This article reconsiders George Grant's account of the decision of the US Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade against legal restrictions on abortion to support his claim that liberal contractualism here raises but cannot resolve the ontological question of what makes justice our due, while questioning his treatment of this crisis as the final triumph of technological reason, and the Biblical idea of will, over the remnants of an ancient justice based on the Platonic notion of contemplation. What provokes liberalism to question equality of right is as much its denial of the Biblical account of family and creation as its denial of classical political philosophy.

Of all the levels of the state or government in Canada, the local one is the most often subjected to structural change or reorganization. The processes by which that change occurs—or by which it is postponed or avoided—are the focus of this article. In particular, the consequences of choosing one process of change rather than another are explored. After developing a framework to define and explore the processes of change, the article proceeds to analyze 81 instances between 1953 and 1983 in which reorganization of local government in Canada either actually occurred or was merely proposed.

Despite a rash of proposals for structural change in the government of Canada, the constitutional changes of 1982 did not bring it about. There continues to be pressure for change, especially on the part of those desiring regional representation in a strengthened second chamber. The argument of the article is that only some changes, at the limit a Bundesrat-type chamber, are compatible with the majority principle on which parliamentary government is based. An elective Senate creates problems for parliamentary government in Australia and is basically incompatible with majority rule; the introduction of such a chamber may well require the adoption of something like the United States or Swiss model. A constitutional mini-convention is proposed to negotiate such a chamber, if desired, with the first ministers prior to the employment of the new amending process.

Organizational change in the central machinery of government is essentially a function of executive leadership. The major determinants of such change are invariably political and not administrative in character and derive from the leadership paradigms of chief executive officers—their philosophy of government, management style and political objectives. This phenomenon is examined in the recent transformation of the Canadian central executive system from one based upon the Trudeau paradigm of rational management to one structured to fit the Mulroney paradigm of brokerage politics. The organizational instruments of each paradigm are considered and their respective capacities to meet the requirements of executive leadership in our modern administrative state are assessed. It is argued that the two different systems and the changes introduced by them are best explained by the paradigms of these two prime ministers.

Michel Foucault offered his readers an “analytics of power” and later began a “genealogy of the subject.” The two tasks were related, and both were premised on Foucault's rejection of traditional modes of political thought or reason. This article explores Foucault's attack on political rationality, something here called Foucault's triple murder: that is, his rejection of the role played in political thought by the ideas of sovereignty, History (as a predictable evolutionary or revolutionary process) and Man (as a transcendental subject). Foucault's restructuring of political thought is shown to be the foundation of his work.

The article examines the evolution of financial aide from the federal government to the Canadian manufacturing industry between 1960 and 1980. Financial assistance is not negligible but is less than what it is sometimes assumed to be. It increased substantially from I960 to 1971 and decreased somewhat thereafter. The study attempts to establish that the evolution of this aid is largely linked to the process of tariff reduction and is not affected by short-term economic changes. The last section discusses the political benefits and costs of financial aid versus other policy instruments; it argues that discrimination basically characterizes financial aide and that businessmen have become increasingly wary of such discrimination.

The social and political involvement of political scientists illustrates issues and compromises the discipline has had to come to grips with throughout its development. A comparison of political science with other scientific disciplines reveals a genuine technology affecting the discourse of political scientists: the evolution of the discipline reflects the changing but privileged relationship specialists have with policy-makers. This article uses electoral studies to show the relevance of this approach and to demonstrate how the construction of political objects is dependent upon technical considerations.

This article examines the impact of two policy crises on the structure and behaviour of Canadian oil and gas interest groups. It first retests Glyn Berry's three propositions developed in 1974 after the first energy crisis, in light of the second energy crisis in 1979–1980. It then generates and examines two further propositions. The three propositions retested are: that interest group influence declines during a crisis; that if the crisis necessitates intensive federal-provincial bargaining, this tendency is accentuated, and that when facing a serious governmental threat the group under attack will seek to exert its influence as widely as possible. The article shows that the evidence from the second crisis supports the validity of the above propositions, but in addition two further hypotheses are examined and found valid. These are: that in post-crisis periods interest group influence is re-established, but that where crises broaden the scope of policy, interest groups are restructured so as to accommodate the broadened interests which both benefit from and are harmed by the crisis policy response. The interest groups examined are the Canadian Petroleum Association, the Independent Petroleum Association of Canada, the Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors, and the Canadian Gas Association.

