This article investigates the nature and role of authority contests—the claims and counterclaims about whose ideas matter on policy debates and via what procedures they should be heard—in policy paradigm contestation, reform and abandonment. Examining the authority contests around prairie Canada's grain marketing policy illustrates an additional pathway—a value-driven model—to Hall's model of endogenous policy anomalies. It further documents differences across governments in how they resolve contentious policy debates, showing that governments make fewer efforts to supplement their own representational authority with expert and/or popular authority when they enjoy majoritarian support from the affected region than when they do not and when their support for paradigm change is value-driven rather than a response to policy anomalies.

Résumé. Cet article porte sur la Politique culturelle du Québec, adoptée en 1992. Outre le fait d'avoir défini une nouvelle mission pour le ministère des Affaires culturelles et modifié ses responsabilités, cette politique constitue un changement majeur dans les orientations gouvernementales, notamment par la création du Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec et par la mise en place de nouveaux partenariats avec des ministères et sociétés d'État ainsi qu'avec le monde municipal. Un des objectifs de cette étude est de démontrer l'originalité de l'Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) pour l'analyse des politiques culturelles. Développé par Paul A. Sabatier et Hank Jenkins-Smith, l'ACF se concentre particulièrement sur le processus résultant du changement dans les croyances et les actions des acteurs impliqués.

Abstract. This article concerns the Politique culturelle du Québec which was adopted in 1992. Besides having outlined a new mission for the Ministry of Cultural Affairs of Quebec, this policy constitutes a major change in governmental orientation, notably through the creation of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (Provincial Arts Council) and through the establishment of new partnerships with other ministries, public corporations and municipal authorities. One of the objectives of this study is to demonstrate the originality of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) in the analysis of cultural policies. Developed by Paul A. Sabatier and Hank Jenkins-Smith, the ACF focuses primarily on the process resulting from changes in the beliefs and actions of the actors involved.

Abstract. This paper is a test of clientelism as an explanatory framework for the challenges faced by the Nova Scotia Liberal government led by Dr. John Savage, 1993–1997. Clientelism, as an explanatory theoretical framework, is a useful tool for interpreting the political events that drove Premier Savage from office only four years after leading his party to a significant majority in the Nova Scotia legislature. The hypothesis presented is that Nova Scotia's political culture supports an environment in which clientelism flourishes. Since the clientelistic dyadic relationship and networks are deeply rooted in the cultural mores of Nova Scotia, they cannot be easily challenged and dismantled by any single political actor or government. Therefore, the Savage government's attempt to capsize this long-established cultural practice is advanced as the prime reason for its failure to endure as a viable administration.

Résumé. Cette communication est un test de clientélisme qui tente d'expliquer le cadre dans lequel s'inscrivent les défis auxquels a été confronté le gouvernement libéral de Nouvelle-Écosse mené par le Dr John Savage de 1993 à 1997. Le clientélisme, en tant que cadre théorique explicatif, est un outil utile qui permet d'interpréter les événements politiques qui ont fait perdre son poste de Premier Ministre au Dr Savage quatre ans seulement après qu'il ait mené son parti vers une majorité significative à l'assemblée législative de Nouvelle-Écosse. En fin de compte, l'hypothèse est que la culture politique de Nouvelle-Écosse favorise un environnement dans lequel le clientélisme est florissant. Du fait que la relation dyadique clientéliste et les réseaux sont profondément ancrés dans les traditions culturelles de Nouvelle-Écosse, il est peu probable qu'un acteur unique ou un simple gouvernement puisse facilement les mettre au défi et les démanteler. En conséquence, nous suggérons que la tentative du gouvernement Savage de renverser cette pratique culturelle de longue date est la raison principale pour laquelle ce gouvernement n'a pas réussi à survivre en tant qu'administration.

This article is intended to shed more light on the processes and mechanisms by which the senior civil servants exercise influence and enjoy power. It appears that simultaneously these processes and mechanisms restrain the senior civil servants and therefore limit their range of action and influence. This exchange of resources and constraints results from a complex process of communication between the issuer and the recipient of that influence; the number and diversity of the ways of relaying this communication create the conditions for communication and power strategies. The senior civil servants become and remain as powerful as they are constrained.

The purpose of this study is to describe and to interpret the opinions of the French-speaking residents of Quebec on the questions of war and peace during the years 1945–60. The principal sources used in the study are the editorials of the French-language press, the results of the Gallup poll, and the speeches of Quebec members of Parliament at Ottawa. In the press, few traces of outright isolationism were found, but there were sharp divisions on the questions of relations with the countries of the communist bloc and with those of the non-aligned “third world.” The general public seems to have accepted in principle the main external commitments of Canada during this period, but to have remained against participation of a military sort in practice. If foreign policy was not the specialty of Quebec members of Parliament, there were always individuals or groups to make known points of view current in Quebec, especially when these were at variance with government policy. The year 1960 appears in hindsight to have been a turning point for French-Canadian opinion because of the appearance of a new government in Quebec but also because of the foreign policy of President de Gaulle and the appearance, that year, of a large new bloc of French-speaking states, independent and members of the United Nations.

