Search

Since 2017, four provincial legislatures have introduced bills invoking the controversial notwithstanding clause. We present an original dataset of news articles from 10 different outlets that discussed the clause while these bills were being debated in Saskatchewan and Ontario. Empirically, although the clause is typically portrayed accurately, we find over one-fifth of articles about the clause did not indicate that it must be included in legislation. Normatively, the clause was twice as likely to be portrayed negatively as it was positively, and the type of portrayal was strongly associated with the ideological orientation of the news outlet. The rate of negative portrayals was similar across the two provinces, which suggests that attitudes toward the clause may endure beyond the policy issue itself or the level of media visibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

This paper studies the prevalence of ballot order effects in two different types of Canadian elections which differ greatly by the strength of party cues they provide to voters. Provincial elections are best described as a typical competition between well established and institutionalized parties, hence providing voters with strong party cues. Alternatively, municipal politics provide voters with much weaker party cues. We use electoral results from recent provincial and municipal elections in Québec and find ballot order effects in municipal elections but not in provincial ones. Although ballot order effects may also be the product of alphabetic preference bias, we argue that in any case these are cognitive biases that are ultimately the product of insufficient cues that voters need in order to cast well-informed votes. The paper, therefore, sheds some light on an understudied type of election in political science. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes the digitization and enrichment of the Canadian House of Commons English Debates from 1901 to present. We start by laying out the general framework in which this project took place and then present the structure of the database and provide guidelines to prospective users. The paper concludes with the introduction of www.lipad.ca, an online platform designed as a hub for archiving Canadian political data, with the parliamentary proceedings at the centre of its architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article makes three contributions to our knowledge of the Canadian political science literature. First, it offers a historical survey of the methodologies and techniques used in the discipline. Second, the findings of this paper constitute a reference for future work interested in commenting the methods and techniques used in CJPS and provide scholars with data they can use to better situate their work within the broader literature. Finally, the paper answers three questions that permeate discussions of the Canadian political science literature. It investigates whether the proportion of qualitative works has declined over time, whether Canadian scholarship is more qualitative than quantitative today and whether there are important differences in the methodologies and techniques used in Canada and in the United States. The article concludes with a discussion of the future of political science methodology based on the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Increasingly, jurisdictions are adopting "apology legislation" that allow medical professionals to apologize to patients and family members when an adverse event occurs while disallowing the introduction of the apology in a liability case as evidence of fault or liability. While apology legislation itself is fairly straightforward, its potential meaning and impact is much more complex. This paper conceptualizes apology legislation from an accountability and ethics of care perspective. These two concepts—accountability and care—are distinct but interrelated concepts and this dual theoretical approach offers a rich analysis on the potential impact(s) of apology legislation. We argue that apology legislation is a mechanism added to the existing accountability regime that can offer important opportunities to express and practise care. As an accountability mechanism, apology legislation creates space for an accountability relationship to emerge between medical professionals and their patients. Apology legislation also addresses long-standing gaps in how we as a society think about health care and respond to patients and families in ways that challenge the dominant "consumer of services" role. It is in this sense that apology legislation has the potential to destabilize traditional notions of social citizenship. Last, we argue that empirical research is urgently needed to know to what degree apologies contribute to accountability and the transformation of health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the phenomenon of party switchers in the Canadian House of Commons. With the most extensive dataset on party-switching MPs (1867–2015), we answer the following questions: What are the electoral trajectories of party switchers? Have their prospects changed over time? We assess whether the historical dynamics of the Canadian party system explain changes in the incidence and fate of party switchers since 1867, hypothesizing that both the rate of party switching and the electoral fortunes of floor crossers decline over time. The evidence accords with our second hypothesis more strongly than our first. Party switching has become slightly less common, but the electoral consequence has become much more severe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of Canadian mining companies on local communities abroad is an increasingly contentious topic as activists and academics, citing case studies, have drawn attention to alleged problems. Despite the policy relevance of this issue, there have been no generalizable analyses of whether mining companies headquartered in Canada behave differently from mining firms headquartered in other countries. This paper conducts the first