Abstract. This paper explores how citizenship norms of duty to vote and to volunteer in one's community influence political participation, and the role of group identities in producing these norms. By showing how citizenship norms influence an array of political activities, and by drawing on social psychology literature that shows how citizenship norms are shaped by group identifications, the paper offers a more complete picture of the relationship between citizenship norms and political participation beyond traditional civic duty/federal vote models that currently dominate Canadian political research. The central argument forwarded is that not only do citizenship norms matter to political participation, but that group identities matter, too.

Résumé. Cette étude explore les effets sur la participation politique des normes relatives au devoir du citoyen de voter et de contribuer à sa communauté, de même que le rôle des identités de groupe dans la production de ces normes. En montrant comment les normes de citoyenneté influencent une foule d'activités politiques et en puisant dans la littérature en psychologie sociale, qui montre comment ces normes sont formées par des identifications de groupe, cette étude aide à mieux comprendre la relation entre ces normes et la participation politique au-delà du cadre traditionnel devoir civique / vote fédéral qui domine actuellement la recherche en politique canadienne. La thèse avancée est que les normes de citoyenneté jouent effectivement un rôle important dans la participation politique, tout comme les identités de groupe.

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.”

According to several authors, the politics of recognition are at an impasse. The politicization of identity, they claim, relies on a hermetic and essentialist conception of culture. Although this critique hits the target in some specific circumstances, nevertheless it misrepresents the more general process of intercultural mediation triggered by the politics of recognition. That said, the emphasis on the end-state of substantive recognition does seem to lead to an impasse. The struggles for recognition, and the identities that underlie these struggles, are too plural, convoluted and fluid to be theorized as quests for definitive recognition. Thus, identity politics ought also to be seen as agonic games of mutual disclosure which participate in the ongoing reconfiguration of the norms of public recognition inherent in democratic politics.

Abstract. Despite increasing speculation and attention, as of yet insufficient empirical research has been conducted on the possibility of a political cleavage based on differences between Canadian inner cities and suburbs. This article sheds light on the potential existence of such differences by analyzing federal elections at the level of the constituency from 1945 to 1997. Results show that city-suburban differences in federal party voting did not become significant until the 1980s, and increased after this point, with inner-city residents remaining to the left of the rest of Canada in their party preferences while suburbanites shifted increasingly to the right in their voting patterns. The results obtained from regression analysis suggest that such a divergence cannot be reduced solely to differences in social composition, housing tenure, or region, and thus confirm that it constitutes a ‘true’ political cleavage. It is argued that intra-urban geography needs to taken into account in future analyses of Canadian political behaviour.

Résumé. Malgré un intérêt croissant pour la question, il existe encore peu de recherches empiriques sur un possible clivage politique dont les fondements seraient les différences entre les quartiers urbains centraux et les banlieues. Cet article jette un nouvel éclairage sur l'existence possible de ces différences à partir d'une analyse des résultats électoraux dans les circonscriptions fédérales entre 1945 et 1997. Les résultats obtenus indiquent que les différences entre le vote pour les partis politiques fédéraux ne sont devenues significatives que pendant les années 1980, mais qu'elles se sont exacerbées par la suite, les résidents de quartiers centraux demeurant à la gauche de l'échiquier politique tandis que les banlieues votaient de plus en plus à droite. Les résultats de l'analyse de régression suggèrent que ces différences ne sont pas seulement attribuables à la composition sociale, au taux de propriété, ou encore à la région, et constituent par le fait même un “ véritable ” clivage politique. L'auteur conclut que l'analyse géographique intra-urbaine devra être prise en compte dans les analyses futures du comportement politique Canadien.

The author critiques two articles by Michael Howlett published recently by this Journal, and comments on policy agenda-setting theory. Howlett's articles use Canadian data to test three different policy agenda-setting theories forwarded by Anthony Downs, by Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones and by John Kingdon. This commentary suggests that the tests have several major flaws. These flaws are a product of several factors: Howlett's dataset and use of statistics, his interpretation of the theories at hand and empirical problems with the policy agenda-setting theories themselves.

