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.

This article examines the differences in pre-1914 France and the United States in two kinds of state policies regulating women's behaviour, those “protecting” the condition under which women participated in certain occupations and those providing infant and maternal protection. Those policies are examined to illuminate the argument that politics, including state policies, makes an important contribution to the maintenance and change of ongoing systems of social relations. Central to this argument is the notion that meaning systems around which actors constitute collective identities are a crucial analytic focus for understanding stability and change. At the end of the nineteenth century hegemonic societal paradigms, constructed out of the processes institutionalizing new social relations, emerged in France and the US. The French paradigm of “citizen-producer” and the American one of “specialized citizenship” had quite different implications for the patterns of gender relations embedded within them. These implications are visible in the treatment of women's work and maternity in these years of the emerging welfare state.

This article challenges the conventional interpretation of the intellectual origins of Canadian federalism. The article argues that the debate over Confederation can be interpreted as a debate over the meaning of sovereignty. It argues centrally that certain of the most prominent supporters of Confederation were more powerfully attracted to the conception of classical federalism and co-ordinate sovereignty than is usually assumed, thus creating a striking parallel to United States federalism that is not typically recognized. It concludes by showing how this understanding of classical federalism was used with great success in opposing the post-Confederation centralism of John A. Macdonald.

The Canadian Constitution contains several distinctive rights not found in the United States Constitution. Indeed, the collective and community-based rights Canadians take for granted are inimical to American liberal traditions. Negative rights or interpretive provisions, such as the non obstante clause, are unique to Canada among Western democracies. The author argues that these rights derive from the country's historical concerns with religious and linguistic communities—especially in Quebec—and that they in turn condition how politics must be conducted in Canada.

This article analyzes the legislative cohesion of political parties in Quebec between 1867 and 1989. The unveiling of frequent and widespread dissent within the two parties throughout the nineteenth century, and its gradual elimination thereafter, stand out as its major finding. Various explanatory factors are then reviewed: the confidence convention, the decrease of the number of divisions that did not involve confidence in the government or approval of its policies, the advent of universal suffrage, sanctions against dissenters and the role of party leaders. All these factors seem to have had some influence. The author argues that studies of this kind must distinguish between the various formal categories of divisions, a dimension often neglected in such studies.

Language rights represent claims of entitlement not only on behalf of individuals, but also on behalf of linguistic communities. As such, they raise deep questions of identity and affinity for Canadians. This study, the first report of the Charter Project, investigates mass and elite attitudes toward language rights in Canada. Beginning with the problem of double standards—whether anglophones and francophones want to affirm certain rights for their own group but not for the other—this study finds that attitudes toward language rights are shaped by an interplay between core values to which citizens subscribe and their concern for the status of the groups, both linguistic and partisan, with which they identify.

Hegelian scholarship is rent between conservative and liberal interpretations of Hegel's political philosophy. These one-sided interpretations miss his attempts to reconcile freedom and authority. Conservative liberalism, I submit, rightly describes his posture. A dialectical procedure allows Hegel to derive rationally a conservative State from the liberal principles embodied in market society. The key to this dialectical derivation lies in the spontaneous order that springs naturally from the self-seeking behaviour of individuals. Hegel's realization of the negative ethical value generated by that spontaneous order, and the failure of corporations to discipline the business classes, prompts the powerful role he confides to the State and its monarch.

Some recent Marxologists (notably Allen Buchanan, Richard Miller and Allen Wood) have denied that the idea of justice can play any significant role within Marxist thought. This article maintains, on the contrary, that the very logic of historical materialism, notably the concept of the historical development of human needs, necessitates a concept of justice even in the higher phase of communism. Furthermore, the “anti-juridical” interpretation of Marx fails to provide an adequate account of the connection between the communist values of self-realization and community. It therefore obscures the concerns addressed by a notion of justice. The early Marx's concept of species-being (Gattungswesen) expresses the relation between self-realization and community in historical terms. Thus it provides an appropriate context for a Marxist theory of justice.

Using a modified version of Chicken, referred to as the Threat Game, Brams and Kilgour have developed a theoretical model of threat escalation and stability in superpower crises. More specifically, they derive explicit thresholds for sufficient pre-emption to stabilize a crisis before it escalates out of control. An appropriate degree of coercion thereby is designated for the response to an adversary, in order to deter further escalation. The overall objective of this study is to use data on superpower crises to test a modified version of the model developed by Brams and Kilgour. Mixed results emerge from testing the most general propositions. The choice of response level usually does not surpass the model's recommended value. However, stabilization is feasible in virtually all crises and, when an actor does meet the threshold, satisfaction with the outcome occurs more frequently than otherwise. Two more specific hypotheses also are tested, with partial support for the model once again being the result.

The semi-direct democracy in Switzerland during the period 1879-1987 is a favourable ground for checking some assumptions related to the theory of participatory democracy such as those involving the inherent characteristics of the popular majority. This article presents a comparative description of the specific features of the referenda votes and general elections in representative democracies. Some aspects of the political behaviour in the Swiss cantons and at the federal level are analyzed as are the fluctuations in referenda participation in relation to institutional factors, competition intensity and the number of signatures collected. Different aspects of amicable agreement democracy, the functioning of interest groups and their relationship to the level of participation are subjects of comprehensive discussion.