rigorous statistical analysis of the effect of country of origin, or more specifically, "being Canadian," on the occurrence of known social conflicts in Latin America. We use an original database of 634 mining properties in five Latin American countries, which allows us to differentiate between a country-of-origin effect and other probable determinants of social conflict in communities near mining properties. We find that Canadian mining firms perform slightly better than other foreign firms, but worse than locally owned firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of Canada's women premiers were selected to that office while their parties held government. This is uncommon, both in the comparative literature and among premiers who are men. What explains this gendered selection pattern to Canada's provincial premiers’ offices? This paper explores the most common explanation found in the comparative literature for women's emergence as leaders of electorally competitive parties and as chief political executives: women are more likely to be selected when that party is in crisis or decline. Using the population of women provincial premiers in Canada as case studies, evidence suggests three of eight women premiers were selected to lead parties in government that were in crisis or decline; a fourth was selected to lead a small, left-leaning party as predicted by the literature. However, for half of the women premiers, evidence of their party's decline is partial or inconclusive. As a result of this exploration, more research is required to draw generalizations about the gendered opportunity structures that shape how women enter (and exit) the premier's office in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several recent reports seek to evaluate the impact of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Canadian democracy by documenting his government's efforts to curtail established democratic processes and mechanisms for public debate. However, this article uses examples of the Harper government's changes to legislative and parliamentary norms to demonstrate that this government's efforts to curtail multi-directional public debate were importantly accompanied by efforts to amplify unidirectional communication of the government's partisan messages. The paper finds that this corresponding emphasis on communication exemplified a “photo-op” approach to democracy, which highlights points of compatibility between the seemingly contradictory authoritarian-populist “publicity state” and neoliberal democratic ideals. This research demonstrates the necessity of attention to government communication in analysis of the Harper government's impact on the Canadian public sphere. It also illustrates the pragmatic rather than doctrinaire nature of New Right politics in Canada and the affinity between neoliberal and authoritarian-populist approaches to governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how Canadian constituency campaigns perceive and use data in elections. We apply a conceptual framework for data-driven campaigning, developed from existing literature, to participant observations and interview responses from the Conservative, Liberal and NDP campaigns in a single riding during the general election of 2015. The rhetoric of “big data” notwithstanding, we find significant variation in the extent and nature of the use of data at the constituency level, and that the increasing use of data in electioneering may have a centralizing effect on traditionally stratarchical political party organization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Applying the regime politics approach to the study of judicial behaviour, which regards the Supreme Court as largely operating to preserve the policy agenda of the existing lawmaking majority, this paper evaluates the Court's behaviour during the Conservative government's tenure. There is evidence to support the basic core of the regime politics thesis. The Court rarely invalidates laws passed by the sitting government. Nonetheless, the Court's behaviour during the Conservative government's tenure was distinctive. Incorporating a measure of issue salience—the relative importance of the policies affected—into the analysis demonstrates the Court's impact on the Conservatives' policy agenda stands in sharp contrast to previous governments. It is the only government of the Charter period to have policies in its election platforms blocked by judicial review and the only government in Canadian history to effectively lose all of the constitutional reference cases it posed to the Court. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper uses the concept of path dependence to explain the challenges and complexities of institutional adaptation at the subnational level. The notion of path dependence is rooted in the well-established research tradition of historical institutionalism, one of the variants of neoinstitutionalism. The academic literature on the new institutionalism, however, has tended to focus on the national level of analysis. But there is a growing recognition of cities and regions as the main engines of socioeconomic change in the current age of seismic global economic perturbation. Their historic and current significance has thus made them arguably more organic units of governance than modern states or supranational regimes. The discussion focuses on the Niagara region in Canada to illustrate the institutional infrastructure of governance underpinning the economic landscape of city-regions and the challenges of reform that such local regions face in an age of unprecedented global socioeconomic change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Election studies must optimize on sample size, cost and data quality. The 2015 Canadian Election Study was the first CES to employ a full mixed-mode design, aiming to take advantage of the opportunities of each mode while preserving enough commonality to compare them. This paper examines the phone interviews conducted by ISR-York and the online questionnaires from panellists