The authors tested predictions concerning the effects of respondents' identification with governing versus opposition political parties on feelings of political efficacy and trust, using data from the 1984 Canadian National Election Study. Dependent variables were political competence, perceived system responsiveness, and political trust, each measured federally and provincially. Respondents who supported the party in power scored significantly higher on perceived responsiveness and trust than those who supported opposition parties, although mainly at the provincial level. Whether respondents' preferred party was in power or not interacted with strength of party identification on the responsiveness and trust measures, both federally and provincially, as expected. Effects were much less pronounced for feelings of political competence. The authors suggest an interpretation to explain the weaker and inconsistent federal results. The article concludes with some observations concerning the relationship between partisanship, on the one hand, and efficacy and trust, on the other.

By way of a critical assessment of the leading authorities on the critics of the Judicial Committee, this article argues that the proper appreciation of what the law lords did to the terms of the BNA Act can be found in an understanding of their perception of their unique function. Supporters of the Judicial Committee's decentralization of the terms of the British North America Act have tended to rely on either G. P. Browne's book on the subject or Alan Cairns's article in this Journal (4 [1971], 301–45). The purpose of this article is to challenge those authorities and offer an alternative explanation.

The relationships between attitudes toward income redistribution and partisan preferences are examined and contrasted in Canadian and American samples of college students. In both samples evidence is found that there is a strong relationship between the variables among males and an absence of a relationship among females. In Canada, support for income redistribution is strongly positively correlated with support for the New Democratic party, positively correlated with support for the Liberal party, and strongly negatively correlated with support for the Progressive Conservative party. In the United States support for income redistribution is strongly positively correlated with support for the Democratic party and strongly negatively correlated with support for the Republican party. Cross-national differences are also found between Canadian and American subjects, Canadian subjects having significantly lower variance among party supporters regarding this issue. Some implications of the results for research in the area of sex differences in politics and the influence of economic concerns on political behaviour are discussed briefly.

This article examines the impact of economic crisis on the process of regionalization in Belgium and the influence of both on the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces in the Belgian political system. It argues that the usual approach to this suject, which identifies centripetal forces with the national government and centrifugal forces with regional governments, misses the possibility that important proponents of further fragmentation may be located at the national level. The economic crisis of the early 1980s did lead to an increase in centrifugal pressures in the system but not to an increase in the power of the new regional executives. Rather, it led to a major rearrangement of the economic policy-making process at the national level.

The 1982 Charter gives the contemporary Supreme Court enhanced responsibilities in the overall Canadian constitutional system. These novel responsibilities require a jurisprudence appropriate to the new relations between courts and legislatures for which our past has ill-prepared us. In addition to the Charter and the host of citizen-state relations which are thus placed on the Supreme Court agenda, the 1982 Constitution Act, s. 52(1), establishes the supremacy of the constitution, which further underlines the growing significance of the judicial branch in our constitutional future. Are judges to be the midwives of constitutional evolution, seeking to adapt the constitution as an instrument of government to emerging conditions, or are they largely to eschew such a role by employing varying strategies and philosophies of self-control, such as adhering as closely as possible to a more technical task definition, deferring wherever possible to legislatures, resisting the lure of judicial creativity as inappropriate to their appointed status, and throwing the burden of constitutional adaptation on other more overtly political institutions of government?

The concept of “relative autonomy” is now routinely used by Marxist and non-Marxist students of public policy to describe the state's independence from class forces. A rare attempt to use the concept empirically is Carl J. Cuneo's work on Canadian unemployment insurance (UI) in the 1930s. This article argues that Cuneo focusses too narrowly on class struggle, and thus misses important aspects of Canadian UI policy. Relative autonomy must be more broadly conceived in terms of the state's administrative expertise, fiscal capacity, and jurisdictional divisions. It is constituted within, not outside, the state. The article illustrates these internal forces through a re-examination of the evolution of Canadian UI in the 1930s.

