demandes que font leurs dirigeants relativement à leur organisation. Du moins, aux yeux de ces derniers, les demandes de reconnaissance organisationnelle sont-elles les plus importantes qu'ils tentent d'imposer au gouvernement. Le manque d'unité de la structure du travail organisé au Canada, de même que la compétition active entre les différentes centrales syndicales, nous ont permis de vérifier cette hypothèse.

Les résultats de cette analyse sont les suivants: (1) toute forme de reconnaissance susceptible d'être accordée par le gouvernement suscite une vive compétition entre les centrales établies; (2) celles-ci cherchent à susciter, pour elles-mêmes, de nouvelles occasions où elles seront reconnues par le gouvernement; (3) les plus amères disputes éclatent entre ces groupes et le gouvernement lorsque ce dernier leur refuse la reconnaissance à laquelle, aux yeux de leurs dirigeants, ces groupes auraient droit. Par exemple, le gouvernement Diefenbaker ayant posé un tel geste vis-à-vis du Congrès du travail du Canada, leurs relations se gâtèrent au point d'être décrites, par les dirigeants du CTC, comme « les plus mauvaises qui se puissent trouver entre une centrale nationale et un gouvernement, parmi les nations occidentales hautement industrialisées ».

Anti-separatism and messianism in Quebec since 1960

Confronted by a political debate now omnipresent in Quebec society, observers have naturally focused their attention – academic or not – on the content and proponents of the “séparatiste” solution to the current Canadian dilemma. Our contention is that it takes two sides to have a debate and that some light could be thrown on the intellectual history of French Canada by reversing the perspective and focusing instead on those who oppose independence for Quebec: the anti-separatists.

Although widely diversified as to the specifics of their opposition and as to their own solution to the problem, anti-separatists nevertheless share certain ideological traits in their portrait of the French-Canadian Homus and in the characteristics and roles which they assigned to the French-Canadian collectivity. Individually, French Canadians are judged to be weak, unstable, verbose, and un-democratic; as a collectivity they are perceived as fulfilling all the requirements of a “chosen” people whose mission it is to reconquer Canada through the strength of their intellect and to show the world an example of binational co-operation.

This schizophrenic vision of French Canada is hypothesized to be a secularized version of the traditional nationalist vision first enunciated by Garneau and Parent and later developed by Groulx, Barbeau, and others. The persistence of this messianic orientation in the intellectual history of French Canada is tentatively explained through the contributions of the sociology of utopia (French Canada as an aborted utopia) and of the sociology of colonial development (French Canada as a colonial society).