Abstract. Conventional wisdom about the structure of political parties in Canada has emphasized their confederal nature. In other words (and the New Democratic party excepted), parties with identical partisan complexions at the federal and provincial levels are thought to operate in “two political worlds.” This paper argues that election campaigns are a key integrating link between parties. How they fight elections reveals extensive cross-level co-operation, particularly through shared activists (local party activists, party staff and party professionals) and technological expertise. This has the effect of shrinking the space between party cousins and forges unity between them. While there are certain obstacles to electoral collaboration, there are also incentives for these parties to work to maintain and strengthen their ties with their partisan cousin at the other level. These findings make an important contribution by directly challenging the notion that Canada's federal system has led to increasingly disentangled political parties.

Résumé. L'opinion communément admise au sujet de la structure des partis politiques au Canada a mis l'accent sur leur nature confédérale. En d'autres termes (exception faite du Nouveau Parti démocratique), on considère en général que les partis à caractère partisan identique au palier fédéral et provincial fonctionnent dans «deux mondes politiques à part». Le présent article avance que les campagnes électorales constituent un facteur d'intégration clé entre les différents niveaux d'un parti. La façon dont un parti dispute une élection révèle un haut degré de coopération entre les organisations provinciales et fédérales, surtout du fait qu'ils partagent des militants communs (militants locaux, personnel politique et professionnels du parti) et leur expertise technologique. Ce phénomène tend à rétrécir l'espace entre cousins du même parti et à bâtir l'unité d'organisation entre les deux niveaux. Même s'il y a des obstacles inévitables à la collaboration électorale, les partis cousins ont de bonnes raisons de veiller à maintenir et à renforcer leurs liens réciproques. Ces conclusions apportent une contribution importante à l'étude des partis politiques, en contestant directement l'idée que le système fédéral au Canada a encouragé les partis politiques de même allégeance à mener leurs activités de manière indépendante.

Social movements are conceived of as networks that provide structures within which organizations negotiate meaning through the construction of collective identities. Network analysis is applied as a method for mapping the relationship among 33 national Canadian women's organizations. Results show that these diverse groups form an expansive, but loosely coupled, network that is bound by a collective identity of “liberalized” feminism. However, minority women tend to be marginalized within the movement and there are surprisingly few linkages with other core social movements. Intra-movement position has significant extra-movement consequences as demonstrated by the finding that network position is a highly significant predictor of the perceived effectiveness of a social movement organization.

Critiques of the public/private divide in Western political thought do not go far enough in analyzing the full range and character of relations in the private sphere as demonstrated in this article, which analyzes John Locke's theorisation about the relative authority of wives, servants and slaves. A third-wave feminist analysis is used to illustrate the theoretical relevance of group-based identities that, far from having a uniform relation to the political power afforded to free (male) citizens, are hierarchically stratified. Thus it is demonstrated that a basic problem within second-wave feminist analysis of Lockean, and more broadly defined liberal thought, is the tendency to categorize women as ''wives'' of free citizens, and not to analyze adequately other dimensions of identity, thereby ignoring the explicit divisions and hierarchy among different groups of women in one of the earliest accounts of the private sphere in liberal theory.

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.

In Australia, religion historically has been seen as a secondary but nonetheless significant sociopolitical cleavage, in part cutting across the class divide. In recent times, Australian scholars, like those elsewhere, have been inclined to argue that the political significance of religion is a legacy of the past and that religion no longer plays an important role in shaping mass political behaviour. Although class is also said to have declined in political significance, it is still treated as being of some importance as a cornerstone of the party system. However, many scholars seem more willing to dismiss the relevance of religion altogether. Using sample survey data collected over more than 25 years, this article examines the role of religion in modern Australian electoral politics and assesses the adequacy of such arguments.

This article examines the interaction of different modes and levels of legitimacy within network governance institutions over time. Drawing on new theoretical directions in European governance studies and empirical findings from Canada, we contend that whereas input legitimacy can be exchanged, or traded-off, with output legitimacy to reinforce the overall legitimacy of a network governance institution, “throughput legitimacy” functions as a necessary condition that sustains legitimacy over time. Through a comparison of homelessness governance networks in Toronto and Calgary, we find that throughput legitimacy carries an amplification effect that results in either virtuous or vicious cycles. That is, we argue and demonstrate that low throughput legitimacy in network governance institutions can effectively bring down the whole house of cards.

