Scholarly research suggests that Canadian election campaigns are centralized affairs, with party headquarters managing a disciplined campaign organization across 338 federal constituencies. At the same time, local realities can incentivize constituency campaigns to deviate from their parties. This article examines the extent of local campaign discipline, given these tensions between parties’ centralizing compulsions and countervailing forces that militate against party cohesion. The article relies on original data to identify and explain the extent of local campaign behaviour that defies central party preferences and directives. It draws from interviews with 87 former candidates and eight party strategists, as well as observational data gathered from 10 constituency campaigns during the 2019 federal election. The findings indicate a relatively high level of undisciplined constituency campaign behaviour during the 2015 and 2019 elections. The article contends that this behaviour stems from insubordination, innovation and incompetence within constituency campaigns.

This paper reports on an assessment of participant observation used for evaluation in a structured and gerontolgoical field context. Participant observation was used to evaluate whether a search conference was a viable means for older persons to identify community needs and create an ongoing community organization to address them. I attended planning meetings, the conference and a follow-up meeting. Observations were recorded in field notes and analysed to identify the decision-making processes. These older persons successfully engaged in a health promotion process whereby they exercised decisive direction in identifying and addressing health and social needs of importance to them. These results attest to the flexibility and applicability of participant observation in structured field settings with older persons who were circumstantially difficult to survey by other means. Participant observation is an effective method of collecting data on the process of how groups of older persons respond to a defined task through several observation points in time.

A critical ethnography of the process of discharge decision-making for elderly patients was conducted to examine the nature of the process over the total course of patients' hospital stays. The focus was on describing the timing and conditions of decision-making, the related activities of professionals, professionals' perceptions of the process, and the effects of the process on those involved and on the hospital organization. Data analysis demonstrated that the process is not intricately linked with patients' clinical progress, that often inaccurate assumptions about the importance of patient-related clinical and social factors and organizational parameters underlie decisions, and that professionals' perceptions of the process are shaped by organizational imperatives. In the current process, resources are used inefficiently and humanitarian and ethical consequences arise for participants. The analysis supports attempts to achieve greater congruence between the discharge decision process and the patient's clinical progress so that the fiscal and humanitarian goals of the hospital can be achieved.