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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]

This paper evaluates the importance of social capital for political participation of native-born Canadians and immigrants. The Survey of Social Engagement in Canada, a large survey of Canadians conducted by Statistics Canada in 2003, is used in order to test the role of social relations and connections in accounting for political participation. Analyses show that although the "usual suspects" play important roles in explaining political activities, the main culprit is social capital. Among social capital measures, though all arc important, associational involvement and social networks, followed by trust and volunteering, are the best predictors of political participation. Moreover, the effect of social capital varies by period of immigration. Theoretical and policy implications of findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the usefulness of Canadian political party labels as information shortcuts. We supplement survey data analysis with the results of an experiment that tested whether knowing a party's position on an issue influenced opinion expression. We find that, contrary to findings in other countries, among our subject pool, Canadian political parties are not consistently useful as information cues. The Liberal party cue is hardly useful, and while the Conservative party cue can be effective, it appears to push partisans toward a more liberal stance on selected opinions. Only the NDP cue appears to influence opinions in the expected direction. These mixed findings run counter to foundational works on party labels as information shortcuts (mostly focused on US politics) and, instead, are consistent with previous scholarship on Canadian politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regime change in Eastern Europe affords an excellent opportunity for investigating linkages between age and politics in times of social turmoil. Using data from three waves of the World Values Survey, this paper explores life cycle, generational and period effects on protest potential in Yeltsin's Russia. The study finds that an individual's position in the life cycle is the strongest predictor of protest potential in the post-communist state. Furthermore, the analysis suggests that citizens socialized during periods of relative socioeconomic stability exhibit the highest protest potential under conditions of uncertainty characteristic of the transition period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health care has arguably been the most important issue in Canadian politics in the past decade. This paper focuses on the extent to which the media affect public perceptions of "the way things are" in the Canadian health care system. Individual perceptions of the state of health care are analyzed as being a function of personal experience with the system, loyalty or pre-formed opinions and the information that the individual receives through the media. Results indicate that media use has a significant effect on the likelihood of negative perceptions regarding the state of health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While an important component of incumbent support, the effect of economic conditions on vote choice (economic voting) can be undermined by the presence of multilevel institutions; voters are faced with the prospect of evaluating economic conditions and governments at different levels simultaneously. This paper tests the applicability of a model which seeks to account for how and how well voters cope with the complexity of multilevel governance. The accountability-centred model suggests that federal and provincial governments should only be evaluated for those actions and outcomes that they can reasonably be seen to have influence over. Additionally, it is asked whether high information respondents are better able to navigate some of the complexities of Canada's multilevel system. Analyses are conducted using data from the 1993 and 1997 Canadian Election Studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For much of the post-war period of welfare state formation, T.H. Marshall's idea of shared entitlement to universal social rights of citizenship formed the theoretical foundations of social democratic political reforms and legitimacy. This approach has been updated by contemporary egalitarian theorists, such as John Rawls. The ongoing politics of restructuring have led to a growing number of arguments against the motivational capacity of an institutional account of social unity. This paper examines a particular argument against rights-based citizenship—David Miller's theory of nationality. Miller argues that "pure" citizenship rests on self-interest, and thus when differences in risk are explicit it can only legitimate minimal redistribution. Strong welfare states require pre-political ties and must be embedded in the ethical relations of shared nationality. Against Miller's position, it is advanced that shared citizenship has both effective motivational and moral dimensions. It can also address the problems the nationality thesis faces in reconciling its account of motivation with the moral diversity that is constitutive of pluralist societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out an improved framework for examining critical junctures. This framework, while rigorous and broadly applicable and an advance on the frameworks currently employed, primarily seeks to incorporate an a priori element. Until now the frameworks utilized in examining critical junctures were entirely postdictive. Adding a predictive element to the concept will constitute a significant advance. The new framework, and its predictive element, termed the "differentiating factor," is tested here in examining macro-economic crises and subsequent changes in macro-economic policy, in America and Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between social group identity and the level of political