Canada is on the threshold of a major transformation in its ethnic and racial profile. Relative rates of immigration from European and non-European countries have reversed during the past 40 years. What impact has this had on the attitudes of the dominant white majority? This article provides a partial answer to this question by examining the attitudes and voting behaviour of this majority when faced with increasing concentrations of visible-minority neighbours. Attitudinal data from the 1997 and 2000 Canadian Election Studies were combined with data from the 1996 census to measure socio-economic status and the visible-minority population of the neighbourhoods occupied by survey respondents. Regression analysis reveals two different contextual effects involving the attitudes of the majority toward visible minorities. Positive attitudes towards visible minorities increase with neighbourhood socio-economic status, a finding consistent with "social identity" theory. However, positive attitudes toward racial minorities decline when the visible-minority population increases, a finding consistent with "realistic conflict" theory. Both contextual effects have implications for voting. Independent of individual characteristics, white voters are more likely to support Reform/Alliance if they live in less-educated environments or among higher numbers of visible-minority neighbours.

The article identifies two schools of thought on why Quebeckers choose to support or oppose sovereignty - the rational choice approach that has focused on individuals' assessments of the collective costs and benefits of sovereignty for the Quebec economy and the French language, and the socio-psychological approach that has focused on variables such as resentment, feelings of status denial, ethnic grievances and self-confidence. It has been difficult to resolve disputes between the two approaches due to weakness in available data and a lack of a comparative approach amongst scholars. Using a data set explicitly designed to compare the two schools, this article examines whether previous researchers' conclusions hold even when concepts are operationalized in different ways and when models are specified using different variables. The author examines five general dimensions: the state of the economy, the state of the French language, the state of federalism, respect and recognition, and the perceived quality of relations between English and French speakers. The major substantive conclusion is that the previous scholarship on the motivations for vote choice have significantly overestimated the importance of assessments of the French language, significantly underestimated the importance of assessments of whether Quebeckers are respected and recognized within Canada, and have also underestimated the importance of assessments of federalism and the quality of relations between linguistic groups. These conclusions hold for even the most ambivalent voters.

Issue ownership refers to political parties' recognized capacity or reputation to deal competently with a number of issues and problems. Canadian perceptions of party competence in five issue areas are examined: unemployment, inflation, national unity, public finance management and international affairs. Using aggregate-level Gallup poll data from a 50-year period, the study shows not only that Canadians distinguish between federal parties based on their issue-handling capabilities, but also that party images are not impervious to change. Two particular moments of realignment in party images are identified: the beginning of the 1960s, and the early 1990s. The image of the federal Liberal party clearly benefited from both periods. Beyond the expected projection effect of party popularity, two factors are shown to account at least partially for these variations over time in issue ownership. The parties' performance while in office and the arrival of new competitors within the party system in the 1993 election are both found to significantly affect perceptions of party competence in Canada.

This article explores the implications for female politicians of the gendered nature of news coverage. An analysis of the language used in television news coverage of the English-language leaders' debates in the Canadian federal elections of 1993, 1997 and 2000 confirms that the debates are framed in stereotypically masculine ways as battles, sporting events or back street brawls. When the news coverage is compared with the leaders' actual behaviour in the debates, it is clear that the coverage focuses disproportionately on combative displays of behaviour by female party leaders, but tends to ignore the women when they adopt a more low-key style, especially when the novelty of a female leader has worn off.

Aggregate cross-national analyses of political participation have reported correlations between civic literacy, political knowledge and election turnout. Enhancing civic literacy among Canadian voters, in part by encouraging greater newspaper readership in the general population, has been put forward as a strategy for combating falling turnout in national general elections. The idea is evaluated comparatively at the level of individual voters, using data from the British Election Study. Newspaper readership is related to political knowledge, but increased newspaper reading does not translate into a greater propensity to vote.

The Gelman-King theory of enlightened preferences holds that the mass media play an important role in enlightening vote choices during election campaigns in the United States. This article adapts this theory to the electoral cycle in Britain. It also expands the theory to consider the media's role in facilitating consistent attitudes. Using data from the 1992-1997 British Election Panel Study, the author finds that attitudinal consistency and enlightened party preferences were highest immediately following elections. Moreover, there were significant differences according to the type of newspapers voters read, with broadsheet readers being the most enlightened. These findings suggest that enlightened preferences theory has wider applicability than simply US election campaigns.

