Canadian Parties in Transition

503 Pages·2016·2.855 MB·English

by  Alain G. Gagnon (editor), Brian Tanguay (editor)

Canadian Parties in Transition
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Canadian Parties
in Transition
Recent Trends and New Paths
for Research
FOURTH EDITION
EDITED BY
Alain-G. Gagnon and A. Brian Tanguay
Copyright © University of Toronto Press 2017
Higher Education Division
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Canadian parties in transition : recent trends and new paths to research / edited by Alain-G. Gagnon
and A. Brian Tanguay.—Fourth edition.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4426-3471-8 (hardback).—ISBN 978-1-4426-3470-1 (paperback).—
ISBN 978-1-4426-3473-2 (pdf).—ISBN 978-1-4426-3472-5 (html).
1. Political parties—Canada. 2. Political parties—Canada—History. 3. Canada—Politics and
government. 4. Representative government and representation—Canada. 5. Elections—Canada.
I. Gagnon, Alain-G. (Alain-Gustave), 1954–, editor II. Tanguay, A. Brian (Andrew Brian), 1954–,
editor.
JL195.C28 2016 324.271 C2016-900507-0
C2016-900508-9
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The editors would like to dedicate this fourth edition of Canadian Parties in
Transition to Vincent Lemieux and Peter Mair, whose work has influenced so
many scholars and students of political parties and party systems.
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Contents
Preface ix
ALAIN-G. GAGNON AND A. BRIAN TANGUAY
Part I: Origins and Evolution of the Canadian Party System
1 The Evolution of the Canadian Party System: From Brokerage to
Marketing-Oriented Politics 3
STEVE PATTEN
2 Money, Politics, and the Canadian Party System 28
LISA YOUNG
3 Parties and Regions: Representation and Resistance 44
JAMES BICKERTON
4 Polarized Pluralism in the Canadian Party System 64
RICHARD JOHNSTON
5 The Waning of Political Parties? 84
GRANT AMYOT
Part II: Ideologies and Party Politics
6 Ideological Competition in the Canadian Party System 109
NELSON WISEMAN
7 The Liberal Party of Canada: Rebuilding, Resurgence,
and Return to Power 127
BROOKE JEFFREY
8 The Conservatives: Rebuilding and Rebranding, Yet Again 146
PETER WOOLSTENCROFT
9 Ideological Moderation and Professionalization: The NDP under
Jack Layton and Tom Mulcair 168
DAVID MCGRANE
10 Third Parties in Canada: Variety and Success 185
ÉRIC BÉLANGER
viii contents
Part III: Representation and Democracy
11 Party Politics and Voting Systems in Canada 217
DENNIS PILON
12 Back to the Future: Encoding and Decoding Interest
Representation Outside of Parties 250
JACQUETTA NEWMAN
13 Party Politics in a Distinct Society: Two Eras of Block Voting in
Quebec 277
ALAIN-G. GAGNON AND FRANÇOIS BOUCHER
14 Where Are the Women in Canadian Political Parties? 296
JOANNA EVERITT
15 The Promise of Direct Democracy: Is That All There Is? 316
A. BRIAN TANGUAY
Part IV: New Paths for Research
16 From Brokerage to Boutique Politics: Political Marketing and the
Changing Nature of Party Politics in Canada 343
ALEX MARLAND AND THIERRY GIASSON
17 Political Campaigning 364
RICHARD NADEAU AND FRÉDÉRICK BASTIEN
18 Two Decades of Digital Party Politics in Canada:
An Assessment 388
TAMARA A. SMALL
19 Participation, Mobilization, and the Political Engagement
of the Internet Generation 409
HENRY MILNER
20 Municipal Political Parties: An Answer to Urbanization or
an Affront to Traditions of Local Democracy? 432
KRISTIN R. GOOD
Statistical Appendix 465
List of Contributors 473
Index 479
Preface
T
he first edition of Canadian Parties in Transition was published over
25 years ago, in 1989, and it is reasonable to ask whether Canada’s
political parties and party system(s) could have been “in transition” for this
entire period. The short answer is “yes”—unequivocally—as the chapters in
this fourth edition of the book will demonstrate. It might well be that the
federal election of 19 October 2015 restored the partisan status quo ante,
with a dominant Liberal Party, the Conservative Party (whatever epithet
it uses to label itself) as the principal opposition, and the NDP trailing the
other two as a potential third option. But perhaps the existing party system is
not exactly the same as the old one(s), with the partisan allegiances of Que-
bec’s voters still up for grabs, the question of possibly significant electoral
reform on the agenda at the federal level for the first time in decades, and
the ongoing impact of new communications and campaign technologies
on power relations both within party organizations and among the parties
themselves. The contributions to the fourth edition of Canadian Parties in
Transition help shed light on the possible futures of this country’s political
parties and party system.
The chapters are organized into four parts. The first explores the mor-
phology of the existing party system and the principal factors that will shape
its future evolution. Part II examines the nature of ideological competi-
tion in the Canadian party system and provides detailed portraits of each
of the main parties along with the main third-party competitors that have
periodically challenged their monopoly on representation. The chapters
in Part III focus on both how interests are represented in contemporary
democracies—voting systems, social movement and civil society alternatives
to the parties, and the various mechanisms of direct democracy—as well as
how effectively key groups and political communities in Canadian society
(women and Québécois, for instance) are represented by the existing system
of partisan competition. Part IV is an entirely new and innovative feature of
this fourth edition: each of the chapters here sketches out an important new
path for future research in the disciplinary subfield of party politics. T his
section will be particularly useful for graduate students in need of new vistas
for their own research projects.
All but 5 of the 20 chapters in this collection are entirely new, and the
five that remain from the third edition have been substantially revised and
ix