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Examines the dynamics of environmental standard setting in the Canadian Federal State using the pulp and paper case. Analysis of provincial regulatory incentives; Resistance of both the regulated industry and jurisdictionally defensive provinces to regulations; Imposition of strong standards in the largest provinces and the weaker ones to small provinces.

While the last few decades have witnessed increased political significance of the Canadian Supreme Court, the Court has also managed to safeguard its institutional legitimacy as evident in the high degree of support it enjoys among the Canadian public. Indeed, how do the Supreme Court of Canada, and high courts everywhere, ensure the attainment and retention of institutional legitimacy? The paper develops an answer to this question by presenting a strategic theory of legitimacy cultivation. The theory is applied and tested in the context of the 1998 Secession Reference case. The paper sheds a new light on the case, shows that patterns of judicial strategic behaviour can provide important insights into how the Supreme Court acquires institutional legitimacy and points out the significance of extending the strategic approach to the study of the Canadian Supreme Court. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper starts from the assumption that historical institutionalism has much to offer in order to address important questions raised in the literature on comparative federalism. Historical institutionalism is a useful approach to enhancing our understanding of both the origins that drive federal system dynamics and the dynamic patterns which federal systems unfold over time. The paper conceptualizes federalism as a multi-layered political order, comprising an institutional and an ideational layer. It then introduces two models of political change, the model of path dependence and the process sequencing model, and asks how each model can contribute to explain the emergence of the federal order in Canada and Germany. I conclude that while the model of path dependence lends itself well to capturing federal system dynamics in Germany, the process sequencing model, in contrast, is better suited to explaining sources and patterns of change in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores eighteenth-century German debates on the relation of freedom and perfection in the course of which Kant works out his juridical theory. It contrasts the perfectionist ideas of political activity in Christian Wolff and Karl von Dalberg (a historically important but neglected figure), with Fichte's program in The Closed Commercial State (1800), distinguishing logics of political intervention. Examining insufficiently recognized aspects of the intellectual context for Kant's distinction between happiness, right and virtue, the paper demonstrates Fichte's (problematic) application of Kantian ideas of freedom to political economy and contests current interpretations of the politically disengaged character or attenuated modernism of German political philosophy in the Enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how citizenship norms of duty to vote and to volunteer in one's community influence political participation, and the role of group identities in producing these norms. By showing how citizenship norms influence an array of political activities, and by drawing on social psychology literature that shows how citizenship norms are shaped by group identifications, the paper offers a more complete picture of the relationship between citizenship norms and political participation beyond traditional civic duty/federal vote models that currently dominate Canadian political research. The central argument forwarded is that not only do citizenship norms matter to political participation, but that group identities matter, too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine the theoretical debates concerning "medicalization" in relation to the empirical trend toward increased demand for "natural" options for childbirth. Many feminist theorists have argued that medical intervention in pregnancy and childbirth is both unwarranted and disempowering and devalues women's own abilities and experiences. Further, it is argued that medicalization (of seemingly natural events) is particularly damaging for women and other marginalized people. In this paper, I explore the claims (of both providers and consumers) concerning medical care for pregnancy and childbirth among privileged populations and ask why rejection of medical care for pregnancy and childbirth is not proportional to disadvantage. It appears to be the case that criticism of medical intervention in pregnancy and childbirth is strongest among privileged women and is expressed consistently as preference for "natural," "traditional" or "normal" approaches and practices. Reverence for the natural, I argue, is a political claim that asserts social position, identity, and resistance. I consider this political claim to be embodied and demonstrated in the occurrence of a physical and psychic duality, a "split subjectivity," that is exacerbated by the sharpness of the public-private divide in women's lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines contemporary debates in Maori politics by responding to the argument of the former leader of the opposition National party, Don Brash, that Maori public policy is most properly based on "need" alone because indigenous status offers no "rights" beyond those of common national citizenship. The paper's alternative argument is that the politics of indigeneity and associated theories of self-determination provide a way of avoiding a general belief that addressing need is all that is required to include Maori fairly in the national polity. It is argued that Maori ought to enjoy rights of indigeneity as the basis of an inclusive, cohesive and fair society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on an international literature that stresses the growing importance of cities in both the economy and governance, this paper proceeds from the premise that national government support is essential to the maintenance of a social safety net, but that a great deal of local initiative is also necessary in order to ensure that national government funds are spent in a manner appropriate to the very different conditions in different cities. The paper focuses on a case in which a municipal government