A persistent peculiarity of Canadian politics is the variation in patterns of party support between federal and provincial elections. This variation is manifest in both numbers of seats won and lost and proportions of the popular vote. Its effect is best illustrated by the first indicator. In the eight federal elections between 1949 and 1968 there were always at least five provinces in which the party that won the largest number of seats did not hold the largest number of seats in the provincial legislature.

Partisanship inspires a degree of ambivalence. There is a widespread tendency—which has a long history in republican political thought—to decry division and partisanship as corrupting, undermining individual judgment, and promoting clientelism, dependencies and loyalties antithetical to the common good. Yet there is an equally widespread intuition that excessive unity is corrupting, undermining the vigour of civic life. Contemporary political theory remains divided on the normative implications of division and unity—witness the battles between agonistic and consensus-oriented schools of democratic theory. In this article I examine the thought of two eighteenth-century writers who, while often treated as contributing to a common intellectual project of reinvigorating classical civic virtue, took opposite positions on the desirability of division. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Ferguson offered competing accounts of what corrupts civic virtue, one decrying party divisions and the other lauding them. The article examines the underlying philosophical presuppositions of Rousseau and Ferguson's competing claims and suggests, ultimately, that both positions suffer from neglecting to attend to an important distinction between salutary and harmful divisions.

Abstract. The paper argues that a direct causal role for federalism must link policy makers' actions to costs and uncertainties unique to federalism, those associated with maintaining jurisdictional autonomy. The paper develops a formal model of imperfect information between two government actors, one preferring policy change and the other the status quo. A government chooses to change policy (or not) in a context where two things are uncertain: the stomach for intergovernmental retaliation, and the jurisdictional bona fides of the government in the policy area. The model shows how policy change is endogenous to beliefs about whom courts will support during federalism review. The model is then used in a detailed analysis of Australian cabinet archives at the state and Commonwealth levels, pertaining to the issue of Indigenous land rights policy between 1966 and 1978.

Résumé. Le présent document soutient qu'un rôle causal direct du fédéralisme doit lier les actions des décideurs aux coûts et aux incertitudes uniques du fédéralisme : ceux associés au maintien de l'autonomie juridictionnelle. Dans cet article, je développe un modèle formel d'information imparfaite entre deux acteurs gouvernementaux, l'un préférant un changement de politique et l'autre le statu quo. Un gouvernement choisit de changer (ou non) une politique dans un contexte où deux éléments sont incertains : la propension à entrer dans des représailles intergouvernementales, et la bonne foi juridictionnelle du gouvernement dans le domaine en question. Le modèle montre que le changement de politique est endogène avec la perception de qui les tribunaux soutiendront dans un jugement de partage des compétences. Le modèle est ensuite utilisé pour analyser en détail les archives du Cabinet australien au niveau des états et du Commonwealth, relativement à la question des droits territoriaux autochtones entre 1966 et 1978.

The Supreme Court's position in federal states, especially in Canada and the United States, is often delicate when it has to settle cases under dispute involving the sharing of powers between the states (or provinces) and the central government. For the United States, even if civil rights affect only indirectly these powers, several Supreme Court decisions curtail the autonomy of the states, from which follows a long process of centralization. Nonetheless the Supreme Court is only one actor among others, and a limited one, in this process.

Abstract. This paper uses data from an online voting experiment to examine the impact of institutional socialization on the vote decision process. More specifically, we examine how Canadian and American voters differ in their vote decision processes in two- and four-party elections. Our expectation is that Canadian voters, who are more familiar with multiparty electoral context, will adjust to the increased complexity of the four-party competition by engaging in a more detailed decision process. Alternatively, we expect US voters, who are less familiar with multiparty competitions, will not undertake such an adjustment, perhaps even engaging in a less detailed vote calculus under more complex conditions. Results lend support to our expectations, offering insight into how institutional design and socialization can affect voter decision processes.

Résumé. Cet article utilise des données tirées d'une expérience de vote en ligne pour examiner l'impact de la socialisation institutionnelle sur le processus décisionnel menant au vote. Nous examinons en particulier comment les électeurs canadiens et américains diffèrent dans leur processus décisionnel lors d'élections à deux et à quatre partis. Nos attentes sont les suivantes : Les électeurs canadiens, plus familiers avec le multipartisme, s'ajusteront à la plus grande complexité d'une élection à quatre partis en s'engageant dans un processus décisionnel plus sophistiqué. Les électeurs américains, quant à eux habitués davantage au bipartisme, ne feront pas de tels ajustements lorsque le contexte électoral se complexifiera et auront peut-être même tendance à simplifier leur processus décisionnel. Nos résultats tendent à confirmer nos attentes, offrant ainsi un aperçu de la façon dont le contexte institutionnel et la socialisation qui en résulte peuvent influencer le processus décisionnel des électeurs.

In televised political debates, opponents refer to different types of persons. This article examines references to persons and the arguments emerging from them. First of all, four main types of reference are identified: self-reference, reference to an opponent, reference to third parties and reference to experts. The article identifies the fallacies and particularly the different types of ad hominem arguments used by Robert Bourassa and Jacques Parizeau in referring to persons during a debate on the Canadian constitutional referendum of October 1992. Finally, a few theoretical considerations are developed on "peripheral" argumentation of political communication.