information in explaining Canadians' issue attitudes and vote choices. Traditional accounts of Canadians' partisan political leanings have placed a great deal of emphasis on social group identity in explaining attitudes. However based on data from the Canadian Election Studies from 1988-2004, it is argued that both social group identity and information influence the nature of vote choice and public opinion in Canada. In fact, the level of voter information has two contradictory effects on the political attitudes of different social groups. In some cases voters' level of information reduces the role of social group identity in explaining attitudes and vote choices; information acts to bridge the differences between different social groups (for example Catholics/non-Catholics and urban/rural Canadians). In other cases, voters' level of information acts to amplify the importance of social group identity in predicting attitudes (for example women/men and religious/nonreligious). These findings suggest that not only is social group identity a less effective predictor of attitudes than has traditionally been thought but that there are also significant underlying differences between the so-called "old" and "new" cleavages in Canada when it comes to understanding their impact on political values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an effort to defend Heidegger's essentialist philosophy of technology against the charge of determinism. Rather than merely accepting its all-encompassing power, Heidegger provides three responses to the challenge of technology: 1) "aggressive essentialism" or the elimination of technology; 2) "moderate essentialism" or the reform of political, social and cultural institutions to better reflect the changes that technology brings; and 3) "passive essentialism" or the acceptance that we cannot act against or direct technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the confidence convention's central part in Canadian parliamentary government, little attention has been paid to what exactly constitutes a vote of confidence. This uncertainty was highlighted in May 2005, when the opposition parties in the House of Commons passed a motion which they claimed was a confidence motion but the government did not. This paper examines the episode, and the motion at the heart of the controversy, to determine whether it should have been considered a confidence vote. Historical precedents from 1926 to 2005 provide the context for the analysis and conclusions about what signifies a test of confidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In political discourse as well as scholarly research on the European Union, the last decade of the 20th century was the decade of citizenship. But, despite numerous unresolved questions, there has been a virtual silence on the matter since 2001. Does this mean that there have been no major developments in European citizenship over the past few years? The answer is clearly negative. Via a comparison of the White Paper on European Governance (2001) and the draft Constitution (2004), this article documents a certain tension in the institutional discourse about European citizenship. It proposes a new theoretical model to grasp this tension and to understand European citizenship as it is conceived nowadays. This analytic prism is based on the distinction between "government citizenship" and "governance citizenship." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Besieged by insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq and gripped by mounting pressure to enhance security and public safety at home, officials in Washington and Ottawa are now confronted with a serious homeland security dilemma: the greater the financial costs, public sacrifice and political capital invested in security, the higher the public's expectations and corresponding standards for measuring performance, the more significant the public's sense of insecurity after each failure, and, paradoxically, the higher the pressure on governments and citizens to sacrifice even more to achieve perfect security. The paradox of security dilemmas at the international level (Jervis, 1976, 1978) explains why perfectly rational decisions to enhance power actually diminish security by promoting unstable spirals in competitive defence spending--a common account of escalating military budgets throughout much of the Cold War. The homeland security dilemma represents the post-9/l I equivalent for domestic politics in the war on terrorism. The paper's central argument can be summed up by the following counterintuitive thesis: the more security you have, the more security you will need, not because enhancing security makes terrorism more likely (although the incentive for terrorists to attack may increase as extremists feel duty bound to demonstrate their ongoing relevance), but because enormous investments in security inevitably raise public expectations and amplify public out-rage after subsequent failures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1977, the Inuit and the Innu in Labrador each submitted statements of intent to begin treaty negotiations with the federal and provincial governments under the federal comprehensive land claims process. On 22 January 2005, the Inuit, the federal government, and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador signed the Labrador Inuit Land Claims Agreement. The Innu, on the other hand, are nowhere near to completing their agreement. This paper seeks to explain why the Inuit were able to complete their agreement, whereas the Innu were not. It challenges the conventional explanation that an economic development project is a necessary condition for completing a treaty by arguing that a number of internal and external factors need to be taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the first multivariate analysis of the combined effects of region and language on voluntary association membership in Canada. National survey data from 2000 indicate