In the discourse of Canadian political science, the term “province-building” has gained wide currency. Although not often defined explicitly, it denotes the recent evolution of more powerful and competent provincial administrations which aim to manage socioeconomic change in their territories and which are in essential conflict with the central government. In this analysis, the generalizations which constitute province-building are examined and most are found not to be adequately supported by the evidence now available. Some lines of research are indicated and it is suggested that this emotive and misleading concept be abandoned.

One way of seeing Machiavelli is as a literary artist who appreciated, in his figurative portraiture of princes, that an effective likeness will always reveal to the attentive eye, something of the prince, of his audience, and of the portraitist himself. And since politics is an activity in which, on his understanding, there is no absolute truth, but only multifarious effectual truths; a comprehensive depiction of political life must embrace irreconcilable points of view as diverse as those of individual princes, the people, and “each man.” The observer's task thus demanded perspectival powers that would test the fabled eyes of Argus. This article sets out the evidence supporting such an interpretation in individual texts of Machiavelli's works, while suggesting how each contributes to the completed literary artistry of his brilliantly evoked world of pictures in words of political aspiration, failure and achievement.

According to the central city exploitation thesis, commuting suburban workers, students and shoppers do not adequately compensate the central city for the public sector benefits they enjoy daily. Assessment of the actual cost of the provision of public services to commuters versus their revenue contribution shows that, in the years 1969 to 1980, suburbanites generated more gains than were required to finance the additional operating costs they imposed on the city of Montreal and nearly offset the part of capital expenditures for which they were responsible. However, in terms of the social costs, commuting results in a deficit for the central city due to the predominant use of the automobile as the mode of transport.

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.

This note derives hypotheses about the intergenerational transfer of Canadian partisanships from a social learning model, which posits that the adoption of attitudes is affected by the homogeneity of cues in the environment. As hypothesized, data from the 1974 Canadian national election study show that the rate of adoption of parental partisanships is affected by the consistency of each parent's federal and provincial party identifications. The second hypothesis, which posits that transfer rates are affected by provincial-federal party system correspondence, is also supported in three of four regression equations.

Public policies can be understood as practical judgments which involve both self-regarding prudential reasoning and other-regarding moral reasoning. A general model of decision-making that has an adequate concept of policy rationality should have a place for both kinds of practical reasoning. Two paradigms of decision-making have dominated contemporary studies of public policy-making, but neither meets this test. Pluralist-exchange models assume that the reasons backing policy decisions are always self-regarding. Elitist-planning models assume they are exclusively other-regarding. Because each of the paradigms separately produces only partial models of decision-making, they must be used together to provide a full account of public policy-making.

Journalistic writing is usually conceived as simple, clear and accessible. It is a vulgarisation discourse. Using a sophisticated program for discourse analysis (DEREDEC), the author has computerized the Flesch and Gunning readability tests. Montreal French newspaper coverage of the White Paper on the referendum constitute the corpus of this study. In brief, the unexpected conclusion is that newspapers are not so readable. The author attempts to explain this situation, referring not only to the journalists' competence but also to their working conditions. Also, what social and political influence can the press have if papers are hardly readable?

In 1944, two civil servants' associations formed the General Council of Employees of the Province of Quebec for the collective defence of the interests of their members. This movement met with the opposition of Premier Duplessis, who disarmed it by a strategy in which formal recognition and consideration disguised the absence of any real concession. The Council soon gave up its attempts at collective action and its member associations continued to function as social and recreational organizations. After 1960, the Council, although first in the field, was unable to resist the rise of the Syndicat des fonctionnaires provinciaux, a more militant group sponsored by the Confédération des syndicats nationaux.

In a recent number of this Journal, D. Marc Kilgour describes a formal analysis of the power of provinces and citizens to effect a constitutional amendment, given the requirements specified by paragraph 38(l)(b) of the Constitution Act, 1982. He concludes that the amending formula—essentially the Fulton-Favreau formula proposed in 1964—distributes power more equitably among provinces than it does among citizens when power measures the capacity of provinces and citizens to change the outcome of the amending process by changing their positions on the issue.