This article examines the complementary hypotheses that voting blocs can exist in small cities as well as large cities, and that voting blocs can develop and exist in non-partisan councils. In this respect the study compares the council voting patterns of two Alberta cities—Calgary and Grande Prairie—over the period of one council term, from 1983 to 1986. Well-defined voting blocs, revealed through Rice-Beyle cluster bloc analysis, are found in both councils. Moreover, discriminant analysis reveals that, contrary to previous research on bloc formation in partisan councils, bloc composition can be generally attributed to the interplay of the councillor background attributes.

Paul Kellogg has called on Canadian political economists to break decisively with dependency theory, arguing that Nikolai Bukharin's insights can provide the key to retheorizing Canada as an unqualifiedly advanced capitalist economy. This comment first questions Kellogg's assumption that left-nationalist dependency theorists were ascribing nationalist motivations to capital investment and then goes on to illustrate that the case for Carroll's internationalist thesis is not as strong as Kellogg supposes. Questions are raised about the appropriateness of Bukharin's emphasis on state capitalism and the nationalization of capitalist interests in the light of Canada's current strategy of market-led continentalism. Finally, the argument is made that capitalist laws of motion can provide only a starting point for understanding the political economy of Canada.

Aristotle gives the classical definition of political rule as the kind of rule appropriate for free and equal persons. This concept of political rule is complicated, however, by the fact that, even in what Aristotle calls a free and equal association, the ruler is separated from the ruled by his possession of the virtue of prudence. This article explores the relation between political rule and prudence in Aristotle's writings, and considers particularly the case of political rule between men and women. Though Aristotle characterizes the proper relation between men and women as a free and equal one, he distinguishes the male/female political relation from the more general political relation by saying that men are naturally more fit to rule than women. We are interested in whether Aristotle excludes women from political rule because he thinks that women lack the potential for the virtue of prudence.

This article explores candidate selection in Canadian political parties with a particular focus on the basic processes involved and the character of the candidates they produce. After a review of the popular conventional wisdom the article reports the results of the first systematic nation-wide study of nomination processes in local constituency party associations (carried out at the time of the 1988 general election). Despite democratic forms, competition for party nominations continues to be the exception rather than the norm and national party interests are only weakly articulated.

The growing economic liberalization within, and interdependence between, modern states have limited the ability of state administrations effectively to pursue public policies without the “co-operation and self-restraint” of their citizens. The concept of citizenship will thus increasingly be a battlefield in the struggle for ideological hegemony between major political interests who attempt to define citizenship to enhance their respective political agendas. These debates over the nature of citizenship have been articulated most clearly in the United Kingdom, where the Speaker's Commission on Citizenship (report released in September 1990) has been a focal point in the discussion of what citizenship in a modern state entails.

Ontario's attempt in the 1970s to reform its system of local property taxation aimed to make the local tax system more equitable and efficient in the interest of allowing local governments greater autonomy to act within their own areas of responsibility. In trying to implement the programme, the government used a variety of means to inform local officials about the objectives of reform and to secure their co-operation in achieving it. These efforts failed and the province abandoned the field to local and regional governments, having concluded that the economic and political costs of provincially imposed reform outweighed any advantages to be derived from it. The outcome attested to the influence that local interests and institutions can exercise over provincial policy-making despite their legally subordinate position in the governmental hierarchy.

Several previous studies have noted that women constitute a relatively small proportion of provincial legislators in Canada. Numerous explanations for this phenomenon exist, most of which are identified clearly by Brodie, Bashevkin, Burt and others. In this research note, the authors examine the relationship between the proportion of female legislators and the urban/rural nature of the electoral district. They find that there is a distinct difference in the proportion of female legislators who represent urban districts compared to rural districts. This urban-rural disparity exists regardless of political party affiliation. Moreover, the gap appears to be widening over time.

Through a critique of the “internationalist” arguments outlined and defended by Paul Kellogg, Elisabeth Gidengil has mounted a defence of dependency theory as it has been applied to Canadian political economy. She argues that dependency theory, far from being discarded as Kellogg has suggested, must be part of any new synthesis that is developed in Canadian political economy. She argues that Bukharin's Marxism, defended by Kellogg, is too abstract to be of any real guide in this new synthesis. This reply first situates where a “Bukharinist” approach is in agreement with dependency theory. Both recognize the existence of a rigid hierarchy of nations that impedes development in the Third World. But in Canada, it is argued, this insight has been stood on its head, Canada being theorized as “dependent” and suffering dependency-induced “structural weaknesses.” A selection of empirical examples is introduced to indicate the weak factual ground on which this claim is based. If there are aspects of the dependency paradigm to be retained, in the Canadian case this requires inverting the way in which this paradigm has usually been applied and insisting on Canada's entrenched position, alongside the other G7 powers, at the top of the hierarchy of nations in the world system.

This article examines the sensitivity of Arab states to the political and ideological repercussions of the Palestine issue by focussing upon Egypt, Syria and Jordan. It suggests that the policies of Arab regimes towards the Palestine issue have been substantially shaped by historical patterns of state formation, and by the gradual consolidation of the Arab state system. This has served to “harden” the Arab territorial state, creating conditions under which Arab states are increasingly (if only partially) insulated from the transnational effects of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.