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Examining multi-level vertical party linkages in Canada’s largest province, this paper makes two primary contributions to the literature. First, drawing on data from a unique survey of constituency associations, the paper focuses on an often unexplored aspect of parties: their local organisations. Second, the paper offers an exploratory analysis of constituency level factors in order to determine which types of constituency associations are the most likely to be integrated. The results of the logistic regression demonstrate the possibility of non-party-based factors such as electoral strength that may contribute to vertical party integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Setting the stage for a special section dedicated to interrogating the Canada–South Africa relationship, the paper finds the current South Africa–Canada relationship to be disconnected, fraught and uneasy. This comes as a surprise given the close ties forged during South Africa's democratic transition. In line with a history of support and shared membership of the Commonwealth, G20, Cairns Group and involvement in the Kimberley Process, it is assumed that both countries are natural allies on the international stage. Instead, South Africa and Canada have consistently been on opposite sides of big international problems. The paper considers whether apparent differences between traditional and emerging middle powers create challenges in fostering meaningful cooperation and advances a number of conceptual conditions important in understanding when and how middle power cooperation occurs. The authors examine an important condition for emerging middle powers in prioritising cooperative endeavours, aid and trade, and draw conclusions from the South Africa–Canada case. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent cases of partisan-motivated prorogations of parliaments at the federal and provincial levels in Canada have focused attention on this phenomenon. While such prorogations are uncommon in the mature Westminster-style parliaments, the Canadian cases are not unique. Systematic study of partisan-motivated prorogations in the Australian states has illuminated the factors commonly associated with such cases. This paper outlines the results of this literature and then tests whether the Canadian cases fit the pattern. It shows that, on balance, these factors do apply. The paper thus concludes that, while partisan-motivated prorogations may not be predictable, it is possible to identify circumstances in which there is a substantially greater risk of their occurrence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Canada has more often than not portrayed a moral image in its relations with South Africa. However, many would agree that Canada has a mixed record in South Africa and that the pursuit of human rights and racial equality in Canada's foreign policy is accompanied by the pursuit of economic interests. Canada–South Africa relations received a major boost under the Chrétien government when the two countries forged closer ties and used multilateral institutions such as the Commonwealth to promote human rights, rule of law, and democracy particularly in African states. At the bilateral level, Canada signed a Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement with South Africa. Moreover, the launching of the New Partnership for Africa's Development in 2001 helped to further deepen Canada–South Africa economic relations. However, recent changes in the geographic focus of Canada's policy, especially the ‘look to the Americas policy’, raises the question as to where South Africa sits on the foreign policy agenda of Canada. This paper looks at Canada's economic relations with South Africa in the post-apartheid era through the lens of moral identity and asks, what are the impacts of the Harper government's ‘look to the Americas’ policy on Canada–South Africa economic relations? And does the promotion of human rights inform Canada's economic policy towards South Africa after apartheid? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The high-profile case of the ‘white refugee’ in Canada, Brandon Huntley, temporarily soured relations between Canada and South Africa and raised serious questions about the Canadian refugee protection determination system. In constructing a plausible narrative to convince the judge that Huntley qualified for refugee protection, his lawyers painted a picture of a country in which all whites were being persecuted because of their race. Although the decision was overturned on appeal, the case raises the question of how South Africans in the diaspora more generally view the country. This paper shows that despite a strong personal South African identity, South Africans in Canada are a deeply disengaged diaspora. In order to rationalise their departure, disengagement and decision never to return, this post-apartheid diaspora paints itself as victims of post-apartheid South Africa and draws on the same narrative reservoir of images as Huntley's lawyers. The Huntley case therefore represents something much more than an egregious but exceptional miscarriage of justice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper builds on the insights of Sawer and Laycock (2009) to explore similarities in the use of populist discourse by former Australian Prime John Howard and current Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. While Sawer and Laycock label this discourse ‘market populism’ and focus on economic issues, here it is argued that Howard and Harper's populism is better understood as ‘mainstream populism’ due to the equal importance of sociocultural issues in their discourses. To demonstrate this, the treatment of issues such as immigration, multiculturalism, the culture wars, criminal justice, and childcare is considered. It is further suggested that such populist policies were used to satisfy rival wings of their respective parties – neoliberals and social conservatives – that do not always share the same priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Inter-party voting coalitions in three minority cabinets were analysed: the 38th (2004–05), 39th (2006–08) and 40th (2008–11) Federal Canadian Parliaments. The paper begins by developing a simple theory to explain the formation of voting coalitions. The theory predicts that electoral incentives and policy issues drive minority government support. The main contention is that voting coalitions are more likely to form along ideological lines, as proposed by Axelrod [(1970) The Conflict of Interest (Chicago: Markham)]. However, the analysis also demonstrates that voting coalitions form along a second dimension in the Canadian Parliament, mainly on issues related to federalism and the province of Quebec. Some evidence is also provided to show that expected electoral gains could explain why certain parties choose to