As Lévi-Strauss puts it, social facts are primarily communication facts. From this point of view political communication is not characterized by the objects it bears upon, but by its praxeologicial character; it is concerned with the effectiveness of communication, and more precisely with power relations and with strategies. So, political communication is to be analysed as a game structure, and not as a network structure or a code structure. It is shown by an example that political communication really presents a game structure, after which some distinctions are made between mastery and control, and then between material, informational, symbolic, and juridical means of power. Like the other structures, game structures are characterized by the laws which govern them. Three of them are specified: the law of equilibration, the law of connectedness, and the law of communal closure. Finally, after reviewing briefly the different orders (practical, institutional, and ideological) where a structure can be seen in operation, three positive aspects of such a game analysis are noted: it is concerned with the inner part of human action, it is well-suited to overcome the limits of functional and systems analysis, and it has the virtue of isolating a truly political dimension in human action.

This article explores the constituency dimension of campaign financing in the 1984 and 1988 federal elections in Canada. The analysis uncovers considerable variability in the capacity of constituency parties to attract campaign donations. These variations appear to be related to the past local and regional strengths of parties, to the expected closeness of the current contest, and to whether incumbents are running for re-election. Multivariate analyses suggest that these political variables have a broadly consistent impact on fund-raising after other features of the socio-economic diversity of constituencies have been controlled.

With a theoretical framework based on Duverger and Epstein we examine the mass party and compare it to the cadre party. The Parti Québécois fits its criteria. In 1977 it imposed its fund-raising methodology on other Quebec parties by barring donations from moral persons. Only Quebec electors may now donate anything. Only the Quebec Liberal party has adapted. The hypothesis is that a loss in popularity leads to a loss of membership and a financial crisis. This may lead to a crise de conscience and a split in membership, leading to disintegration and defeat. Such a crisis shook the PQ from 1981 to 1985 and the defeat of December 2, 1985, was an inevitable consequence.

Abstract. As the formal “carriers” of the goals and agendas of social movements, social movement organizations (SMOs) are committed to both institutional and identity politics. Given this dual engagement, SMOs must attempt to reconcile their intraorganizational strategies for representation and mobilization with their intergroup strategies for instrumental action in the policy process. In this article, these tensions are explored in a case study of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) and its involvement in the policy debate on reproductive technologies over 15 years. The article reveals how the NAC's capacity to influence and participate in the formulation of policy on reproductive technologies was challenged by its inability to resolve competing demands: those of institutional politics, which called for professional advocacy; and the internal demands emanating from its grassroots member groups, for deliberation and participation. The article also attributes the NAC's diminished effectiveness in the policy process to broader changes in the relations between the Canadian state and social movement organizations.

Résumé. Les organisations qui se situent au coeur des mouvements sociaux se distinguent par leurs préoccupations qui sont à la fois institutionnelles et identitaires. Étant donné cette double préoccupation, ces organisations doivent constamment tenter de concilier leurs stratégies internes de représentation et de mobilisation et leurs stratégies externes d'intervention dans le processus de production des politiques publiques. Ces tensions sont examinées dans cet article grâce à une étude de cas qui porte sur le Comité canadien d'action sur le statut de la femme et son rôle dans le débat sur la procréation assistée au cours des 15 dernières années. L'article révèle que la capacité du Comité à participer à la conception des politiques canadiennes en matière de procréation et à l'influencer a été mise à l'épreuve par le tiraillement d'exigences divergentes : les exigences institutionnelles d'intervention professionnelle et les demandes internes de délibération et de participation émanant de la base du mouvement. L'article attribue aussi la réduction de l'efficacité du comité dans le processus de production des politiques à des changements dans les rapports qu'entretient l'État canadien avec les mouvements sociaux.