initiated a tri-level government program. Winnipeg officials and politicians developed a proposal for federal and provincial participation in a locally created welfare-to-work scheme, a scheme that, unlike conventional workfare, offered union wages and training leading to well-paid work. The municipal government provided on-the-job training for workers selected from the welfare rolls to carry out infrastructure upgrades and financed the project with money the federal and provincial governments saved on welfare payments. The paper argues that the municipal government was uniquely well placed to identify needed work, as well as to choose welfare recipients who would be able to benefit from the job training on offer. In this case, therefore, we argue that local initiative was essential to the success of this federally and provincially financed welfare-to-work program. The findings of the theoretical literature we review suggest that it could eventually become a precedent for further municipal and local activism along similar lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the presence (or the lack thereof) of references to work done by French-speaking scholars in the broad literature dealing with Canadian politics over the past ten years. It surveys books published by commercial and university presses and analyzes both quantitatively and qualitatively the reference and use of scholarly work by French-speaking scholars published in English and French. The paper sheds light on the sociology and the politics of scientific production in the field of Canadian polities. It examines a phenomenon that is both troubling and revealing of the unequal status of scholarly contributions to the field of Canadian politics. Moreover, it questions the extent to which the current Canadian politics field reflects a comprehensive and inclusive understanding of the Canadian political dynamic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins the analysis of complex multi-actor, multi-round decision-making processes in Canadian public policy formation. After setting out the notion of a decision-making style and its constitutive elements, the paper identifies research into complex multi-actor, multi-round decisions as a serious lacuna in the literature on public policy decision-making, despite the fact that this type of decision-making is very common in public policy-making circumstances. The paper advances research in this area through the analysis of several hypotheses raised in recent European studies concerning the conditions under which such processes are likely to successfully conclude in a decision, rather than an impasse. These hypotheses are tested against evidence taken from five cases of multi-round decision-making in Canada over the period 1995-2005: amendments to the Indian Act, the creation of Species-at-risk legislation, alterations to the Bank Act, the extension of Privacy legislation to the private sector and efforts to develop a Free Trade of the Americas Agreement (FTAA). Data on actor interactions in these five areas gleaned from on-line newspaper and media index services reveals that Canadian results do not match those arrived at in European studies, showing both different patterns of government and non-governmental activity and less volatility in actor behaviour as rounds evolve over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canadian political parties have been using the Internet as a campaign tool since the 1997 election. Rebuilding Canadian Party Politics by Carty, Cross and Young (2000) presents one of the first analyses of Internet-based communications during a Canadian election. It is also one of the most important assessments of Canadian party systems. The book outlines the components that characterize the fourth party system, which they argue, began after the 1993 election. Regionalization is the defining characteristic of this emerging system. The book argues that the Internet, like other communication technologies, is important in this latest party system. Consistent with the notion of regionalized campaign communications, the authors suggest that Canadian political parties use the Internet to target campaign messages to different regional and sociodemographic groups and enter into private conversations with voters. Using original data collected from the 2004 federal election, this paper reflects on these claims. The paper builds the case that the use of the Internet as a campaign tool is not consistent with their argument. Internet-based campaign communications in Canada by the major parties is neither regionalized nor targeted. Rather, this technology makes campaign communication more transparent and centralized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an emerging consensus that group differentiated rights can protect collective identity, furnishing the state with important tools of accommodation. What happens, however, to the efficacy of these rights as tools of accommodation and their protective capacity if the identity they are meant to protect and accommodate is contested? In addressing this question, this paper explores the intersection of identity contestation and group differentiated rights in the Canadian context with specific reference to aboriginality and existing aboriginal rights. First, the paper offers a presentation of the plurality of meanings shouldered by the term "aboriginality". Second, it traces the numerous decisions which comprise the Dlegamuulokw, case and examines the various explanations, descriptions and characterizations of aboriginality contained therein. In the process, it exposes that a particular understanding of this collective identity underpins the Court's ultimate characterization of aboriginal title, the aboriginal right at issue in this case. This represents a problematic interpretation, given that the version of aboriginality selected differs from the one put forward by the aboriginal litigants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Monetary Fund's (IMF) annual Article IV consultation meetings and ensuing reports arc external assessments of member states' economics by highly regarded international economists, designed to ensure that member states conform to IMF-prescribed liberal economic standards. For non-borrowing advanced industrialized countries, like Canada, what is the perceived utility of these annual Article IV consultations? Constructivists suggest that the adept staff of international