purchased from a sample provider. We compare data quality and representativeness. We conduct a comprehensive comparison of the distributions of responses across modes and a comparative analysis of inferences about voting. We find that the cost/power advantages of the online mode will likely make it the mode of choice for subsequent election studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Do Canadians’ preferences for Canada’s role in the world depend on who Canada acts with and not just what Canada does? This question is particularly important in the context of overseas military intervention, which Canada never undertakes on its own. This paper presents a survey experiment measuring how support for a hypothetical peace operation changes with the leader of the mission. Missions led by the United Nations and by Canada’s European allies receive more support than American-led missions do, especially among respondents who also favour peace operations for substantive reasons. The finding suggests that the UN and the European connection are alternative ways for a mission to benefit from a preference for multilateralism. While the results confirm some tension between American-led missions and internationalism, European partnerships may offer a way of reconciling an interest in alliances with the internationalist Canadian public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconsiders whether federal and provincial parties are as independent and separate as the literature would suggest. Examining five different types of party personnel (party members, activists, riding presidents, candidates and legislators) this paper explores how federal parties and their counterparts in Ontario have responded to multi-level governance. Rather than embracing “two political worlds,” party personnel have responded to the federal nature of Canadian politics by engaging with parties at multiple levels. Additionally, the paper examines two competing explanations of party integration and seeks to uncover whether differences organizational design or ideological consistency best explain divergent levels of party integration. The experience of the Conservatives demonstrates that vertical integration is not a result of a party's organizational design alone and that a coherent ideology can help to offset a truncated organizational structure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How “historical” is Canadian political science? This paper sets out to answer this question through an analysis of historically oriented articles that have appeared in this journal from its first volume, in 1968, to 2015. We suggest that historical research in this journal is at once enduring and uneven, a pattern that we then explore in more detail in a case study, spanning forty years, of historical articles that focus on the interconnected themes of the constitution, courts, and federalism. The unevenness of this pattern suggests that the intellectual and methodological foundation of “historical” Canadian political science may not be as firm as it appears. We therefore conclude with a description of some methodological and conceptual tools, originally fashioned within the historically oriented subfield of American political development in the United States, that Canadian political scientists might deploy to probe important and enduring questions of Canadian politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mechanism-based explanations are gaining in popularity in the social sciences. Canadian political science has somewhat embraced these debates. Recent work has explicitly identified with mechanismic explanation and, at the same time, there is a point to be made about the compatibility of CPS's cannons with a mechanism-based understanding of causation. In this paper, we survey past and recent work aligned with this ontological approach. We demonstrate a heterogeneous engagement with the methodological literature regarding mechanisms and different understandings as well as uses of mechanisms in political analysis. This survey allows us to argue for the potential of mechanism-based explanations for CPS while also forcing us to advocate for a sober and discerning use of this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we initiate a discussion within the Canadian political science community about research openness and its implications for our discipline. This discussion is important because the Tri-Agency has recently released guidelines on data management and because a number of political science journals, from several subfields, have signed the Journal Editors’ Transparency Statement requiring data access and research transparency (DA-RT). As norms regarding research openness develop, an increasing number and range of journals and funding agencies may begin to implement DA-RT-type requirements. If Canadian political scientists wish to continue to participate in the global political science community, we must take careful note of and be proactive participants in the ongoing developments concerning research openness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act (2015) targets immigrants suspected of engaging in polygamy. While polygamy is already illegal in Canada and non-immigrant polygamous arrangements exist within Canadian borders, the framing of polygamy as a foreign practice portrays this familial arrangement as a threat to Canadian national values. Effects on women and children have traditionally provided a convincing argument for state regulation of polygamy; however, the combination of state under—and over—enforcement suggests that relying solely on a harm framework inadequately captures the complexities of state treatment. In this paper, I argue that the state's primary motivations for defending monogamy are not necessarily rooted in the avoidance of harm but in the preservation of a particular type of citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines judicial reasoning in the area of Aboriginal title, paying particular attention to the Supreme Court of Canada's Tsilhqot'in Nation (2014) decision. While the decision has been heralded as a ‘game-changer’ within media circles and legal commentaries for its recognition of a claim to title under section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982, the authors argue that the decision does not depart substantially from prior judicial logics predicated upon the production of Crown sovereignty and the denial of Indigenous legal orders. In fact, the authors argue that the decision displays a clear judicial orientation towards the present jurisdictional divisions of Canadian federalism which not only serves to eliminate Indigenous legal orders and territorial responsibilities, but also provides federal and provincial governments with enhanced powers of ‘incursion’ into Aboriginal title lands. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper draws upon data collected from an online voting experiment to test the implications of “going negative” in a multiparty election campaign. Specifically, we investigate two sets of questions: First, does the attention and vote share that candidates receive vary according to the tone (positive/negative) of their election campaign? Second, does the attention and vote share that candidates receive vary according to whether or not all candidates engage in similar (positive/negative) campaigns? While studies of “negative campaigning” have been prominent in the American context, our work builds upon this literature by using an experimental design to test for their effects in a multiparty setting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although “horserace journalism” is thought to be central to contemporary election news coverage and has generated a great deal of criticism, there is no general model of the nature and dynamics of horserace journalism or “poll reporting.” This paper proposes and empirically evaluates such a model. The model builds on and extends John Zaller's “theory of media politics” to consider specifically what citizens demand from polls and what journalists supply. Aside from the generic motivations of politicians, citizens and journalists, the model emphasizes the unique features of polls as objects of news coverage. The paper finds considerable support for the model in an analysis of newspaper coverage of horserace polls (that is, vote intention polls) in the Canadian general election of 2006. Our findings from this one case have potentially broad implications for our understanding of the relationship between polls and electoral democracy both empirically and normatively. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Canada's military engagement in Afghanistan continues to figure highly in the public consciousness, spurring debate on perceived progress and the public's willingness to bear casualties. Despite the many political considerations at play, there is an emotional core to the issue that is often overlooked. In an earlier paper we found public support for the Afghanistan mission to depend in large part on emotive responses, although our analysis was restricted by the limited number of emotional indicators in the data (Fletcher et al., 2009). In this paper, we investigate a broader range of emotional influences on attitudes toward the mission through the use of field research on the Highway of Heroes and experimental framing of casualty-based imagery with student samples. Our findings reveal that Canadians' emotional responses to the repatriation of fallen soldiers reflect a distinctive composite of sadness and pride; the consequence of which is to undercut support for Canada's traditional peacekeeping role, a position negatively related to support for the Afghan mission. When compared with studies conducted in the US (Gartner, 2008a, 2011; and Huddy et al., 2007) our findings suggest some ways in which Canadians and Americans form distinct emotional communities (Rosenwein, 2006) in reactions to war. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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 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 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]

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]

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 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 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]

Indigenous peoples have, to varying degrees, turned to the courts to litigate their ongoing disputes with Canada's settler colonial governments. Scholars have examined well the ways courts are used for strategic political ends by a variety of Indigenous and non-Indigenous litigants and are laden with settler values and institutional logics that are foreign to Indigenous peoples. However, it is less clear what effect turning to the courts in pursuit of strategic goals has on specific relationships between Indigenous peoples. This gap is more pronounced in Métis scholarship where there have been few final appellate cases. This paper argues the interaction between the Manitoba Métis Federation and Treaty 1 peoples seeking leave to intervene at the Manitoba Court of Appeal in MMF v. Canada illuminates the way litigating Indigenous-settler disputes can advance divisive, exclusionary, zero-sum political relationships between Indigenous peoples. These fractious interactions serve to undermine the construction of a co-ordinated and related inter-Indigenous decolonizing politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Satisfaction with the workings of democracy seems to have declined in Canada, as it has in other established democracies. Political scandals are one frequently invoked explanation for that shift. But there is substantial scholarly disagreement about whether political scandals undermine democratic satisfaction. This paper uses evidence from a conveniently timed round of the CES (Canadian Election Study) from 2004, as well as the CES panel from 2004 and 2006, to explore this relationship more definitively than is usually possible. The results indicate that the scandal eroded satisfaction with the way democracy