Léon Dion is a pioneer of political science in Quebec and Canada. For over 25 years he has advocated a series of reforms of the Canadian federal system, striking a balance between his commitment to Quebec nationalism and his loyalty to Canada. This article analyzes Léon Dion's use of German thought in his latest book, underlying his effort to thwart the apathy and moroseness descending upon Quebec politics in the post-referendum era. A parallel will be drawn between Dion's book and Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation, delivered in Berlin in the winter of 1807. Both thinkers are characterized by intellectual involvement and concern for national identity in times of crisis. It will be argued that Dion's book contains an important political message for English-speaking Canada.

The paradox of modern political theory which affirms individual autonomy and simultaneously seeks solid foundations for social belonging is approached here through its emergence in eighteenth-century France: first by a comparative reading of Montesquieu and Rousseau according to the exigencies of suitability and legitimacy of their respective political philosophies; then by an evocation of some of the echoes of their thought in the French Revolution around the themes of the exercise of power, of virtue and of religion.

This article explores the relevance of studies of judicial policy-making in the United States to the decision-making of the Supreme Court of Canada under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The article suggests that literature concerning the political legitimacy of judicial policy-making is minimally relevant, since a broad form of judicial review appears to be well established in Charter jurisprudence. The literature on institutional decision-making capacity has greater relevance, since the Canadian Court faces the same information-processing constraints as its American counterpart. The article concludes by suggesting that attempts to overcome problems of institutional capacity may produce additional questions of political legitimacy.

This article discusses interest representation by Canadian co-operative business associations, as a way of exploring difficulties faced by democratically structured group interests in influencing federal government policy. Several dimensions of co-operatives’ problems in this regard are examined: their internal structures of democratic representation, their reform ideology, their influence by two conflicting logics of collective action and selected aspects of federal policy development. The article concludes by contending that the problem of democratic representation by economic group interests in the policy process should be taken more seriously by Canadian political scientists.

This article argues that the traditional views of constitutional conventions have failed to illuminate the variety among this important group of constitutional rules. A fresh examination of conventional rules explains how they may vary in precision, acceptance and importance to basic constitutional principles and processes. A hierarchical ordering of five types of constitutional rules is proposed as a replacement for the simple dichotomy between usage and convention that is currently accepted. The implications of such an ordering, which reach beyond mere analytic classification, are then discussed.

The analysis of the modalities of the governing of conduct, in an individualizing and totalizing modern political rationality, along with the conception of spaces of freedom for concrete human subjects in this environment, are two great preoccupations of Michel Foucault's last works. This article provides an account of the actualization by Foucault of his thought on power which explains the various factors, from problems of historical interpretation to new perspectives, which led him to conceive of power in the categories of the governing of the conduct of others. This study finds anticipations of these changes in Foucault's first historical studies, and demonstrates their relevance in the framework of reflections on freedom.

The philosophy of Karl Popper has rarely been examined with respect to its fruitfulness and relevance for political theory. While his contributions to the philosophy of science may appear to be of only marginal significance for the fundamental concerns of political theory, his own forays into the field, particularly in The Open Society and Its Enemies, have been polemical in tone and explicitly political in motivation. This article re-examines Popper's critique of the theory of sovereignty and his own approach to political theory by employing a largely neglected element of his critical approach, namely his problem-oriented method.

This study develops a dependency interpretation of the interplay between class and region in influencing Canadian voting. The weakness of any national class cleavage in voting is linked to the socially disintegrative effects of regional dependency. Class cleavages are not consistently manifested in Canadian voting because consistent class interests are lacking. Log-linear analyses confirm that class does affect voting but this effect differs in both form and intensity depending on a region's location in the centre-periphery system. The impact of union membership and language on the interplay between class and region is also examined.

This article argues that the concept of hypothetical consent advanced by Hanna Pitkin has little force as a basis for political obligation. It reformulates the meaning of hypothetical consent by emphasizing the subjectivity of consent, and it points out how this subjective meaning expresses the right of actual citizens to dissent. It suggests how subjective hypothetical consent can be used from the perspective of a sovereign as a standard that requires the sovereign to treat citizens as if they had consented, although they have not consented. It concludes by arguing that although this standard may appear to corrode political authority, instead it enhances political authority. It drives the sovereign to relinquish the claim that citizens are obligated to obey, and to treat them so they will have reason to obey.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, “left-nationalist” dependency theories dominated Canadian political economy. However, Canada defied the predictions of dependency theory and developed all the class relations appropriate to advanced capitalist societies. The origins of Canadian industrial capitalism were not such that the country was locked into a staple-trap, notwithstanding the very real reliance of the economy on staple-export. In recent years, a number of political economists have offered an “orthodox” Marxist critique of dependency to account for these and other weaknesses in its overall framework. This article first summarizes the dependency arguments, then the arguments of its Marxist critics, and finally introduces a summary look at the ideas of Nikolai Bukharin, a little-examined but nonetheless important theorist whose insights on the relationship between the state as a capitalist and the growing internationalization of economic life are key to a Marxist re-theorization of Canadian political economy.