Federal states like Belgium operate under conflicting pressures in the conduct of their international relations: centralizing pressures, on the one hand, imposed by the necessity of speaking with a single voice in order to forge a coherent international policy and decentralizing pressures, on the other, because globalization stimulates a qualitative and quantitative extension of the internal and international roles of substate players, mainly through the international deployment of substate paradiplomacy. This centralization of external affairs and the centrifugal forces introduced by globalization cause problems in this type of system, in which substate entities have numerous fields of jurisdiction. This new phenomenon is not without its risks because it leads to disorder and conflict. In many countries, the development of paradiplomacy by the substate actors creates conflict with the central government. The impression is created that the federal and the substate authorities are condemned to fight a zero-sum struggle for access to the international system, the former seeking to prevent the latter from playing a role in the development of foreign policy and to limit all international action by them. The case of Belgium is of particular interest since its substate entities are the most dynamic regions in the world in international relations. The objective of this article is to evaluate the impact of the Flemish identity paradiplomacy on the foreign policy of the federal state.

This article presents a test of the argument that vulnerability to economic dislocation, primarily as it is represented by economic homogeneity in communities, exercises a constraint on levels of support for Quebec nationalism. The guiding hypothesis is that residents of economically vulnerable ridings will be reluctant to accept the risks attached with political moves toward independence. The authors employ data on the level of support for the Bloc Québécois in the federal elections of 1993 and 1997, and the proportion voting "Yes" in the 1995 sovereignty referendum in Quebec, in the province's 75 federal electoral districts as their measures of support for sovereignty. Results suggest that there is a relationship between the geographies of potential economic vulnerability and the level of nationalist support, particularly evident in the 1995 referendum voting and the 1997 election. Calculations involving perceived economic vulnerability and risk remain as powerful defenders of the political status quo in Quebec.

This article ascertains the impact of local candidates on vote choice in the 2000 Canadian election. The authors show that 44 per cent of Canadian voters formed a preference for a local candidate and that this preference had an effect on vote choice independent of how people felt about the parties and the leaders. The findings suggest that the local candidate was a decisive consideration for 5 per cent of Canadian voters, 6 per cent outside Quebec and 2 per cent in Quebec. Although preference for a local candidate had a similar effect on urban and rural voters, as well as on voters of varying degrees of sophistication, the findings revealed that rural voters and more sophisticated voters were more likely to have formed a preference for their local candidate. As a consequence, the local candidate was more likely to be a decisive consideration for more sophisticated rural voters.

LUSSIER, ANDRÉ. Le nationalisme québécois sur le divan. Par Frédéric Boily 666

THéRIAULT, JOSEPH YVON. Critique de l'américanité. Mémoire et démocratie au Québec. Par Guy Lachapelle 668

LEMIEUX, VINCENT. L'étude des politiques publiques. Les acteurs et leur pouvoir, 2e édition. Par Christian Poirier 670

MCKENZIE, JUDITH. Environmental Politics in Canada: Managing the Commons into the Twenty-First Century; and PARSON, EDWARD, ed. Governing the Environment: Persistent Challenges, Uncertain Innovations. By Debora L. Vannijnatten 673

SAVITCH, HANK V. AND PAUL KANTOR. Cities in the International Marketplace. By Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly 674

MILNER, HENRY. Civic Literacy: How Informed Citizens Make Democracy Work. By Gregg M. Olsen 676

ISBESTER, KATHERINE. Still Fighting: The Nicaraguan Women's Movement, 1977-2000; and KAMPWIRTH, KAREN. Women and Guerrilla Movements: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba. By Jeffery R. Webber 679

ROY, OLIVIER. Les illusions du 11 septembre. Le débat stratégique face au terrorisme. Par Dany Deschênes 682

FONTAINE, JOSEPH ET PATRICK HASSENTEUFEL, sous la direction de. To change or not to change? Les changements de l'action publique à l'épreuve du terrain. Par Anne Mevellec 684

LAUVAUX, PHILIPPE. Destins du présidentialisme. Par Mariette Sineau 685

LUCIAK, ILJA A. After the Revolution: Gender and Democracy in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. By Monica Escudero 687

RAMEL, FRéDéRIC, avec la collaboration de DAVID CUMIN. Philosophie des relations internationales. Par Philippe Constantineau 689

CHAMBERS, SIMONE AND WILL KYMLICKA, eds. Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society. By Shaun P. Young 690

PLANINC, ZDRAVKO, ed. Politics, Philosophy, Writing: Plato's Art of Caring for Souls. By Dana Jalbert Stauffer 692

LACASCADE, JEAN-LOUIS. Les métamorphoses du jeune Marx. Par étienne Cantin 693

OTTESON, JAMES R. Adam Smith's Marketplace of Life. By Laurent Dobuzinskis 694

HAYDEN, PATRICK. John Rawls: Towards a Just World Order. By Ernie Keenes 696

MORIN, EDGAR. Pour une politique de civilisation. Par Yves Laberge 698

KITCHING, GAVIN. Seeking Social Justice through Globalization: Escaping a Nationalist Perspective; and HELLIWELL, JOHN F. Globalization and Well-Being. By Philip G. Cerny 699

BRUNEL, GILLES et CLAUDE-YVES CHARRON, sous la direction de. La communication internationale : mondialisation, acteurs et territoires socio-culturels. Par Radu Dobrescu 701