This article examines the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the objective of explaining the inclusion of agriculture in the FTA, the negotiation process surrounding the FTA and the outcomes with respect to agricultural commodities. It departs from both the systemic and state-centred models which have dominated Canadian foreign economic policy to argue that, while developments in the international trading system are important factors in explaining Canada's decision to pursue the FTA, the negotiation process and outcomes of the FTA are importantly accounted for in terms of domestic institutions: specifically, state-societal linkages in combination with federal structures. Evidence that the autonomy and capacity of national trade officials was constrained throughout the negotiation process and in terms of the FTA provisions regarding agricultural commodities requires a re-formulation of foreign economic policy-making that links it to the domestic institutional context. Within the latter, the sub-national governments, in combination with durable state-group policy networks, are important factors.

This article analyses the reasons why the political ideas of Rosa Luxemburg must find, according to Hannah Arendt, their place in the education of political scientists in the countries of the West. For Arendt, two ideas of Luxemburg are pre-eminent: the theory of justice and the theory of political action. Justice is an essential idea to found a common world while political action establishes political freedom. Thus, the political theory of Rosa Luxemburg rejects not only the political thought of Lenin, but constitutes a good criticism of the modern political party systems. Finally, the author demonstrates that Arendt appropriated Luxemburg's non-Marxist political theses as a true expression of political freedom not bound by domination.

Canadian courts and governments increasingly invoke principles of mutual consent and nation-to-nation negotiation as central to the goal of addressing colonial injustices in a democratic society. However, Canada continues to interpret its obligations according to the Crown's fiduciary obligation to merely consult and accommodate Aboriginal peoples on infringement of their rights. In this article, I argue that there are conceptual resources available within existing Canadian law and politics for reconstructing a democratic consensual resolution to the problem of Indigenous exclusion and dispossession. I demonstrate that meeting the basic threshold of mutual consent would first require Canadian institutions to abjure the imperious temptation to impose parochial standards of free, prior and informed consent. Second, the Crown would refuse to ensnare Indigenous communities in unconscionable bargains, agreements that they would not otherwise view as reasonable, fair or equitable. And finally, Canada would accept rights of jurisdiction over land rooted in vital relations of health and well-being, as well as a corollary right of refusal or veto over decisions deemed by affected parties to be unwanted.

Political socialization is defined as the acquisition of orientations, beliefs, and values relating to the political system of which an individual is a part. In this study we are concerned with political knowledge about one of David Easton's major components of a political system: the authorities.

Résumé. Cet article défend l'idée que pour être en mesure de bien saisir la sélection des élites communistes chinoises (cadres, fonctionnaires, leaders), il faille maintenant se détourner des approches utilisant la variable factionnelle comme élément explicatif pour ensuite mettre l'accent sur les règles et les conditions formelles « nécessaires » à la nomination et à la sélection du personnel. Nous pensons que l'âge et l'expérience dans les instances du Parti et de l'État prennent progressivement le dessus sur le côté informel de la politique chinoise. Enfin, ce texte se veut une mise en garde aux chercheurs concernant l'utilisation de la notion de faction dans la politique chinoise, à ne pas accepter a priori l'existence des factions et encore moins leurs présumées influences.

Abstract. This article puts forward the idea that to be able to understand the selection of Chinese communist elites (cadres, officials, leaders), we must now turn away from approaches using the factional variable as an explanatory element to instead focus on rules and “necessary” formal requirements for the nomination and selection of personnel. We believe that age and experience in both the Party and State apparatus are gradually taking over the informal side of Chinese politics. Finally, this article wants to be understood as a warning to researchers regarding the use of the notion of faction in Chinese politics. Neither the existence of factions nor, much less, their supposed influence, should be accepted a priori.

The article assesses the utility of Eric Nordlinger's statist approach in explaining Canada's policies on deep seabed mining at the United Nations Third Conference on the Law of the Sea. Nordlinger argues that government decision-makers in liberal democratic societies enjoy considerable autonomy in translating their preferences into public policies even when opposition is mounted by major groups outside government circles. Nordlinger's thesis on state autonomy is useful in explaining Canada's deep seabed mining policies since government decision-makers determined policy outcomes. Nevertheless, the approach requires important modifications to enhance its relevance to the Canadian parliamentary system. It needs to distinguish between politicians and government bureaucrats, to identify the sources of their policy preferences and to recognize provincial involvement.

Students of political integration from all schools of thought have recognized that the creation of a new larger political community out of smaller existing units depends upon the development of values of legitimacy towards the new political centre. This process is often referred to as the development of a “sense of community” or as a “shifting of loyalties,” and it has been theoretically posited as a fundamental condition for the long-term success of political integration both by the cybimetic and the neo-functional schools of integration.

When changes in values towards supranational integration in Europe take place they will be observable in the socialization process as younger generations of European students acquire the new values. This article examines changes in the values socialized in the French Lycée through a diachronic quantitative content analysis of history textbooks used in 1950 and 1966. Three central hypotheses are derived from the two major approaches to integration and are examined in light of the data with particular attention being paid to changes in values of nationalism, conflict vs co-operation, and high political vs economic and social matters.

The results of the analysis show contradictory trends, some of which are explained by controlling for international regions and some of which must remain unexplained until a larger cross-national study is undertaken.