organizations (IO) teach state civil servants and officials how to better formulate sound policies. However, constructivists need to engage in further empirical study to back up their theoretical assumptions about IO teaching and state learning. Based on personal interviews with Department of Finance staff involved in Article IV consultations and on content analysis of IMF reports on Canada, this paper contributes an empirical study on whether the Fund staff "teaches" and Canada's finance department staff "learns" from the annual surveillance exercises. The findings of this paper suggest that although involved Canadian Finance personnel appreciate meeting with the Fund staff as an academic and intellectual exchange, the policy advice they receive in the Article IV consultations rarely, if ever, changes their economic analyses, because the Fund's advice tends to not be practical. Based on suggestions from Department of Finance staff, as well as IMF evaluations of its bilateral surveillance, this paper concludes with recommendations from the finance staff on how to improve on the utility of Article IV consultations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper questions both realist and restorative conceptions of truth commissions, to the extent that both of those conceptions neglect the internal links between truth commissions and criminal trials. Interpreting the requirements of retribution, responsibility and truth-telling, the paper argues that trials and truth commissions should be placed at points on a spectrum rather than in distinct categories, and that the circumstances of political transition explain the divergences in their respective practices. We may see truth commissions and trials as expressing the same aims of justice, though in contextually differentiated ways that modify both the subordinate principles required by the aims of justice and also their institutional expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Everyone familiar with the study of Canadian politics knows the joke about how a French national, an Englishman and a Canadian were asked to write an essay about an elephant: the French national wrote about the culinary uses of the elephant, the Englishman wrote about the elephant and imperialism, and the Canadian wrote a paper entitled. "Elephant: Federal or Provincial Responsibility?" Though simple, the joke conveys the essence of Canadian politics: always defined by jurisdictional disputes. The joke misses the boat, however, by ignoring the fact that indigenous people are now (as they always have been) engaging in jurisdictional debates in an attempt to challenge the Canadian constitutional order and to reaffirm their own constitutional order and autonomy. This paper examines one such dispute—the Mi'kmaw claim of rights and responsibilities for the salmon fishery—and presents it as a case of contested sovereignties and a resulting jurisdictional dispute. In so doing, I pose the question: Is salmon a federal, provincial or Mi'kmaq responsibility? In seeking an answer, this paper proceeds in an exploratory manner to map both constitutional orders, and the interrelation between these orders that results in the debate over responsibility for the salmon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers why gender mainstreaming (GM), a strategy that many have claimed holds promise for transforming public policy and working towards social justice, is inherently limited and flawed. The paper begins with a brief overview of GM, specifically focusing on the Canadian context, and highlights current discussions in the literature regarding issues of implementation and best practices. It then moves on to reveal that a critical but overlooked dimension of GM is its theoretical foundation. In contextualizing GM within a contemporary feminist theory framework, the paper seeks to illuminate the problematic relationship that currently exists between GM and feminist theory and, moreover, demonstrates why the theoretical premises of GM need significant reworking. The argument put forward is that if insights of recent feminist theorizing are taken seriously, it becomes clear that GM should be replaced by an alternative and broader strategy of diversity mainstreaming. Through the use of practical examples, the paper illustrates how diversity mainstreaming is able to better capture, articulate and make visible the relationship between simultaneously interlocking forms of oppressions that include but are not limited to gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public support for legal recognition of same-sex marriage increased markedly in Canada over the course of the 1990s. The argument of this paper is that a sequence of Supreme Court decisions in the realm of same-sex relationship recognition—and the legislative activity that followed as a result—played a pivotal role in shaping public opinion on this issue. It is argued that the impact of these institutions was twofold. First, by framing the issue as one of equal rights, the courts and legislatures induced many Canadians to weigh equality-related considerations more heavily in the formation of opinions on same-sex marriage. Second, legal recognition of same-sex relationships directly persuaded many Canadians that such recognition was legitimate. The paper uses data from the Canadian Election Studies for 1993, 1997 and 2000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates that an important and overlooked guide to understanding Canadian and US Supreme Court decision making in tax cases is the "default," or the party to whom the court will decide in favour of if tax language is ambiguous. While statutory interpretation methods influence the overall manner in which courts approach tax-law decision making, the default is a more concrete guide to evaluating Canadian and US Supreme Court decisions. The paper first explores the statutory interpretation approaches referenced in Canadian and American Supreme Court tax law cases. The paper then examines the histories of defaults, including the cases in which they emerged and the rationales given for their adoption. Third, based on original research, the paper concludes that defaults have a profound effect on income tax decisions by, in Canada, the Supreme Court favouring the taxpayer and, in the United States, the Court deferring to the Internal Revenue Service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explain the origins of Quebec's system