This article uses some of the fundamental conceptualizations of Antonio Gramsci to understand the political process in Senegal. It analyzes how the ruling class responded to the “organic crisis” generated by a dependent type of capitalist underdevelopment. It contends that this response embodied a “passive revolution” whereby potentially revolutionary forces were decapitated through the co-optation of their leading cadres in a reformed framework of political representation. The article suggests also that the contours and substance of the passive revolution reflected the “hegemonic project” elaborated by the “organic intellectuals” of Senegal. These intellectuals sought to establish a new “hegemony” capable of legitimizing the rule of a reinvigorated ruling class. Yet, because this new hegemony was founded on the basis of the passive revolution it never reached the masses and it generated therefore widespread popular scepticism and cynicism.

In the past century, the notion of human rights has expanded significantly to include a variety of social rights. The introduction of this new category of human rights inspired a lively debate concerning the authenticity of such claims, focussing particularly on the ways in which social rights differ from political rights. This article examines the major points at issue in the debate. The important differences emphasized to date are those relating to costs, universality, and the correlativity of rights and duties. In each of these major areas of dispute, analysis indicates that the allegedly fundamental distinctions between social and political rights are in fact differences of degree, not of kind and, in fact, social rights conform both to the broad logic and the established practice of human rights.

The renewal of the Canada-US North American Aerospace Defence (NORAD) agreement in March 1986 will not end the debate on the relationship between NORAD and trends in American strategy, including the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). This article reviews and explains the various strains of that debate. It points out why some in Canada argue that participation in NORAD will inevitably lead to Canadian involvement in the ballistic missile defence objective of the SDI. It also notes, however, why the military and other observers are concerned that strategic and technological trends in the US may make it difficult for Canada to remain active in North American aerospace defence, and indeed, even to provide for its own air sovereignty.

There has been a recent tendency, with deep historical roots in structural-functionalism and elite analyses, to insulate the state from class formations and struggles. Reacting against classical Marxist and neo-Marxist attempts to locate certain features of state policy in the class struggles of capitalist formations, there has been a reversion to “explaining” state policy solely by the “internal dynamics” of state administration and the motives and intentions of their incumbents. Leslie Pal's critique of my work in his article is yet another attempt in this tradition. After critiquing my “narrow” use of “relative autonomy” and “rigid” reliance on “class struggle” to account for the introduction of the Employment and Social Insurance Act of 1935 and the Unemployment Insurance Act of 1940, he offers an alternative classless “model” which relies heavily on actuarial ideology and federal-provincial relations in the dynamics of internal state administration. In light of his use of my work as a point of departure, I will make only a few salient points. My comments are divided into two parts: theoretical assumptions and the class nature of actuarial ideology.

I appreciate the opportunity Professor Vaughan's article provides to clarify some of my thoughts on the Judicial Committee and constitutional interpretation.

Vaughan and I are in agreement on two broad points. First, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council read a theory of classical federalism into the BNA Act. This theory of divided sovereignty was expressed most clearly by Lord Watson in the Maritime Bank case. Secondly, the BNA Act's treatment of federalism is highly centralist, both in the division of powers and in the federal government's imperial powers over provincial governments. Both these points are contained in the following passage from my introduction: “In their anxiety to preserve a division of powers appropriate for “classical federalism” and thereby resist the strongly centralizing tendencies of the constitutional text, the Judicial Committee developed an acute sensitivity to the competing claims of the provinces and the federal government.” I think Professor Vaughan would agree with that statement.

The federal election of 1984 brought to an end 16 years of virtually uninterrupted Liberal government whose foreign policy was characterized by an evident desire to set Canada apart from the United States and give a truly Canadian flavour to the country's diplomacy. The Conservatives have drawn a lesson for themselves from the limited results of such policy and have re-aligned the country more closely with the United States to resolve various issues inherited from the Liberals, free trade being one of them. If free trade were to become a reality, there would be serious implications for the future of Canadian industry, for the social and economic well-being of the population, and, most important of all, for the existence of Canada as a sovereign state.