A major objective of this article is the reexamination of canvassing-voting relationships analyzed by Clarke, Jenson, LeDuc and Pammett in Political Choice in Canada. However, this study distinguishes itself in two major ways. First, usage is made of multivariate techniques, a necessity in view of the number of variables that ought to be taken into consideration. Secondly, two conceptually important types of variables are incorporated; namely, the number of parties canvassing potential voters (“competitive contacting”) and the degree of party competition in the constituency (“competitive context”). The results indicate the relevance of these two types of variables, although varyingly so. Thus, “reinforcement,” the principal canvassing effect uncovered, is related to competitive contacting, independently of the competitive context. On the other hand, possible “recruitment” and “conversion” effects are associated with particular attributes of both factors. These results, along with some unexpected ones, underscore a suggestion advanced in the article for renewed research into the subject of canvassing.

Although Canada's first documented case of COVID-19 appeared in mid-January 2020, it was not until March that messaging about the need to contain the virus heightened. In this research note, we document the use of the media's construction of risk through framing in the early stages of the pandemic. We analyze three dimensions of the health risk narratives related to COVID-19 that dominated Canadians’ concerns about the virus. To capture these narratives, we examine print and online news coverage from two nationally distributed media sources. We assess these frames alongside epidemiological data and find there is a clear link between media coverage, epidemiological data and risk frames in the early stages of the pandemic. It appears that the media relied on health expertise and political sources to guide their coverage and was responsive to the public health data presented to Canadians.

This article examines the failure of Canadian public policy in addressing racial economic inequality directly. Our analysis contends that Canada's key policy regimes were established in the postwar era, when approximately 96 per cent of Canadians were of European descent. As a result, the frameworks, problem definitions and policy tools inherited from that era were never intended to mitigate racial economic inequality. Moreover, this policy inheritance was deeply shaped by liberal universalism, which rejected racial distinctions in law and policy. These norms were carried forward into the more racially diverse Canada of today, where they have steered attention away from the use of racial categories in policy design. As a result, racial inequality was not a central priority during major policy reforms to core policy regimes in recent decades. In theoretical terms, our analysis contributes to Canadian Political Development through a sustained consideration of the intersecting roles of ideational frameworks, path dependency and policy inertia.

The concept of participation is a cornerstone of development and democracy discourses, but studies on participatory development rarely examine the political regimes those policies are embedded in. Yet, in authoritarian contexts, participation is ambiguous, potentially threatening—as it can be connected to democratic ideals—and it also can be used as a resource, a tool for domination. Through an analysis of participatory development projects implemented in Sudan, I explore how power relations are renegotiated at the local level. Relying on data collected during fieldwork in Khartoum and the state of North Kordofan, where the projects are located, I highlight the disconnect between the discourse surrounding the participatory devices, which establishes an horizontal relationship between citizens and the local government, and the actual practices that strengthen the latter's power. In doing so, the article challenges a linear, top-down conception of authoritarian power and reveals the tensions that exist between institutional levels.

Abstract. This paper examines how two talk radio programs—CBC's Sounds Like Canada and Corus Radio Network's Adler Online—work to reproduce colonialism in Canada through formation of colonial subjectivity. It proceeds through analysis of listener experience informed by postcolonial theory, and the work of Deleuze and Guattari. The mobilization of affective states by these programs, specifically sympathy and outrage, has important implications for how colonialism continues to dictate many of the terms of Canadian political discourse. If colonialism continues to be reproduced in our daily interactions with the media, this poses serious threats to Canadian multiculturalism and to the potential for realizing Aboriginal political goals.

Résumé. Cet article explore la manière dont deux émissions-débats radiophoniques (Sounds Like Canada de CBC ainsi que Adler Online du réseau Corus Radio) participent à la reproduction du colonialisme au Canada en renforçant la formation d'une subjectivité coloniale. Cette recherche propose une analyse de l'expérience d'un auditeur développée conjointement avec les théories postcoloniales et les oeuvres de Deleuze et Guattari. La mobilisation d'états affectifs, plus précisément la sympathie ou l'indignation, qu'engendre l'écoute de ces émissions-débats a de nombreuses implications sur la façon dont le colonialisme continue de dicter plusieurs éléments clés du discours politique canadien. La perpétuation du colonialisme au cours de nos interactions quotidiennes avec les médias pose un risque non négligeable pour le multiculturalisme canadien et pour l'atteinte éventuelle des objectifs politiques des communautés autochtones.