of compensation for workplace accidents, which was established in 1909 and functioned as the first component of Quebec's welfare state. Besides being an important example of early social policy, workers' compensation was also part of a transformation of liberalism that embodied a significant change in liberal jurisprudence, from a system of employer liability based on individual fault and responsibility to a system of compensation regardless of fault. This paper argues that Quebec's first Workmen's Compensation Act can only be understood in terms of the interaction of three factors that are more commonly seen as alternatives in the theoretical literature on policy development. The first is the differential power resources of capital and labour, where the interests of the former predominated over those of the latter in shaping the provisions of the act. The second involves a structural dimension, where the institutional autonomy of the legal process and jury system in employer liability cases started to cause problems for capital accumulation and provided a stimulus for change. And third, the acceptance of the new idea of workers' compensation depended on a widespread process of policy learning by both state and societal actors. Theoretically, the paper tries to go beyond one-dimensional explanations of policy development and to integrate analyses of interests, institutions and ideas into a wider framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Foucault's proposed positive program of practical critique in his later work, which he calls 'critical ontology,' provides a response to his critics. The goal of critical ontology is to "separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing or thinking what we are, do, or think." However, it may be objected that, since Foucault emphasizes going beyond contingencies, it appears that he is guilty of committing a kind of genetic fallacy. I will defend Foucault against such a charge by using concepts and practices in child development as an illustration. The example of child development is fitting for political theorizing because the development model of childhood is now central to the practices and policies of healthcare providers, social workers and educators. Such practices and policies aim to enhance the abilities of individuals to be both citizens and autonomous agents. Yet the effects of these policies on individuals are not always positive. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of critical ontology for practices grounded in the model of child development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the existence of sub-State political cultures in Canada. In so doing it revisits research conducted by Richard Simeon and David Elkins into the existence of provincial political cultures in Canada. It reviews the evidence for provincial political cultures and examines recent data from the Canadian Election Study in an effort to determine whether attitudes towards government have changed. Second, it revisits the process by which sub-cultures are identified Using data from the federal election profiles and the CES the paper identifies nine distinct regional variant cultures within Canada. These regional cultures possess different political attitudes and behaviours that cannot be explained by the existence of provincial boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the authors analyze the empirical process of securitization of the US–Canada border and then reflect on the model proposed by the Copenhagen School. We argue that securitization theory oversimplifies the political process of securitizing moves and audience acceptance. Rather than attributing securitization to a singular speaker addressing a specific audience, we present overlapping and ongoing language security games performed by varying relevant actors during the key period between the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA) in December 2004 and the signing of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) in June 2005, showing how multiple speakers participate in the continuing construction of a context in which this issue is increasingly treated as a matter of security. We also explore the language adopted by participants in the field, focusing on an expert panel convened by the Homeland Security Institute. We conclude that in the securitization of the US–Canada border there are inconsistencies between truth and discourse, as well as significant distinctions between official and bureaucratic discourses, further emphasizing the importance of a comprehensive model of securitization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Until very recently, the “orthodox” liberal view had assumed that the right to the profession and practice of one's own religious values encompassed the right to instil particular religious values in one's children. This view has been challenged by sustained analysis of the role of children within liberal theory, given the basic tenet of the equal moral worth of persons. This strand of liberal thought questions the extent to which parental rights to direct children's upbringing can include a right to form children's basic value sets. With this challenge comes a stronger basis from which to also challenge the idea that parents may legitimately oppose certain aspects of the state-mandated curriculum on the basis that such education may impinge on the values they wish to instil in their children. This paper will examine the controversy surrounding Québec's “Ethics and Religious Culture” course within a framework that seeks to put the interest of children first, as well as how the religious rights of parents and children might be understood in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Canadian federal cabinet stands out among Westminster parliamentary democracies because of the large number of first-time ministers who are appointed to cabinet without any previous parliamentary or political experience. Several explanations have been put forward to account for this peculiarity but no attempt has been made to examine how Canadian prime ministers overcome the information deficit associated with appointing ministers with no experience. How can prime ministers be confident that they are making the right choice? This paper explores the subject by estimating the survival functions of ministerial turnover for potential, but not yet appointed, cabinet ministers were they to survive to a defined political