Scholars are now accustomed to adapting to ever–changing forms of communication technology that permit quicker and wider dissemination of their research and the availability to them of the research of others. Since 1968, the Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique has appeared solely in paper format although its editorial and production procedures have become increasingly distinguished by electronic forms of communication. In 1996, the JOURNAL's website was created, providing various editorial and business information, including the abstracts of articles and lists of books reviewed in recent issues.

The signing of the Nis[vBar ]ga'a Final Agreement in August of 1998 was an event of singular importance in the history of “First Nations relations” in Canada. It marked the completion of the first treaty negotiations in British Columbia in the twentieth century and will soon be followed by many others as nearly province–wide negotiations redefine the relationship between First Nations, the province and Canada. Given a political climate hostile to Aboriginal rights, the treaty is a significant achievement and deserves the support of fair–minded Canadians. It certainly does not “give too much” to the Nis[vBar ]ga'a Nation as its critics in the Liberal and Reform parties of British Columbia frequently assert.

We live in a world of explosive change in information and communication technologies (ICTs). Companies advertise cell phone rates that apply to calls anywhere within North America, trumpeting that North America is now a single “neighbourhood.” E-mail puts us in touch with friends and colleagues around the world as easily as it does with neighbours or colleagues in the same department. We phone individuals rather than, as in the past, a place, hoping that the person we are calling is “home.” Home is where the cell is, and not the heart. Newsgroups create virtual communities unbounded by territory. In general, ICTs appear to reduce dramatically the importance of geography, territory and distance. Thus if “living in a place” is what really mattered for identity in the recent past of Guterson's nove1, the scope and pace of this technological change should have a profound effect on identities. Simply put, ICTs have the potential to erode, and erode rapidly, the territorial foundations of our lives.

Tiendra–t–on, dans quelques années, pour exemplaire de la démocratie représentative la séance du 28 juin 1999 au cours de laquelle 745 députés et sénateurs, sur 836 votants, réunis en congrès à Versailles, ont ratifié des modifications aux articles 3 et 4 de la Constitution frančaise? Ces modifications stipulent que désormais “la loi favorise 1'égal accès des femmes et des hommes aux mandats électoraux et aux fonctions électives” et que les partis et groupements politiques “contribuent à la mise en oeuvre [de ce] principe”. Les représentants du peuple frančais — dont 90 pour cent sont de sexe masculin — auraient en effet fourni à cette occasion une illustration particulièrement magistrale du fait que l'appartenance de sexe n'entre pas en ligne de compte quand il s'agit de promouvoir le bien public! Et pourtant, après la promulgation des lois d'application, nombre d'entre eux seront empêchés de se présenter comme candidats afin de laisser la place à des candidates. Le score (89%) réussi au Congrès de Versailles dépasse les attentes populaires (un peu plus de 70% de Frančaises et de Frančais sont, selon les sondages, favorables à la parité.) I1 reflète ma1 la vivacité des débats qui ont entouré la proposition de cette mesure. Je ne reviendrai pas sur les débats qui continuent d'opposer féministes paritaristes et anti-paritaristes. Je prendrai ici en considération les positions d'auteurs masculins.

La différence entre le rapport de Machiavel et celui de Montaigne a la politique s'impose d'emblée a leurs lecteurs. Face à une oeuvre machiavélienne presqu'entièrement vouée à analyser la chose publique et à décrire les conditions d'une action efficace en son sein, Montaigne se montre avant tout moraliste dans ses écrits comme dans sa vie, céest–à–dire plus soucieux de protéger les droits de sa conscience que de répondre aux exigences de la vie publique, et plus attaché à une description de son existence singulière qu'à une analyse systématique du fonctionnement du monde politique.

The constitution and constitutional discourse have loomed large on the agenda of Canadian political science since the 1960s. Over time, political scientists have approached the constitution and its role in society from a number of angles reflecting perceived primary axes of power and dominant cleavages within Canadian society. Thus, federalism, regionalism and British-French dualism have been prominent in explorations of constitutional politics, while such questions as the relation of the constitution to class or gender have been less central.

