Scholars are now accustomed to adapting to ever–changing forms of communication technology that permit quicker and wider dissemination of their research and the availability to them of the research of others. Since 1968, the Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique has appeared solely in paper format although its editorial and production procedures have become increasingly distinguished by electronic forms of communication. In 1996, the JOURNAL's website was created, providing various editorial and business information, including the abstracts of articles and lists of books reviewed in recent issues.

Since the mid–1990s, comparative research on welfare state evolution has contrasted the contours of postwar social policy expansion with the parameters of contemporary programme retrenchment. Paul Pierson's 1994 account of pension, housing and income support policies in the United Kingdom and the United States during the Thatcher and Reagan years proposed two core arguments with this literature: first, welfare state expansion and contraction were governed by fundamentally different dynamics; and second, even conservative, ideologically committed political executives found it hard to impose radical social policy changes. Because “the welfare state has proved to be far more resilient than other key components of national political economies.” Pierson has maintained, “retrenchment is a distinctive and difficult political enterprise.”

The literature on evolutionary theory tends to address questions of ethnicity from two perspectives: (1) macro, or long–term selection processes associated with basic human preferences for individual or group survival, ethnic identity or kinship affiliations; and (2) intermediate selection mechanisms associated with the fitness and adaptability of specific cultures, religions or belief systems in different regions of the world. Comparatively less time has been spent addressing micro–evolutionary questions about the timing, escalation and duration of ethnic violence — that is, micro or short–term selection processes and fitness mechanisms that account for the escalation and/or duration of ethnic hatreds, violence or war at a particular time.

Governments appear increasingly constrained in their ability to make independent policy choices in an era of global economic finance and communication. As a result, scholars are more closely examining how actors, institutions and economic forces that extend beyond state borders can influence domestic public policies and politics. This scholarship on “globalization” and “transnational relations” serves as a corrective to a comparative public policy literature that has tended to treat external pressures as either exogenous shocks, or as simply other interests to which the state must respond.

Au cours des dernières années, plusieurs recherches ont été menées sur un phénomène relativement récent en Occident: l'accès plus important des femmes à des charges publiques électives. Ces recherches ont porté soit sur les caractéristiques des femmes qui sollicitaient un mandat électif et qui parvenaient à se faire élire, soit sur les obstacles qui jonchaient leur route vers le pouvoir, soit sur certaines de leurs attitudes et opinions et sur certaines perceptions, notamment quant au rôle des femmes en politique . Ces études ont été effectuées à tous les paliers de gouvernement, bien que le palier municipal ait été quelque peu négligé, reflétant peut-être un désintérêt plus large de notre discipline pour cette instance décisionnelle.

Over the past few years there has been an increase in scholarly attention to the politics, the theorization and the logic of difference as a site of contestation; as a cultural value, as a measure of liberalism's capacity for tolerance and inclusion, and as a subject of state action for protection. The debate has been joined by two contributors to this JOURNAL: Avigail Eisenberg in 1994 and Katherine Fierlbeck in 1996. Their thinking is fairly representative of the important debate about the political significance of difference, especially in view of Aboriginal rights and contemporary treaties in Canada, and deserves closer scrutiny.

Recensions / Reviews