benchmark; these survival rates are included in a logit model of Canadian ministerial appointment following four general elections (1957, 1979, 1984 and 2006) in which the prime minister was tasked with appointing a cabinet with ministerial neophytes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Conventional wisdom about the structure of political parties in Canada has emphasized their confederal nature. In other words (and the New Democratic party excepted), parties with identical partisan complexions at the federal and provincial levels are thought to operate in “two political worlds.” This paper argues that election campaigns are a key integrating link between parties. How they fight elections reveals extensive cross-level co-operation, particularly through shared activists (local party activists, party staff and party professionals) and technological expertise. This has the effect of shrinking the space between party cousins and forges unity between them. While there are certain obstacles to electoral collaboration, there are also incentives for these parties to work to maintain and strengthen their ties with their partisan cousin at the other level. These findings make an important contribution by directly challenging the notion that Canada's federal system has led to increasingly disentangled political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper expands on the work of Higgins, whose 1979 review remains the only synthetic overview of the field, by presenting an updated analysis of the study of municipal, local and urban issues in Canadian political science. We conclude that despite several discursive shifts—from the descriptive works of the 1950s and 1960s, through to the blossoming of interdisciplinary research in the 1980s and 1990s—Higgins' principal conclusion, that the various streams of urban politics continue to be studied in relative isolation from each other, still rings true. Despite the recent broadening of the literature, productive scholarly debates within and across research clusters are rare, and where debates do emerge, they are more often driven by current events and normative claims than by theoretical innovations. To remedy these deficiencies, we propose several bases for a new urban research agenda that is more methodologically and theoretically diverse and connected to work in other disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Public sector websites are heavily invested in influencing policy outcomes through information provisioning and dissemination. Traditionally e-government research has focused on the internal functions of e-government studying service delivery, horizontal information processing integration and levels of implementation maturity. This paper shifts the analytical focus to external-facing e-government to consider the macro presentation of state-sponsored sites on the Web. To evaluate the external face of Canadian e-government this project measures the web-based impact of public sector websites in virtual policy networks. Virtual policy networks are web-based issues networks containing content on a specific policy topic and connected through hyperlinks. It is argued that government's online nodality in these networks is an indicator of public sector websites' authority and influence on the Web. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Studies of federal judicial appointments made before 1988 discovered significant partisan ties between judicial appointees and the governments appointing them. In 1988, in response to criticism of these "patronage appointments," the Mulroney government introduced screening committees to the process. This article explores the impact of these committees. Using information gained from surveys of legal elites, we trace the minor and major political connections of federal judicial appointees from 1989 to 2003 in order to determine whether patronage has continued despite the reform to the process. We discover that political connections continued to play an important role in who was selected for a judicial appointment. However, these connections were not quite as common as those found before 1988, and the new process does appear to have prevented the politically motivated appointment of completely unqualified candidates. Interestingly, our findings also suggest that the impact of patronage varies by region and interacts with other, newer influences, in particular, concerns for group representation on the bench. The paper concludes by briefly discussing these results in the context of the relationship between judicial selection and politics with a comparative perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Trade, not aid" has long been a catchphrase in international development discourse. This paper evaluates whether the "trade, not aid" logic has driven bilateral aid allocations in practice. Using a dataset that covers development assistance from 22 donor countries to 187 aid recipients from 1980 to 2002, we find that donor countries have dispersed bilateral aid in ways that reinforce their extant bilateral commercial ties with recipient countries. Instead of "trade, not aid," bilateral aid disbursement has followed the logic of "aid following trade." The policy implication is that bilateral aid allocation patterns have reinforced the disadvantages of poor countries that have a limited ability to participate in international trade due to a variety of factors such as geography and a lack of tradable resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an account of the recent works of Peter Sloterdijk, an author that has developed a phenomenological analysis of human spaces. The aim of my contribution is to put this spatial theorization in relation with political constructions. Sloterdijk's enterprise presents itself as a long history of the cosmological and architectural elements that shape the very spaces of human-production. It is also described as a new path for the understanding of the human topos that has been for too long subsumed by metaphysics of the 'beyond' and liquefied nowadays by contemporary mobilization processes of the capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criminal justice policy in the US has long been exceedingly responsive to public opinion. Unfortunately, public attitudes towards justice in the US are severely bifurcated along racial lines, such that Whites see a system that is "colour-blind" and Blacks perceive one that is severely