The theoretical literature on representation tends to read the work of Edmund Burke as a defence of a functional-corporatist conception of society, in which the groups relevant for political representation are stable and objective economic “interests” whose cooperation in and contribution to the life of nation and empire are essential for the status of Britain as a pre-eminent commercial power. This article presents an alternative, contractarian Burke that emerges out of his defence of the interests of non-economic “descriptions” of citizens such as Irish Catholics, a Burke who offers us an illuminating perspective from which to assess the claims of historically marginalized groups in contemporary liberal democratic societies.

This article investigates the motives behind policy-making at the municipal level. More specifically, it argues that local governments are guided in the formulation of their policies by a need to reconcile fiscal and electoral considerations. On the one hand, by focussing on urban renewal initiatives it shows that an important proportion of municipal policies are primarily devoted to the maintenance or the bolstering of the taxation base. On the other hand, a description of the different guises taken by urban renewal over a 20-year period highlights the influence electoral circumstances have on the configuration of renewal strategies. Urban renewal efforts undertaken by Québec City's municipal administration provides the case study for this article. It identifies the impetus for launching these efforts and identifies the economic and electoral factors that produced a transition from a form of urban renewal involving a redevelopment of the core area, to one assuring the preservation of the built environment of central neighbourhoods.

The tribunicial function and the Créditiste group in the Quebec National Assembly, 1970–3

An analysis of the attitudes and behaviour of the Créditiste group since its first appearance in Quebec's National Assembly (1970–3) has two interesting aspects. First, it clarifies the Créditiste phenomenon, supporting the conclusions arrived at in a study conducted by Vera Murray. This study held that the RCQ was distinguished by the exercise of a specific function, namely, the defence and representation of the interests of underprivileged social classes. This is a function which Georges Lavau has described as tribunicial. We intend to show that the Créditiste members, in spite of the internal splits in the party during the leadership of Camil Samson and Armand Bois, have clearly fulfilled a protective function on behalf of “proletarian social elements” in the political system.

The election of Yvon Dupuis to head the party in February 1973 inaugurated the progressive abandonment of this specific role, which had characterized the RCQ until then on Quebec's political chessboard, in favour of the function of providing governmental alternatives. Second, this study enables us to clarify and to distinguish between certain points in regard to the tribunicial function and the function of providing alternatives, used by Georges Lavau. In our opinion, the case of the RCQ is a much purer illustration of the tribunicial function than is the case of the PCF.

In brief, the essence of the tribunicial function is the use of social criticism – not political criticism – based on the defence of underprivileged classes and revolving around the detailed denunciation of the political establishment. The tribunicial function also displays very little interest in the discussion or elaboration of a program of wholesale reform.

To characterize the institutions that have accompanied Fordism, we start from the relative presence or absence of corporatism in industrial relations. A specification of the relationships between corporatist arrangements and social and political factors suggests four specific models can account for the 12 countries considered. The model allows us to make sense of the various arrangements linking institutional forms and the social and political forces that generate and sustain these forms. Two domains are considered specifically, industrial relations and politics.

In an assessment of Louis Hartz's fragment theory, H. D. Forbes contends that its basic weaknesses are most easily exposed in the case of French Canada. This article argues the opposite: Hartz's approach in this case is particularly illuminating rather than representing its Achilles’ heel. Hartzian analysis is consistent with the historiography of French Canada. The growth of liberalism in the nineteenth century that Forbes points to in the French-Canadian fragment pales when placed in a comparative perspective as Hartz's theory requires. It is the mix of feudal and liberal ideas in the twentieth century that helps to explain the rise of social democratic forces like the Parti québécois.

American presidents have enjoyed a significant boost of their popular support early after their election. This article examines the existence of this same honeymoon phenomenon in the context of Canadian federal elections since 1945. The study shows that the above-mentioned phenomenon exists in Canada, identifies the circumstances more conducive to producing it and tries to demonstrate that it mostly results from a majority effect. In conclusion, it is suggested that the gain in political resources due to the honeymoon effect could be beneficial to the government's legislative performance.

We argue that economic inequality between ethnic groups increases state repression. We contend that a high level of ethnic inequality fuels distributional conflicts between poor and rich ethnic groups. It also increases the salience of ethnic identity and promotes ethnic mobilization to challenge the status quo. This between-group tension creates collective grievances for ethnic groups, mounts challenges to incumbent governments and increases perceived threats to governments. The greater the perceived threats, the more likely that governments will employ coercive measures. We further argue that the impact of ethnic inequality on state repression is moderated by the level of democracy. Various institutional mechanisms in democracies increase the costs of repression, reducing leaders’ incentives to employ coercive measures, even when facing high levels of ethnic inequality. Evidence from 152 countries between 1992 and 2011 supports our arguments.