that Quebecers have the lowest average number of memberships, with Western Canadians highest and Atlantic and Ontario residents in between. Preliminary results also confirm that francophones report fewer memberships than anglophones. Findings from Poisson regression models, however, indicate a significant interaction between region and language: francophones have lower membership levels only in Quebec, and in Western Canada have higher levels than anglophones or allophones. These results hold even with controls for a number of possible explanatory factors suggested in the literature, including religious and socioeconomic differences across the regions and language groups. The implications for understanding patterns of voluntary association activity in Canada are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes the Prometheus story in chapter 12 of Leviathan as the point of entry for an examination of the importance that Hobbes assigns to the problem of an uncertain future in his political philosophy. Hobbes's thinking on human nature represents a dramatic departure from the ancients not only because his mechanistic psychology reverses the ancient conception of the relation between reason and passion but also because his understanding of the temporal situation of human beings privileges the future to an unprecedented degree. It is against the backdrop of a universe in which the problem of an uncertain future has reached intolerable proportions that Hobbes develops his portrait of human nature; it is against the backdrop of this universe that he develops his account of Leviathan as the only earthly power capable of stabilizing the horizon of expectation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the use of the concept of freedom of expression by a Quebec City radio station, CHOI-FM, in its dispute with the CRTC and in the court case of Sophie Chiasson before the Quebec Cour supérieure. Although freedom of expression is the main argument used by CHOI-FM in 2004 and 2005, our hypothesis is that this argument is mainly instrumental. Nevertheless, freedom of expression must be analyzed because it is a major symbol of democracy; it is linked with lively public debate and individualism. In this case, freedom of expression is also used in an attempt to lend respectability to populism and illicit discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although exit polling has not been used to study Canadian elections before, such polls have methodological features that make them a potentially useful complement to data collected through more conventional designs. This paper reports on an experiment with exit polling in one constituency in the 2003 Ontario provincial election. Using student volunteers, a research team at Wilfrid Laurier University conducted an exit poll in the bellwether constituency of Kitchener Centre to assess the feasibility of mounting this kind of study on a broader scale. The experiment was successful in a number of respects. It produced a sample of 653 voters that broadly reflected the partisan character of the constituency, and which can hence be used to shed light on patterns of vote-switching and voter motivations in that constituency. It also yielded insights about best practices in mounting an exit poll in the Ontario context, as well as about the potential for using wireless communication devices to transmit respondent data from the field. The researchers conclude that exit polling on a limited basis (selected constituencies) is feasible, but the costs and logistics associated with this methodology make a province-wide or country-wide study unsupportable at present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The imposition of political conditionality for debt relief and further assistance to debtor nations presupposes that the political leadership under which borrowing and spending decisions were made could have contributed to the poor performance of external capital in debtor countries. Yet no attention seems to have been given to an empirical evaluation of the link between the level of democratization and growth of debtor economies caused by foreign capital. This paper employs two models--debt-cum-growth and democracy-debt-led growth--to investigate the contribution of external debt to the growth of the Nigerian economy, and to evaluate whether the direction of this contribution could be explained by, for instance, the process of power change among political stakeholders, the quality of governance, the political environment, and democratic dividends in the democratization process in a typical debtor nation. Although the results in the first model are mixed, Wantchekon's links between natural resource endowment and regime type on the one hand, and external capital and the nature of the host country's industry on the other, are established for Nigeria, with the implication that the gains of political conditionality for debt relief should not be expected from debt-led growth of the Nigerian economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper improves our understanding of critical junctures, a concept employed in historical institutionalism for exploring change. However, the concept lacks rigour, weakening our ability to define critical junctures. Of late, academics have utilized other mechanisms to identify change in historical institutionalism. Thus, it is within this context that the critical junctures approach is remoulded through the specification of standards, hence reducing uncertainty as to what constitutes a critical juncture. The remoulded approach is employed here in examining change in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions' (ICTU) influence over public policy in 1987. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electoral engineering determines prospects for centripetal politics in postconflict societies. Lebanon's postwar elections have been contested by interethnic electoral alliances in multi-ethnic electoral districts. Interethnic coalitions, vote pooling and bargaining have structured the results of these elections, as have the electoral laws demarcating the boundaries of electoral districts. Democratization, peace building and ethnic harmony have been the main victims of these cross-ethnic alliances, however. This paper seeks to explain this Lebanese puzzle by examining the institutional determinants of cross-ethnic electoral alliances in the 1992, 1996 and 2000 parliamentary elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a test of clientelism as an explanatory framework for the challenges faced by the Nova Scotia Liberal government led by Dr. John Savage, 1993-1997. Clientelism, as an explanatory theoretical framework, is a useful tool for interpreting the political events that drove Premier Savage from office only four years after leading his party to a significant majority in the Nova Scotia legislature. The hypothesis presented is that Nova Scotia's political culture supports an environment in which clientelism flourishes. Since the clientelistic dyadic relationship and networks are deeply rooted in the cultural mores of Nova Scotia, they cannot be easily challenged and dismantled by any single political actor or government. Therefore, the Savage government's attempt to capsize this long-established cultural practice is advanced as the prime reason for its failure to endure as a viable administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questions concerning how Rawls's theory of justice accords with international criminal justice are largely ignored in favour of extensive debates on questions of distributive justice and how they relate to his theory and its international application. This lack of attention to international criminal law is significant since Rawls claims that his theory of justice is developed to correspond with recent dramatic shifts in international law. This paper argues that it is impossible for Rawls's account, state-centric as it is, to accord with advancements in international law that have increasingly asserted recognition of individuals in the global context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the difference between the evolution of the protest movement against globalisation in Quebec and in Canada, especially since the end of the eighties. We argue that this difference can be best understood by taking into account the distinctive relationship which prevailed in these two social entities between the national project pursued by social and political actors and the reactions of these actors to the globalisation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A vigorous debate surrounding the "democratic dialogue" has done much for the understanding of our post-Charter parliamentary democracy. At the same time, it has diverted valuable attention from the settlement of the Charter with Canada's other constitutional pillar: federalism. This paper argues that the reconciliation of the Charter's national standards with the provincial diversity recognized by our federal Constitution is given expression by a federalist dialogue, occurring alongside, and even before, its democratic counterpart. An examination of several recent cases before the Supreme Court in which provincial policies have been impugned by the Charter provides evidence that provincial governments and the principles of federalism have a role to play in Charter interpretation, and that this role is often conceded by the Supreme Court in response to provincial factums. This discussion does not conclude the grand questions of federalism in the Charter era, but it does raise some definitive questions to propel the debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of social relations or social capital for voting turnout at three levels of Canadian government, paying particular attention to social contexts, socio-demographics and socioeconomic forces. The data source is the Public Use Microdata File from the National Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participation, administered by Statistics Canada (2001). Results provide support for social capital theory. Those who donate to charities and/or volunteer have a stronger propensity to vote than their counterparts. Two other measures of social capital, social networks and participation in religious activities, are also related to turnout, However, their effects are comparatively modest. Among the social bases of social capital, community rootedness is an important predictor of turnout. Civic engagement or attentiveness to current affairs also significantly increases voter turnout at all levels of Canadian government. Finally, standard socioeconomic and demographic predictors of political participation do show independent effects on turnout. However, with the exception of age, these predictors are not as consistent or as strong as social capital measures in explaining turnout. Theoretical and policy implications of the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a recent instance of transnational cooperation and governance, encompassing a novel combination of international and supranational legal properties, the International Criminal Court provides an instructive forum for considering increasingly complex sovereignty. This paper considers why Canada and the United States have pursued such divergent policies toward the Court. I argue that these postures are informed by their subjective conceptions of state sovereignty, a reflection of varying interests, values and capacities. As such, this case study illuminates factors that may influence patterns and limitations of transnational cooperation by states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from the 2004 Canadian Election Study to analyze the factors that motivated a vote for each party and to identify the ones that mattered most to the outcome of the 2004 federal election outside Quebec. Particular attention is given to the impact of the sponsorship scandal, the sources of support for the new Conservative party