biased against them. In this paper, we explore the magnitude of this racial cleavage and, more importantly, demonstrate how it impacts differential reactions to events (such as accusations of police brutality) and policies (such as capital punishment) in the justice domain. To the degree that elites base policies on (mainly White) majority preferences, such policies are unlikely to be responsive to the racial discrimination that is a part of the current criminal justice environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of national identity in sustaining public support for the welfare state. Liberal nationalist theorists argue that social justice will always be easier to achieve in states with strong national identities, which, they contend, can both mitigate opposition to redistribution among high-income earners and reduce any corroding effects of ethnic diversity resulting from immigration. We test these propositions with Canadian data from the Equality, Security and Community survey. We conclude that national identity does increase support for the welfare state among the affluent majority of Canadians and that it helps to protect the welfare state from toxic effects of cultural suspicion. However, we also find that identity plays a narrower role than existing theories of liberal nationalism suggest and that the mechanisms through which it works are different. This leads us to suggest an alternative theory of the relationship between national identity and the welfare state, one that suggests that the relationship is highly contingent, reflecting distinctive features of the history and national narratives of each country. National identity may not have any general tendency to strengthen support for redistribution, but it may do so for those aspects of the welfare state seen as having played a particularly important role in building the nation or in enabling it to overcome particular challenges or crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last 20 years, the idea that the social realm is under threat of decline or collapse has been a central theme in academic literature and political analysis. In this short paper I explore the meaning of social decline and its relationship to multiculturalism and diversity. Using the twin notions of participation and trust as two key measures of social decline, I argue that participation has not so much declined over the last 40 years (as Robert Putnam, for example, has argued) as it has changed because of what I call the politics of the us's--groups historically oppressed (including women, ethnic and racialized minorities and gay, lesbian and disabled citizens) who have created new kinds of advocacy organizations in order to change the norms of civil society itself. I also argue that such changes (while often perceived as negative in relation to a transcendent "us") are positive to the extent that they have made society more inclusive, respectful of diversity and just. Trust, on the other hand, has declined but, I argue, this is also due to the politics of diversity as the us's fought for change and other groups responded by defending traditional norms and values, often in the name of a transcendental us, creating a vicious circle of distrust as each side feels betrayed by the other's victories. Thus, I conclude, to understand social decline, in terms of participation and trust, we must pay attention not only to the us but also to the us's in civil society. The tendency, therefore, to champion a transcendent us in order to reverse social decline, as many scholars and politicians seem prone to do in recent years, not only ignores the us's but may foreclose on their hope for a future free from discrimination and hate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For much of the 1990s, the academic literature on multiculturalism was heavily normative, dominated by political philosophers who developed idealized theories of a distinctly liberal-democratic form of multicultural citizenship. This "liberal multiculturalism hypothesis"--the notion that multiculturalism policies can be adopted without jeopardizing core liberal-democratic values--has been quite influential, shaping debates not just within the field of philosophy, but more widely in academia and indeed in public life. Many social scientists, however, question whether multiculturalism in the real world has been so benign. This paper considers the available evidence, empirically testing the liberal multiculturalism hypothesis, both in Canada and cross-nationally. What does this evidence tell us about the prospects for liberal-democratic multiculturalism and about the impact of multicultural policies on liberal-democratic values? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of scholars have noted a negative relationship between ethnic diversity and social capital or social trust, especially in the US. Evidence from other countries has been more mixed and sometimes contradictory. In this paper we provide the first Anglo-American comparative analysis of the relationship between neighbourhood diversity and social capital, and show how this relationship varies across ethnic categories. We apply multilevel structural equation models to individual level data from the 2000 Citizen Benchmark Survey for the US and the 2005 Citizenship Survey for Great Britain. The findings suggest that while for attitudinal social capital among Whites the negative underlying relationship with diversity is apparent in both countries, the effect is much weaker or reversed for minority groups. For structural social capital the negative relationship is apparent for minorities but not Whites, but this is mainly attributable to other neighbourhood characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forecasting votes understood as citizens revealed preferences in collective choices allow to evaluate electoral success opportunities both for incumbents and opposition and to anticipate future public policies. In this paper, we provide forecasts for the 2007 French presidential election gathering contributions from Public Choice theory and Political science dealing with electoral behaviors. Forecasts generated at a sub-national level exhibit more accuracy at the second round than at the first one. We propose some explanation and improvements for 2012. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disability rights organizations have been active participants before the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) since the mid-1980s but they have been completely neglected in the literature on social movement legal mobilization. This paper seeks to remedy this lacuna by providing an overview of the litigation activity of the main disability rights organizations. It builds on an emerging complementary theoretical perspective for understanding the participation by movement actors in the Court. Through an analysis of shared and contested collective meaning frames within and across social movement organizations we can complement existing theoretical explanations for the overall development of legal mobilization by social movement actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for a rethinking of how we approach the study of Canadian public policies on diversity and human rights. I explain how human rights can be considered as a distinctive policy field and I consider the advantages and disadvantages of this conceptualization. I then argue for a particular theoretical approach to understanding the evolution of comparative public policies on diversity over time, focusing on a historical, structural and institutional approach to Canadian political development. The development of a specific field of Canadian political development--akin to the subfield of American political development in American politics--can provide a focal point for empirically and historically grounded theorizing about the Canadian case in its North American, comparative and global context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the length of political tenure in Canadian federally elected parliamentary governments since 1867. Using annual data on tenure length, we categorize the distribution of governing tenures in terms of a hazard function: the probability that an election will arise in each year, given that an election has not yet been called. Structuring the election call as an optimal stopping rule, we test whether that distribution responds predictably to characteristics of the political and/or economic environment. The results of using the continuous Cox and Gompertz models together with the discrete semi-parametric proportional hazard model suggest that governing parties in Canada do engage in election timing and that the only economic policy measure that is used consistently in conjunction with election timing is fiscal expenditure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of ministerial career paths is neglected in the Canadian political science canon. The existing literature, data and methods are for the most part descriptive and require updating. This article addresses this deficit by focusing on the topic of ministerial appointments in the Canadian federal parliament. An event history model is developed to estimate the "hazard" of ministerial appointment for all government party members of Parliament for the period 1935-2008. Existing theories and explanations for ministerial appointments and their relationship to constitutional conventions and political principles are systematically tested using a series of variables identified in the Canadian and comparative literature. The paper concludes with recommendations for further research and integration with complementary country-specific and comparative research programs in the field of ministerial career paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since their introduction in 1973, comprehensive land claims (CLC) agreements have become important mechanisms for Aboriginal peoples to achieve their political, social, cultural, and economic goals. Although the literature on CLC negotiations is a rich and varied one, it has tended to ignore the role that municipal governments have on influencing negotiation outcomes. This lacuna is surprising since a number of treaty negotiations in the Yukon Territory and BC involve lands located in major municipalities. This paper develops a theoretical framework for understanding the influence that municipal governments can have on treaty negotiation outcomes. Using a case study of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation treaty negotiations in the Yukon Territory, we find that institutional and milieu factors are important. However, leadership was the most important and decisive factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Dyadic representation" has received considerable attention in the US, but much less attention in parliamentary systems where party discipline strongly limits representatives' capacity for individual action. A link between the legislative behaviour of representatives and the preferences of their geographic constituencies may nevertheless exist outside the US, however, particularly in single member plurality systems where the "electoral connection" is strong. This paper tests for evidence of this dyadic relationship in Question Period in the Canadian Parliament, across three policy domains: defense, debt and taxes, and welfare. As anticipated, there is evidence of dyadic representation in Canada. Results are discussed as they pertain to the comparative study of legislative institutions and political representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canadian political science often neglects the municipal level as a legitimate research subject, even when large-scale transformations are implemented, such as the 2001 territorial reorganization in Quebec. This paper shows how mayors were involved in municipal mergers, mainly led by the provincial government, and especially how they played different roles in order to ensure their legitimacy as leaders of their communities. Specifically, the creation of the City of Saguenay has been studied through an examination of the activities, strategies and discourses of the mayors of this agglomeration in order to highlight normal and extraordinary levels of action. In doing so, this article contributes new knowledge of the mayors' own conceptions of their duties and roles and also of the rescaling process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments and Indigenous groups bargain under the shadow of the law, and this paper pushes the judicial politics research agenda by examining empirically whether flickers in law's shadow systematically affect the implementation of the Canadian government's negotiation choice in the Indigenous land rights context. Through interviews and a time series analysis of Canada's specific claims policy, I find that judicial uncertainty