Cultural and racial pluralism have increasingly become a “riveting reality” of contemporary Canadian society. Various dimensions of this reality are explored and critical observations are made about the contribution of Canadian political science to an understanding of the phenomenon and its impact on our political life. The increasing polyethnicity of Canadian society has pressured our decision-makers into articulating both a vision and a policy of multiculturalism. However, since the early 1980s both vision and policy have come under siege. The motives of the critics of multiculturalism are questioned, and an endorsement is made of policies which continue to seek answers in pursuit of the democratic ideals of procedural justice, human equality and mutual respect.

It has often been said that the closest thing we have to an empirical law in international relations is that democracies do not fight against each other. This study adds to the literature on democratic peace by focusing on the crisis behaviour of democracies and nondemocracies. International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project data are used to conduct a quantitative analysis of states' crisis activity from 1918 to 1988. Strong support emerges for the three hypotheses of the study. First, it is clear that democracies initiate fewer crises than nondemocracies. However, democracies tend to escalate crises to higher levels of severity. Finally, democracies eventually win the crises in which they become involved. The conclusion is that democratic leaders face strong incentives to “select” winnable crises against nondemocratic states because of the audience costs they face, but when the opponent is another democracy, the domestic audience expects leaders to compromise.

The article presents a reinterpretation of the welfare state dealing with the role played by women in the development and on-going function of the welfare state. Three roles are emphasized: women's organizing and the role of women's organizations in pressuring for the measures making up the welfare state, women as workers in the welfare state and, finally, women as clients of the welfare state. Having described these roles, the current politics of the welfare state are examined in order to illustrate the importance of understanding the relations between gender and politics.

During the last decade a good deal of discussion of the “communitarian critique” of liberalism has occurred. The debate is perplexing for a number of reasons. The competing positions are often difficult to characterize (or, sometimes, even to distinguish) and it is often unclear what would be the thèoretical or practical significance of affirming one position over the other. In this “guide for the perplexed” the authors discuss two ambiguities and two problems which they believe are central to the debate. Examining these problems and ambiguities suggests some distinctions and confusions, strengths and weaknesses, characteristic of both communitarian and liberal arguments.

Abstract. Public support for legal recognition of same-sex marriage increased markedly in Canada over the course of the 1990s. The argument of this paper is that a sequence of Supreme Court decisions in the realm of same-sex relationship recognition—and the legislative activity that followed as a result—played a pivotal role in shaping public opinion on this issue. It is argued that the impact of these institutions was twofold. First, by framing the issue as one of equal rights, the courts and legislatures induced many Canadians to weigh equality-related considerations more heavily in the formation of opinions on same-sex marriage. Second, legal recognition of same-sex relationships directly persuaded many Canadians that such recognition was legitimate. The paper uses data from the Canadian Election Studies for 1993, 1997 and 2000.

Résumé. Durant les années 1990 le soutien populaire aux mariages entre conjoints de même sexe s'est clairement renforcé. La thèse principale de cet article avance qu'une série de décisions de la Cour suprême portant sur les relations entre conjoints de même sexe, de même que les décisions adoptées par les pouvoirs législatifs en réponse à ces jugements, jouèrent un rôle crucial dans la formation de l'opinion publique sur ces questions. D'abord, en formulant le débat en termes d'égalité devant la loi, les appareils judiciaire et législatif ont amené les Canadiens à accorder plus de poids aux arguments liés à l'égalité dans leurs réflexions sur le sujet. En second lieu, la reconnaissance légale des unions entre conjoints de même sexe a persuadé les Canadiens de la légitimité de cette reconnaissance. Les conclusions de ce texte s'appuient sur les données des éditions d'Étude électorale canadienne de 1993, 1997 et 2000.

We provide the first wide-scale analysis of the factors that influence voter turnout in Canadian local elections. Drawing on original data from 300 municipal elections conducted from 2004 to 2014, we use ordinary least squares regression with panel-corrected standard errors for time series cross-sections to test explanatory hypotheses related to differences in institutional design, the social-spatial context of these elections, and local competitiveness. Our results show that, although institutional and sociospatial factors influence local turnout, the competitiveness of elections exercises the greatest influence on local electoral participation.