Since the mid–1990s, comparative research on welfare state evolution has contrasted the contours of postwar social policy expansion with the parameters of contemporary programme retrenchment. Paul Pierson's 1994 account of pension, housing and income support policies in the United Kingdom and the United States during the Thatcher and Reagan years proposed two core arguments with this literature: first, welfare state expansion and contraction were governed by fundamentally different dynamics; and second, even conservative, ideologically committed political executives found it hard to impose radical social policy changes. Because “the welfare state has proved to be far more resilient than other key components of national political economies.” Pierson has maintained, “retrenchment is a distinctive and difficult political enterprise.”

It is widely recognized that the traditional institutions and processes of Canadian politics, such as executive federalism, elite accommodation and brokerage parties have fallen into disrepute with large sections of the Canadian public, and political scientists have noted their failure to resolve long–standing conflicts in the area of constitutional politics. I argue that the reasons why these processes have failed to manage constitutional political conflict have not been properly diagnosed. In particular, Canadian political scientists have not adequately differentiated executive federalism from accommodation and brokerage, often assuming they are contingent on each other (as they are, by definition, in the commonly used expression “elite accommodation”). The pessimism among some Canadian political scientists about Canada's ability to amend the Constitution to the satisfaction of major groups stems in large part from the misplaced assumption that the brokerage and accommodation necessary in Canada require executive federalism. This conventional wisdom suggests that since executive federalism is discredited and has been replaced by a populist requirement for citizen participation, usually through referendums, shuns accomodation in favour of a mojoritarianism which is unable to deal adequately with the problems of a multinational federation like Canada.

The literature on evolutionary theory tends to address questions of ethnicity from two perspectives: (1) macro, or long–term selection processes associated with basic human preferences for individual or group survival, ethnic identity or kinship affiliations; and (2) intermediate selection mechanisms associated with the fitness and adaptability of specific cultures, religions or belief systems in different regions of the world. Comparatively less time has been spent addressing micro–evolutionary questions about the timing, escalation and duration of ethnic violence — that is, micro or short–term selection processes and fitness mechanisms that account for the escalation and/or duration of ethnic hatreds, violence or war at a particular time.

Adam Smith argued that division of labour was the basis of wealth: the greater the division of labour the greater the wealth. He also held that the extent of the division of labour was determined by the opportunity to exchange, or by the size of the market. Although Smith understood market exchange to be constrained by distance and natural impediments, he insisted that public policy should not add additional artificial obstacles to market exchange. Thus, in general, he argued that governments should be committed to “free trade.”

The interest of philosophers in the politics of cultural identity was one of the most interesting developments in this field in the 1990s. Their involvement in an area dominated by historians, sociologists, political scientists and anthropologists2 has been particularly evident in Canada where scholars such as Will Kymlicka and Charles Taylor have shaped the way many academics understand cultural identity politics. These theorists have favoured a cultural approach to the phenomenon. They have established frameworks for understanding and managing multiethnic states that stress the inherent strength and meaning of culture.

The purpose of this article is to present and establish the significance of the Nuclear Arsenal Game (NAG). The NAG investigates behaviour within dyads composed of states that experience an international crisis. It assumes that nuclear and quasi–nuclear states act according to the size and potential of their own nuclear force structure and to that of their opponent. This article argues that the size and potential damage an arsenal poses, set in relation to an enemy state's second–strike capability, determines actor preferences within a crisis situation, preferences which include the option of launching a first strike and risking retaliation in kind. The primary purpose here is to propose a nuclear index for use in empirical studies and offer an example of a game–theoretic model of crisis interaction based on the Theory of Moves (TOM) that considers (a) all levels of nuclear capability; and (b) Classical (or Rational) Deterrence Theory (CDT) to be effective in identifying and explaining actor preferences and predicting behaviour that could include intentional nuclear use.