increases the federal government's propensity to accept specific claims for negotiation. However, there is evidence that Indigenous protest action during the Oka crisis and Elijah Harper's role in scuttling the Meech Lake constitutional accord, more than other factors, greatly impacted the federal budget allocated towards negotiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the connection between democracy and human development. In so doing, it examines two main questions: Are democracies better than non-democracies in achieving human development? Among democracies, is there a direct relationship between the actualization of civil and political rights and human development? In answering these questions, we offer a cross-national study of 18 Latin American countries from 1972 to 2001. We use fixed effect models for analyzing our cross-country, pooled time-series data. The evidence suggests not only that democracies are better than nondemocracies in fostering human development (controlling for wealth), but also that differences in degree of democracy have a significant impact on human development in terms of infant mortality and life expectancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last few decades, non-territorial forms of national self-government have attracted increasing interest in political science, especially in the guise of national cultural autonomy. National cultural autonomy is a model of self-government that was pioneered by Austrian theorists and politicians Karl Renner and Otto Bauer in the waning days of the Habsburg Empire, yet was never implemented in Austria-Hungary. This paper will examine some of the problems and possibilities that may attend a transfer of national cultural autonomy as a model of self-government into Canadian political discourse, especially as regards Quebec nationalism, Francophone communities outside Quebec, Anglophone Quebecers, self-government for Aboriginal peoples, and political values in English-speaking Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In developing his theory "Justice as Fairness," John Rawls imagined a hypothetical initial situation designed to yield principles of justice to regulate society's main institutions, or what he called the "basic structure." The positing of citizens as fully capable in this hypothetical "original position" allowed Rawls to consider advantage in terms of the primary social goods (all-purpose means) a citizen held. Rawls reasoned that the representatives of free and equal citizens would design principles of justice that yield equal liberties and "a fair equality of opportunity," while ensuring that permissible inequalities are those which "contribute effectively to the benefit of the least-advantaged" citizens (2001: 64). This essay considers two criticisms of the Rawlsian approach to distributive justice made by capability theorists (principally, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum). Sen's criticism is that primary social goods will not be equally usable by citizens because of variances in functional capabilities. Extending Sen's criticism, Nussbaum argues that disadvantaged citizens are not represented in the selection of the principles of justice, and this is problematic for a theory that emphasizes a fair equality of opportunity, especially for society's least advantaged members. This paper argues that the Rawlsian approach can successfully respond to and accommodate these concerns. The main ideas are as follows: (1) The representatives in "the original position" are to represent the known range of citizen capability rather than the normal range. (2) Rawls's two principles of justice would still be chosen, but these would be preceded by a lexically prior principle of basic citizen capabilities, which Rawls characterized as the "two moral powers" (rationality and reasonableness). (3) The desirability of other functional capabilities (those which enable persons to use primary social goods to realize their ends) and their development are to be publicly debated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing literature on gender effects in the electoral process offers little evidence of significant gender vote share differentials. In this paper it is shown that for the 2006 Canadian federal election, once candidate campaign spending is introduced into the model with appropriate flexibility in the vote share responsiveness across genders, significant differences are found to exist between male and female candidates. The findings suggest that, for equal levels of spending, male incumbents have a vote share advantage relative to female incumbents, though this vote share advantage is found to diminish with increased expenditures. Female non-incumbent candidates, on the other hand, have a vote share advantage over male non-incumbent candidates for higher levels of expenditure and this advantage was found to increase with increased expenditures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Quebec labour movement's decision to withdraw its support for Canada's federal system in the l970s and instead embrace the sovereignist option was unquestionably inked to the intersection of class and nation in Quebec. In this period, unions saw the sovereignist project as part of a larger socialist or social democratic societal project. Because the economic inequalities related to ethnic class, which fuelled the labour movement's support for sovereignty in the 1970s, were no longer as prevalent by the time of Quebec's 1995 referendum, organized labour's continued support for the sovereignist option in the post-referendum period cannot adequately be explained using the traditional lens of class and nation. This paper employs an institutional comparative analysis of Quebec's three largest trade union centrals with a view to demonstrating that organized labour's primary basis for supporting sovereignty has changed considerably over time. While unions have not completely abandoned a class-based approach to the national question, they have tended to downplay class division in favour of an emphasis on Quebec's uniqueness and the importance of preserving the collective francophone identity of the nation. Party-union relations, the changing cultural, political and economic basis of the sovereignist project and the emergence of neoliberalism in Quebec are offered as key explanatory factors for the labour movement's shift in focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]