Studies of parliamentary systems contend that backbench legislators are increasingly marginalized, with power being centralized in the executive. However, such research typically focuses on national legislatures, ignoring subnational jurisdictions. We extend this literature by exploring the process of “executive creep” in Canada's provinces; namely the tendency of executives to erode legislative independence by appointing backbenchers to quasi-executive positions or cabinet committees. We examine executive creep in all provinces since 1968, finding a clear trend towards the increased incorporation of backbenchers into the work of the executive. Moreover, these changes serve to strengthen the power of first ministers relative to their cabinets.

During a three-year period beginning in 1889, Canada struggled through a bitter identity crisis as militant English-Canadian nationalists rallied support for their vision of a homogeneous English-speaking country. In the eye of this storm was a NorthWest Legislative Assembly determined to abolish official bilingualism and assimilate its French-speaking minority. This article examines the origins of the North-West's ''dual language question'' and critically evaluates justifications given for the suppression of the French language. In their debates, the North-West legislators grappled with enduring issues of national unity, economic efficiency, majoritarian democracy and political legitimacy.

Two years ago the chairman of this evening's meeting stood in my place and delivered a scintillating address on “Statistics Comes of Age”. A year ago Professor Mackintosh gave his presidential address on “An Economist Looks at Economics”. I propose, therefore, to follow them in these subjects and to pursue an inquiry which occupied the time and energies of the first important Canadian economist, Adam Shortt. Economics is an older subject than statistics but I shall confine myself in this paper to the period since statistics began to leave its impression on economics and reached that stage, fatal to economics, when it came of age. Professor G. N. Clark in Science and Social Welfare in the Age of Newton (Oxford, 1937) has traced the background of statistics, in the growing importance of mathematics through astronomy, surveying, and book-keeping which followed the discovery of the new world, prior to its beginnings with the publication of John Graunt's Observations upon the Bills of Mortality in 1662, or four years before the census of Talon in Canada. An important statistical department was set up in England under an inspector-general to collect statistics on imports and exports about 1695. The effects of the imports of treasure from North America were becoming increasingly evident and William Fleetwood with a strong vested interest in stability in the value of fellowships published his Chronicon Preciosum in 1706, a first book on prices. And so the snake entered the paradise of academic interest in economics. Under the stimulus of treasure from the new world the price system ate its way more rapidly into the economy of Europe and into economic thought.

Since the end of hostilities in 1945, Canada has been undergoing a rapid constitutional change. The power to make laws on many vitally important matters, which on the outbreak of war in 1939 became vested in the national Parliament either under the emergency doctrine or under the specified jurisdiction over defence, has now almost entirely passed back again to the provincial legislatures. The process of decentralizaton is slower than the former centralization, but it is well under way. A shift in legislative authority is thus in process, affecting such subjects as production and investment control, labour legislation, rent restriction, regulation of prices and wages, man-power distribution, and other essential elements of economic planning. The War Measures Act ceased to be in effect on January 1st, 1946, and the National Emergency Transitional Powers Act which replaced it is being continued on a purely temporary basis. While further prolongation of the latter act may be sought on the theory that the war emergency is not yet over, the mere lapse of time will bring increasing doubt as to its constitutional validity. Sooner rather than later Canada will revert to all the constitutional limitations on the national government which existed in 1939; the one exception is unemployment insurance, the first and only transfer from provincial to federal legislative power made by formal amendment since 1867. The various taxation agreements between the central and local governments, some of which have been renegotiated on an individual basis, have not shifted the legal power to levy taxes but have merely produced a voluntary abstention on the part of some provinces in respect of certain forms of taxation.

It appears that very little has been written about the multi-product firm. What has been done is largely an extension of single-product theory to those multi-product firms which have their origin in related demands and related supplies. For example, the utilities of two or more products may be so interrelated as to produce a joint demand. In such event, if the products are linked in a technical sense, as, say, the pieces and pawns of a chess-set, then they will be marketed by a single firm, usually under a name inclusive of the component products. If there is no such technical link, still the products (e.g., knives and forks) are more likely to be produced by a single firm than are unrelated products. Again, regardless of demand, the production of one product by a firm may necessarily result in the production of other products. To take the classic example of joint supply, the production of wool entails the production of mutton.

Each of these cases presents special analytic difficulties, notably problems of cost imputation. Various writers have essayed solutions, some of which have found their way into text-books, and some of which (by no means a separate class) are still matters of controversy.

The present paper, however, is not concerned with the extension of single-product theory to multi-product situations. Rather, it is an effort to analyse those features of the multi-product firm which belong to it as such. In effect, this means that it concerns costs and receipts peculiar to the multi-product firm, other costs and receipts being considered as given. This approach serves to emphasize those factors which give rise to the multi-product firm and which limit its size. It must be remembered that all firms are potentially producers of all products. Single-product theory demonstrates why no single-product firm expands its production without limit, and shows on what grounds a choice of output is made. Multi-product theory is required to show why expansion by variation is also limited, and on what grounds a choice of output is made when there is no restriction of the number of products.