Governments appear increasingly constrained in their ability to make independent policy choices in an era of global economic finance and communication. As a result, scholars are more closely examining how actors, institutions and economic forces that extend beyond state borders can influence domestic public policies and politics. This scholarship on “globalization” and “transnational relations” serves as a corrective to a comparative public policy literature that has tended to treat external pressures as either exogenous shocks, or as simply other interests to which the state must respond.

American political theorist Michael Walzer is a prominent provocative thinker on the morality of warfare. His landmark study, Just and Unjust Wars, remains a modem classic. But we might ask: given that this oft–cited work first appeared in 1977, what, if any, relevance does it have for us today? Consider, for instance, Walzer's controversial account of jus ad bellum, a term traditionally referring to the justice of resorting to war.

Arms control and the balance of power are seemingly mutually contradictory processes. They share a subtle relationship that can produce either peace or war, a relationship that depends largely on how uncertainty is managed. Certainty plays a vital role in arms control because it permits a regularity of interaction that promotes co–operation among states. Uncertainty plays an equally vital role in the balance of power by restraining states through the fear of third–party interference. As the degree of uncertainty decreases when a system tends toward bipolarity, so arms control becomes more salient. Consequently, the balance of power will likely contribute disproportionately more than arms control in a multipolar environment than in a bipolar one. An important consequence of this relationship is that there are circumstances where a successful arms control agreement may actually increase the likelihood of war by impairing the restraining influence of the balance of power.

Traditionally, Canadian commentary on the Judicial Committee has focused on the effect or impact of the imperial tribunal's decisions on the nature of Canadian federalism. Numerous studies have examined the issue of whether or not the Judicial Committee strengthened the powers of provincial governments at the expense of the federal government by misinterpreting the Constitution Act, 1867 and by ignoring the intentions of the fathers of Confederation who sought to create a strong centralized government. The Canadian preoccupation with the merits of this debate has led one distinguished political scientist, David E. Smith, to suggest that “perhaps too much” has been written about the Judicial Committee. The literature examining the relationship between the Judicial Committee and Canada has not, however, addressed the significance of the imperial context in which the tribunal's decisions were written. The Judicial Committee was not only the final appellate body for Canada but was also responsible for hearing disputes from other parts of the Empire. Decisions written for one Dominion or colony could have profound legal and political effects on another.

Le développement et l'institutionnalisation de la statistique sociale sont intimement liés à l'État. En effet, trés tôt dans l'histoire de l'État moderne, celui–ci devint un important patron de la production statistique et l'État est aujourd'hui un producteur direct de statistiques via ses organismes nationaux. Quels facteurs ont bien pu motiver les gouvernements à investir le champ de la mesure de la société?

According to Colin Bennett, “the comparative policy tradition has never been seriously embraced by Canadian policy analysts.” This is not to say, however, that comparison is absent from policy analysis. Though their number is somewhat limited, several Canadian policy analysts are committed to a comparative approach, and this trend is increasing, particularly in the field of provincial policy analysis.

Case studies of municipal elections hold little appeal for students of local government. Recent scholarship for the most part has focused on gender or the election of councillors, but studies of mayoral contests are virtually non–existent. This is somewhat surprising, considering the constituent size of several large Canadian municipalities where local government leaders are directly elected. If indeed local government is the level closest to the people, a study of municipal electoral behaviour in large cities can provide insights about the relationship between local politicians and the electorate.

Au cours des dernières années, plusieurs recherches ont été menées sur un phénomène relativement récent en Occident: l'accès plus important des femmes à des charges publiques électives. Ces recherches ont porté soit sur les caractéristiques des femmes qui sollicitaient un mandat électif et qui parvenaient à se faire élire, soit sur les obstacles qui jonchaient leur route vers le pouvoir, soit sur certaines de leurs attitudes et opinions et sur certaines perceptions, notamment quant au rôle des femmes en politique . Ces études ont été effectuées à tous les paliers de gouvernement, bien que le palier municipal ait été quelque peu négligé, reflétant peut-être un désintérêt plus large de notre discipline pour cette instance décisionnelle.