Although most of this essay relates to the work of political scientists, some of it deals with the writings of others who have contributed to our understanding of the government and politics of Canada. It would be a perverse and superficial student of our political institutions indeed who confined himself to the scholarship of political scientists without familiarizing himself at least in a general way with the writings, for example, of historians Ramsay Cook and W. L. Morton, sociologists S. D. Clark and John Porter, economists John Dales and Harry Johnson, legal scholars Edward McWhinney and Frank Scott, and, outside the bounds of Academia proper, journalists Peter Newman and Claude Ryan, and practising public administrators A. W. Johnson and Herbert Balls.

This article investigates whether the entry of a greater number of women into the political arena could transform gender relations. The opinions of female and male New Democratic, Liberal and Parti québécois candidates in the 1989 Quebec general election were polled, in order to clarify three main questions: Do the female candidates polled have opinions favourable to feminist demands? Do female and male candidates have the same opinions with respect to these demands? Do political party and political philosophy influence the opinions of each sex on feminist demands? The results show that, generally speaking, women have higher scores on a feminist index than men. More specifically, this gap between women and men varies in accordance with the thematics of feminism, and with political party and political philosophy.

The principal differentia of the Canadian economy are familiar. Because of the nature of her resources and her situation, Canada depends chiefly upon the production in quantity of a few staple commodities for export to those regions having less specialized resources and more diversified economies. Canada is thus subjected, willy-nilly, to a violent alternation of boom and depression by the fluctuation of demand in her foreign markets. Geography, moreover, has afflicted Canada with a transportation problem, which has two phases: in time of boom, the problem is how to obtain quickly more and cheaper transportation; in time of depression, how to pay out of her shrunken national income the heavy fixed costs incurred by the construction of transportation facilities.

The past decade has witnessed a growing recognition of the economic effects of government finance. Government expenditures and revenues, government borrowing and debt repayment are studied, not for their impact on the Treasury, but for their impact on the economy. It is recognized now more than ever before that each aspect of government finance may be used as an instrument of economic policy to influence the size of the nation's income or alter the character of the nation's output. At first the problems of the depression and now the necessities of the war have converted “government finance” into “fiscal policy.” The theory of fiscal policy, reborn in the depression, nurtured during the recovery and matured in the war, has become the handmaiden of the government official and the political economist.

In spite of the great amount of attention it has received, the theory of fiscal policy still lacks complete co-ordination of its various faculties and still suffers from frequent reversion to its childhood days. During the time of deep depression when the multiplier theory was developed it was taken for granted by many economists that deficits were the appropriate instrument for raising the level of national income. Since widespread unemployment and underemployment existed there was little need for differentiating real from money income, since a general rise in prices was not very likely and, in any case, was desirable. During the war, however, we wish to raise only the real income or the physical output, and then only the output of war materials, and keep down as much as possible the money national income and the price level. How must the theory of fiscal policy be changed as a result of these new objectives and altered conditions? And when the war is over will we have to resort to deficit-spending to prevent a depression? Are deficits, which were required to raise the level of national income, appropriate for maintaining a high level of national income? We must exercise the greatest care in answering these questions and we must guard against glibly applying some ready formula which we ourselves have carried over from the pre-war days of business depression. It is necessary first of all to examine the structure of fiscal policy (Part i) and trace through the interrelations among expenditures, taxation, borrowing, debt repayment, and national income (Part ii). Then we can see how fiscal policy may be used to achieve desired ends and avoid dangerous pitfalls during the war (Part iii) and in the post-war period (Part iv).

Evidence from other advanced industrial societies indicates that the traditional ideological contours of old states are being reshaped by the advance of a new political agenda. Using attitudinal survey data, this article explores the ways in which “new politics” has shaped the political belief systems of a segment of the Canadian population born after 1945. Findings indicate the presence of postmaterialist orientations among the young and a structuring capacity of postmaterialism versus left/right with respect to attitudes in different policy domains. Postmaterialism is also linked to greater mobilization potential and, among left identifiers, is shown to predict New Democratic party versus Liberal party support.