works but did not undermine support for democracy more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent media accounts suggest certain faith-based interest groups are increasingly pressuring provincial governments across Canada to ensure their views on education policy are acted upon. This paper offers a qualitative assessment of the policy influence possessed by faithbased groups active on the education file in Alberta and the factors responsible for this level of influence. Overall, such influence is not directly attributable to the group's size or resources nor can it be explained by the assumption that Alberta is overrun with religious citizens demanding socially conservative policies. Rather, the explanation is found in a more nuanced appreciation of the self-interested electoral calculations made by the long-governing Progressive Conservative party, on the one hand, as well as well as the party's long-running commitment to "school choice" on the other. This sentiment is intimately related to both the province's populist political culture as well as a broader ideological convergence around the principle of "free choice" in general, and the benefits of marketization in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origins and implications of partisan identification are well-studied, but negative partisan attitudes--dislike for a particular party--have escaped such scrutiny, even as the politics of negativity enjoys sustained popularity, especially come election time. In this paper we build upon the comparatively modest negative partisanship literature to consider the effects of negative partisan attitudes on a range of political behaviours. There are reasons to suspect that negative and positive partisanship may have different effects; thus, accounting for the unique influence of negative attitudes is important for understanding the full effect of partisanship on political behaviour. Our results, based upon Canadian Election Study data from 2008 and 2011, reveal that, in addition to vote choice, negative partisanship influences voter turnout and a range of political activities, both related and unrelated to parties. These findings provide evidence of the power of the "dark side" of partisanship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no unifying theory to guide the study of partisan political staff. The literature suggests staffers may be variously mechanisms for resolving principal-agent problems, extensions of centralized political control or spoils given as rewards inside the core executive. Annual Public Accounts data, available only since 2007, offer a promising new addition to the debate over federal exempt staffs. This paper presents descriptive and linear regression results on staffing expenditures for five years of federal data in Canada. Using the construct of "revealed preference," predictors of variance in ministerial spending on staffing may provide new, objective information on their function in Canadian government. Results of this study demonstrate that quantitative methods can be applied to the study of political staff and may be a helpful addition as the field continues to develop, test and refine theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extending recent social science work using the concept of “scene” into politics, this paper investigates connections between cultural variation and political variation across Canadian localities. First, we introduce the notion of “scene.” Then, using a national database of local amenities (with some 1800 categories and 1.6 million data points), we show that key dimensions of cultural meaning account for significant differences in voting patterns in recent Canadian elections. In particular, electoral districts with scenes that suggest themes of self-expression are associated with support for left-leaning parties, while scenes that support locality and corporateness are associated with the right. We conclude with suggestions for pursuing hypotheses about potential mechanisms driving these associations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the tradition of democratic theory, elections are recognized as important mechanisms of accountability. However, the migration of public decision-making responsibility away from elected representatives and the emergence of new governance actors necessitate a fuller conceptualization of accountability relationships. As governments pursue partnerships with societal actors and disperse authority across multiple levels, questions of public input and accountability within the democratic governance process arise. In this paper, cases of authority migration in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia between the years of 1946 and 2005 are used to examine the accountability relationships between new governance actors and both government and society. The existence and relative strength of accountability relationships are evaluated using the rules stipulated in the provincial legislation. Political ideology of governing parties, geographic scale of new jurisdictions and period in time are evaluated as predictors of the strength of the accountability relationship overall. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The federal government's power to appoint judges has come under increased scrutiny in recent years. While many suggest that partisan affiliation, gender and professional background may be influencing the Canadian appointment process, and some have called into question the fairness of such influences, little attention has been directed at determining whether these characteristics influence the outcome of cases. This paper studies decisions made by the Ontario Court of Appeal between 1990 and 2003 and uses a unique measure of partisan affiliation in an attempt to answer the question: do characteristics which play a role in the appointment process influence judicial decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While comparative public law scholars report that we are witnessing a “global expansion of judicial power” (Tate and Vallinder, 1995), much of the comparative research also suggests that judicial power is subject to significant external constraints, including those associated with interests of governmental actors (such as Helmke, 2005; Vanberg, 2005). In Canada, however, the question of the extent to which governmental actors affect the Supreme Court of Canada's decision making in the wake of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has not received systematic attention (but see Hennigar, 2010; Kelly, 2005). The paper analyzes the extent to which governmental mobilization through third-party intervention affects the Supreme Court's decision making. It relies on a dataset of all constitutional rights cases involving review of written laws decided by the Court in the post-charter period (1982–2007). It shows that third-party intervention is a powerful institutional mechanism providing governmental actors with an opportunity to systematically affect the exercise of judicial review. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Is there a conflict between the principles of representation by population and the representation of communities of interest? In Canada, the legal requirement to design electoral districts based on pre-existing regions and communities of interest has produced large discrepancies in district populations. Several authors claim that this situation has a deleterious effect on the representational experiences of those citizens living in more populous districts. This paper examines whether the population of an electoral district affects the quality of political representation in that district. We first present survey data characterizing the relationship between constituency population and citizens' reported satisfaction with democracy and contact with politicians and parties. We then present audit experimental evidence from Canada demonstrating that the helpfulness of politicians towards citizens is not conditioned on constituency population. Our data indicate that constituency population has no clear impact on the quality of representational experiences in Canada, suggesting that it is possible to ensure the effective representation of communities of interest without harming the overall quality of Canadian democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Canadian party system exhibits both “stable dealignment,” defined as directionless volatility and relative stability. But the boundary between the system's orderly and disorderly parts is not that clear in conventional wisdom, which contrasts big, inclusive parties with small parties representing ideas or interests. In fact, the relatively stable parties have been the NDP and the Liberals, in contrast to the Conservatives and a rotating cast of province- or region-specific insurgents. Volatility is a feature mainly of Quebec and the West and is greater in federal than in provincial elections. But geographic divergence is greater in provincial elections. The paper proposes a research program to account for Canada's coexistence of opposites. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Disagreement over how and between whom power should be shared has led to competing conceptions of federalism in Canada. The model of federalism adopted in the Constitution Act 1867 divides power between the provinces and the federal government to the exclusion of Aboriginal peoples. However, pre-Confederation documents such as the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the early treaties suggest that federalism is founded on the coexistence of self-governing nations. This paper presents a case study of how one Aboriginal people, the Métis, are reviving the pre-Confederation vision of federalism founded on mutual recognition by carving out a space for themselves in Canada's political and institutional landscape. We argue that by delivering an expanded array of programs and services to their citizens, creating innovative governance structures, adopting legislation in key areas of Métis interest and fostering economic self-sufficiency, the Métis are reshaping federalism from the bottom up. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Official participation in Canadian First Ministers' Conferences has long been exclusive to federal and provincial first ministers. In March 1992, however, the membership of this intergovernmental arena was expanded permanently to include territorial premiers. Using the tools of historical institutionalism and drawing upon relevant literature and eleven elite interviews with former first ministers and senior civil servants, this paper seeks to explain why this instance of incremental institutional change occurred. It finds that significant friction between the institutional and ideational layers of the Canadian federation during a period of mega-constitutional reform allowed federal, provincial and territorial actors to draw upon ideas about democracy and the political and constitutional maturation of the territorial North to expand permanently the membership of First Ministers' Conferences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The release of a new study guide for immigrants aiming to become Canadian citizens in 2009 was the first major reform of this document since its inception in 1995. This paper examines the coverage of the Anglo-Canadian and Franco-Québécois press surrounding the new citizenship guide. Rather than supporting the widely accepted thesis that Canada is marked by a « collision of identities », our study suggests the emergence of an implicit alliance between the two Canadian “solitudes” with respect to their understanding of citizenship. In particular, the two groups of newspapers agree upon the necessity to protect « acquired gains » of Canadian society against the beliefs and practices of an uncivilized « Other ». Nevertheless, we should not jump to conclusions: does the convergence of media representations of Canadian citizenship really reflect the emergence of a shared collective identity in Quebec and Canada? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]