and the factors that explain the NDP's improved performance. The findings are used to address some basic questions about the 2004 election and its larger implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In normative political theory, the position called dualism maintains that the two practical problems of institutional design and personal conduct require, at the fundamental level, two different kinds of practical principle. The most influential proponent of dualism is John Rawls, and his theory of "justice as fairness" has recently been criticized by the monists Liam Murphy and G.A. Cohen. In this paper I argue that if Rawlsians are going to salvage his dualistic framework from the challenge raised by Murphy and Cohen, they will have to reject Rawls's "political conception" of justice in favour of the partially comprehensive view defended in A Theory of Justice. I contend that dualism is only a viable approach to normative political theory if both aspects of the dualistic framework are emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze intra-party determinants of dissenting behaviour using samples of British and Canadian government backbenchers. Controlling for the range of factors traditionally considered to be important predictors of dissenting behaviour, we find that the major factor determining cross-voting, next to MPs' tenure, is perceptions of isolation from party communication and influence channels. This effect is particularly visible among Labour MPs with long tenure, as their ideological position is more extreme than that of party leaders, which reinforces the effect of isolation. The results suggest that the difference of dissent levels between the Canadian and British Houses of Commons can be explained by the frontbenchers' approach to managing the major resource of the party, i.e., the backbenchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weber argued that bureaucrats serve whoever holds power even in the case of revolution or enemy occupation because they are more concerned with their jobs, salaries and pensions than with political ideas. His hypothesis has yet to be satisfactorily tested, however, and any such project would have to include all states that emerged from revolutions. As a contribution towards such an examination this paper reviews state building in nationalist Ireland and Bolshevik Russia to determine whether the behaviour of old-regime administrators in those countries proves or disproves Weber's claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue in this paper that there are certain similarities between Catharine MacKinnon, on the one hand, and Mary Wollstonecraft and Jean Jacques Rousseau, on the other, in the conception of inequality and its origins. All three make two important claims that characterize their accounts of inequality: first, that inequality is not natural, and second, that the differences which are alleged to justify inequality are in fact produced by the inequality. These two claims distinguish one way of arguing for equality. I contrast this with another way of arguing for equality, one which acknowledges natural differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Work exploring the relationship between public opinion and public policy over time has largely been restricted to the US. However, a wider application of this line of research can provide valuable insights into whether and how representation varies across political systems. This paper takes a step in this direction using a new body of data on public opinion and government spending in Canada. Analyses reveal that the Canadian public notices and responds (thermostatically) to changes in public spending in particular domains, and also that Canadian policymakers represent these public preferences in spending. The extent and nature of public responsiveness and policy representation varies across domains. Relationships are more pronounced in certain domains, and they are more 'specific' in some domains and more 'global' in others. The findings generally accord with the results of similar work in the US and the UK, although the details differ in important ways. Indeed, the differences are strongly suggestive about the structuring role of institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the issue of women's political representation in France and India. Its aim is threefold. First, it explains how women's representation was placed on the political agenda. Second, it examines the arguments used to justify and oppose demands for better representation. Finally, it considers what conclusions can be drawn from the two cases. By moving beyond conventional comparative categories in Western feminist literature and beyond the isolationist insistence within France on its own specificity, the paper identifies the particularisms and commonalities of each case, thus attempting to achieve what Shirin Rai calls a "rooted crossing of cultural, historical and political boundaries" (Rai, 2000:15). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the relevance and contributions of Harold Innis and his work on communications theory to important issues in the political science field of comparative politics. Analysts of comparative politics have largely ignored Innis' work, yet he addresses many of the central issues of concern for comparativists. Innis' work on communications theory, represented mainly by Empire and Communications and The Bias of Communication, addresses these central comparative issues from angles left largely unexplored by comparativists. Through his focus on media of communication and their resulting space- or time-bias impact, and by highlighting concepts such as monopolies of knowledge and space-time equilibrium, Innis can shed new light and can offer alternative explanations for comparative issues such as modernity, institutions, social movements and the rise and fall of civilizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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