support the government more, despite ideological incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Canada and the US The United States and Canada have a long tradition of bilateral and binational security coordination, cooperation and collaboration. This is evident in a vast and growing number of transgovernmental networks that facilitate and enable policy alignment and parallelism in defence, border security, intelligence and counter-terrorism. The security community has mastered coordination and cooperation. The US–Canada relationship is based on reciprocity. Despite its common cultural bedrock though, the US–Canada security community's hallmark is policy parallelism. Forms of mature collaboration remain limited and are only found on occasion. Partnerships have proven more successful in functional areas than in principled ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political parties are often assessed on the basis of participatory democratic theory, which emphasises the importance of openness, inclusiveness, and responsiveness as the markers by which we can measure their democratic quality. This approach can be contrasted with competitive democratic theory that emphasises the centrality of fairness, transparency, and accountability to the democratic assessment of parties and other democratic actors. We apply these contrasting frameworks to a democratic audit of one set of party institutions and actors: the grassroots constituency associations maintained by Canadian parties. We illustrate how the outcomes of such assessments are deeply informed by the frameworks employed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article attempts to explain declining levels of voter turnout among young adults in terms of decreasing levels of political knowledge. Using data from a representative national survey of the Canadian electorate conducted in 2007, we find through descriptive and inferential statistics that younger individuals are more politically illiterate than older generations by a margin of 20–30 percentage points. We also detect that this generational political knowledge gap accounts for approximately half of the turnout gap that exists between voters in their early 20s and voters in their 50s. Our results further demonstrate that eliminating the knowledge gap would significantly increase turnout among young voters by 15 percentage points. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article looks at framing strategies behind the recent Canadian Conservative government’s rhetoric on the military. Critics argue that Conservative rhetoric has politicised Canadian history and overemphasised the armed forces. Few scholars, however, have looked at the specific forms this rhetoric took and the strategies it suggested. The article presents the results of a systematic analysis of Conservative rhetoric between 2005 and 2015. It argues that three key frame alignment strategies were at the heart of the Conservative Government’s rhetoric: extension, consolidation and transformation, with truly transformative rhetoric transpiring only in the last phase. While agreeing with critics that this emphasis on the military aimed to alter perceptions of Canadian identity, the article shows that Conservative rhetoric was far from and monolithic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do citizens have meaningful attitudes – i.e. enduring, subjectively important and psychologically consequential evaluative orientations – regarding the relative roles of courts and legislatures in resolving contentious issues of public policy? If so, what explains these preferences? Using data from the Canadian Election Study, the authors find that Canadians possess meaningful attitudes on what they term the ‘courts/parliament trade-off’. They also find significant heterogeneity across levels of political knowledge in the nature of these attitudes. Further, most determinants of attitudes on the courts/parliament trade-off can be understood to reflect evaluations of political outcomes under the courts or Parliament, rather than assessments of processes within these institutions. Attitudes on the trade-off are largely interpretable as responses to dynamic features of party politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The conventional wisdom has been that the Canadian Citizenship Act and the British Nationality and Australian Citizenship Act demonstrated the growth of a local nationalism after the Second World War. In reality, the situation was more complicated. Both English-speaking Canada and Australia still regarded themselves as British nations. The passage of the Canadian Act was an illustration of the bicultural nature of that country, which developments during the war had brought to the fore. The Australian Act was simply a reaction to the Canadian Act, as the latter had undermined the common code of British subject status across the Commonwealth. Meanwhile, the British Nationality Act was primarily an attempt to preserve the common status of British subjects throughout the Commonwealth and maintain the integrity of this organisation during a period when it was being rapidly transformed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, the authors argue that the particular understanding of nations and nationalism underpinning the work of the 'Canada School' of multinational federalists leads them to ignore important aspects of ethno-national conflict. To support this point, the authors return to the case of Canada and apply a nuanced understanding of nations and nationalism. This brings to light a more complex picture of ethno-national conflict and a number of implications that need to be addressed by the theory and policy of ethno-national conflict management. To conclude, the authors suggest that both distributive and structural mechanisms should be used depending on the context of a particular case, rather than importing the federal model promoted by the Canada School wholesale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Canadian Constitution remained a British statute from 1867 to 1982, a situation that endured even after the country became independent in 1931. As a result, every time Canadians wanted constitutional changes, legislation had to be passed in Westminster. Between 1980 and 1982, following the Quebec referendum on independence, the then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau undertook to change this situation. This meant devising a Canadian amending formula and, most importantly for Trudeau, the inclusion of an entrenched bill of rights in the constitution. Trudeau's initial project was opposed by eight of 10 provinces and this situation proved difficult for the UK. The opposing provinces lobbied British lawmakers in order to convince them to vote against the federal request. That situation eventually forced Ottawa to accept a diluted version of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]